After an amazing TBR from September, the book releases in the month of October also look promising. With a winner of the prestigious Man Booker International Prize, to Vineet Bajpai's seventh book Mastaan, here's your October 2019's To-Be-Read-List:
1. Mastaan by Vineet Bajpai
The Harappa Trilology famed Vineet Bajpai is all set to introduce yet another historical fiction masterpiece. After Reliance Digital acquired the rights for the Harappa Trilogy, fans had been waiting for the author's another book since long. Well, very few people know that Mastaan is the author's seventh book and he has written 4 more business books.
An imperial monster masquerades as a mercantile company. From gunpowder to opium, the East India Company uses every weapon to bring an entire sub-continent to its knees. Even Tipu, the fearsome Tiger of Mysore, falls prey to British military might. As a century of deceit and cruelty unfolds - the oppressed thirst for retribution. Delhi is the first to drown in blood, as a violent sepoy uprising engulfs all of Hindustan. The seat of the crumbling Mughal empire emerges as the epicenter of the ghadar. An unforgettable poet laments the destruction of his beloved city and a senile Badshah’s eyes gleam with unreal hope, as both sides of the Laal Qila witness terrifying bloodshed and historical battles. And amidst all the cannon-roars, brutal duels, intoxicated mushairas, ravishing courtesans, haunted treasures and bloody battles – unfolds the immortal love-story of the magnificent Mastaan and the beautiful Fay. Did one man really change the course of history’s greatest war for freedom?
Publisher - TreeShade books
Genre - Historical fiction
Release Date - October 16
Paperback- 290 pages
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2. Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi
A richly imagined, engaging and a poetic insight to a society in transition and into lives previously obscured. - The Man Booker International Prize
The winner of Man Booker International Prize in 2019, Celestial Bodies by Arabic author Jokha Alharthi is a much-awaited book this month. Celestial Bodies is set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, where we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present. Elegantly structured and taut, Celestial Bodies is a coiled spring of a novel, telling of Oman's coming-of-age through the prism of one family's losses and loves.
Publisher - Sandstone Press
Genre - Short Fiction
Release Date - October 15
Paperback- 320 pages
3. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Alex Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. A dropout and the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved crime - the last thing she wants is to cause trouble. Not when Yale was supposed to be her fresh start. But a free ride to one of the world's most prestigious universities was bound to come with a catch.
Alex has been tasked with monitoring the mysterious activities of Yale's secret societies - societies that have yielded some of the most famous and influential people in the world. Now there's a dead girl on campus and Alex seems to be the only person who won't accept the neat answer the police and campus administration have come up with for her murder.
Because Alex knows the secret societies are far more sinister and extraordinary than anyone ever imagined.
They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living . . .
Publisher - Gollancz
Genre - Fantasy Fiction
Release Date - October 8
Hardcover- 480 pages
4. Stealing Green Mangoes: Two Brothers, Two Fates, One Indian Childhood by Sunil Dutta
Sunil Dutta is a twenty-year veteran of the LAPD. Before that, he was a biologist at the University of California and a translator of classical Indian poetry. Before that, he was a destitute refugee, one of so many uprooted by the genocidal violence surrounding the Partition of India. Back then, he had a brother. Back then, they were children together, chasing whatever fun and solace they could find in impossible conditions. Sunil looked up to Raju. He admired his strength, his character.
Raju took a different path. He was arrested, he fled the law, he became a fugitive. He became a terrorist. Then he became a father—and then a murderer.
After being diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer later in life, Sunil urgently wanted to understand what choices had led he and his brother down such radically different paths. In Stealing Green Mangoes, Dutta takes us from his family home in Rajasthan to America, to France, to the streets of southeastern Los Angeles, homing in on the questions that tore him and Raju apart: Can you outgrow the madness that made you? Can you make peace with the ghosts of your past?
A memoir with sweeping, spiritual ambitions, Stealing Green Mangoes tells the story of a man who pushed back against the forces that captured his own brother and built a compassionate, meaningful life in a broken world.
Publisher - Anthony Bourdain/Ecco
Genre - Biography
Release Date - October 1
Hardcover- 256 pages
5. Blue Moon by Lee Child
This is the 24th instalment in the renowned Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. With over 2 movies with Tom Cruise as the protagonist, everyone is aware of its adventures.
Reacher is trained to notice things. He’s on a Greyhound bus, watching an elderly man sleeping in his seat, with a fat envelope of cash hanging out of his pocket. Another passenger is watching too ... obviously hoping to get rich quick.
As the mugger makes his move, Reacher steps in. The old man is grateful, yet he turns down Reacher’s offer to help him home. He’s vulnerable, scared, and clearly in big, big trouble.
What hold could the gangs possibly have on the old guy? Will Reacher sit back and let bad things happen? Or can he twist the situation to everyone’s benefit?
Publisher - Delacorte Press
Genre - Crime Fiction
Release Date - October 29
Hardcover- 368 pages
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