Malvika Singh
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Three estranged siblings are pulled back into the same house when one of their sons goes missing. Rohini Paranjpe Sathe’s The Music Makers is a tender, unflinching novel about patriarchy, buried dreams and the music that survives a family’s silence.
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At six the alarm ascends into a scream,
a banshee with a grudge against my dream.
I, who last night resolved to rise like light
lie pinned beneath the wreckage of the night.

One eye consents to open. Just the one.
It scans the ceiling, rules the morning.
So out my hand goes,
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A rom-com writer wakes to find herself inside her own book, and falls for the very hero she invented. Every trope you expect is here, filed and stamped, yet the self-aware conceit turns each cliché into a knowing smile. My rating: 3.5/5.
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Some Julys are wetter than others not because of the sky but because of what happened underneath it. The fevers weathered, the small hand held, the ordinary miracle of everyone waking up, at last, cool to the touch.
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There are thrillers that frighten you with what waits in the dark, and then there are thrillers that frighten you with what smiles at you in the light. Soft Erasure by A.D. Levenson belongs firmly to the second kind and it unsettled me in a way I did not quite expect when I turned the…
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There is something delicious about a murder mystery that opens on a beach at the wrong end of a Greek summer, and Spirits and Whine by Lisa Troy knows exactly what to do with that setting. Sun-bleached, salt-sharp, close enough that everyone knows everyone’s business. The island town becomes a character in its own right,…
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Rain and waiting rooms, a cough that won’t quit, a small girl who doesn’t want to leave her bed — and a mother who is braver than she believes she is.
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For thirteen years, I knew exactly where I would be at 9:47 on a weekday morning — at my desk, second cup of chai going cold beside a stack of KYC files, the ceiling fan doing its slow, indifferent rounds above me. Banking teaches you many things. Punctuality. Precision. The particular dread of a month-end…
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A dark psychological thriller of copycat serial killers and a grieving widow auditing the secret life her husband left behind. My review of Book 1 in Natalie Michaels’ Copycat Killer series.