Dhruvadevi Book: When Loyalty Puts a Queen’s Future at Risk Standing by your spouse sounds simple enough. But what happens when that loyalty threatens your dignity and the future of an empire? Sarvajeet Dinesh Chandra’s Dhruvadevi: The Queen Who Made Chandragupta places a queen in precisely that position. Set in India around 377 CE, the Read more…

The Chola Tigers Book Review: An Absorbing Adventure with Some Missed Opportunities Someshwar is a wealthy merchant. In the opening of The Chola Tigers: Avengers of Somnath, however, his money cannot buy the one thing he asks for: the survival of the temple. His family has already been killed. Then the Shiva Linga is shattered, Read more…

The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi: A Quiet Storm of Color, Choice, and Culture Some novels shout. Others whisper. The Henna Artist does neither. It speaks—softly, deliberately, with just enough quiet confidence to pull you in. Alka Joshi’s debut doesn’t try to impress you in the first ten pages. Instead, it earns your trust over Read more…

Synopsis: Even as a child, Sambhaji knew that he needed to fend for himself. His mother passed away when he was hardly two. His father, the great Shivaji, was always busy chasing his dream of ‘Swaraj’ (or self-governance) and keeping the vicious Mughal emperor Aurangzeb at bay. Sambhaji is the eldest son of Shivaji. He Read more…

Synopsis: 373 AD. In the thick forests of Malwa, an enigmatic stranger gallops into an ambush attack by bandits to rescue a young courtesan, Darshini. His name is Deva and he is the younger son of Emperor Samudragupta. That chance encounter, first with Deva and later with his two friends, the loyal general Saba Virasena Read more…