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Miss Timmins’ School for Girls
By Nayana Currimbhoy
Harper Collins.
Pages 496. Rs 399.

AN intense, irreverent love story and a dark murder mystery, this is the story of a conventional young woman who leaves her cloistered small-town home to teach at a remote boarding school run by British missionaries. It is also a coming-of-age novel set at the confluence of three cultures — the protagonist’s conservative, middle-class Brahmin family; the British colonial universe of the boarding school; and the rock ‘n’ roll, drugs, free love philosophy of the 1970s — filtered to this small corner of India.

Young Charu finds herself in a school that is still run like an outpost of the Empire, with Scottish dancing, scripture studies, and porridge for breakfast. By day, Charu shares Shrewsbury biscuits and tea with the school’s missionaries and teaches Shakespeare to a hothouse of privileged Indian girls; by night, she is drawn to the troubled and charismatic Moira Prince — a fellow teacher harbouring secrets of her own and her pot-smoking hippie friends.

Then, one monsoon night, a teacher is murdered, and the ordered world of the school and the town — peopled by colonial-era eccentricities, small-town gossips, and hippie misfits — is thrown into chaos. Charu finds herself implicated in the murder — and suddenly her real education begins.

Live from London
By Parinda Joshi.
Rupa.
Pages 204. Rs 195.

What happens when fate forklifts a fun and fearless 2-year-old from a crazy college costume party and puts her straight on to the stage of Britain’s Got Talent?

Nishi Gupta lives in London, loves playing her red beauty (guitar) and has a knack of seamlessly landing up in dicey situations. Unable to battle her humiliation post a stage debacle, she interns at a record label company. There, she meets Mr Fredrick, the godfather she was looking for; influential and hard to impress. Instead, she finds herself attracted to an international recording artist with a slightly funny name, Nick Navjot Chapman, who is part Indian, part Canadian and entirely sexy.

A short steamy affair, a gig on Nick’s debut album and a ticket to stardom; life changes fast for Nishi. Then, the unthinkable happens and she finds herself back in India trying to build a fresh life in a country she vaguely remembers. Will she be able to move on forgetting her past, or are there more surprises waiting for her?

Theodore Boone: The Abduction
By John Grisham.
Hachette.
Pages 217. Rs 225.

Theodore Boone is back in a new adventure, and the stakes are higher than ever.

When his best friend, April, disappears from her bedroom in the middle of the night, no one, not even Theo Boone —who knows April better than anyone — has answers.

As fear ripples through his small hometown and the police hit dead ends, it’s up to Theo to use his legal knowledge and investigative skills to chase down the truth and save April.

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