• Building a Free India (Speaking Tiger Books), edited by Rakesh Batabyal, brings together landmark speeches delivered over roughly a century by leaders of the national movement, from Dadabhai Naoroji and Surendranath Banerjee to Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar. It also includes speeches of lesser-known but equally remarkable figures.
  • M. Hamid Ansari’s Challenges to a Liberal Polity (Penguin/Viking) takes on some of the burning issues of Indian polity and society. The former vice president discusses Nehru’s vision for India, issues of citizenship, religion, democracy, Muslim identity, the role of women to build a compassionate society and the implication for dissent. 
  • Two friends from different backgrounds weather every storm of life together till one fateful night in Kamila Shamsie’s Best of Friends (Bloomsbury). Decades later, when the two have settled into their lives, the past catches up with them. This is a literary thriller about the complexities of friendship. 
  • In Guillaume Musso’s The Secret Life of Writers (Hachette), a celebrated author retires and moves to an island, away from the public eye. Twenty years later, a body washes ashore and a journalist shows up for an interview at the island. A gripping mystery unfolds where the lines dividing truth and fiction are blurred.