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Just as earthly time stops when the characters unfurl their journey across the magical land of Catriona, so does the reader’s sense of time as one rapidly navigates one’s way through the silvery forest of ivory trees, mysterious caves with mythical gods, through lakes containing lotus embedded with emeralds and through a landscape lighting up with a multitude of characters. It’s a place ‘where one grows faster and lives longer’. It’s a place where earthy metaphors are conjured but the limits of their earthy meanings are challenges. The story centers around two young women Sara and Cristina, two young women.

The other book being reviewed is very different in its genre and appeal: no endearing canine warms the pages of this dark thriller. Indeed, the very cover of Lucy Whitehouse’s Keep You Close has a burning matchstick that might as well be a metaphor for the reading experience on offer: incandescent, thrilling, terrifying. Those readers who liked Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl will definitely enjoy this well-crafted whodunit. Marianne Glass, an artist, falls to her death from the upstairs window of the family home in Oxford, in what is assumed to be a tragic accident. Her estranged friend, Rowan Winter, is not convinced, though, knowing very well that Marianne has always had acute vertigo, and would never have gone so close to the roof’s edge.

If you know a dog-person, or a human owned entirely by dogs, this is a book you want to share with them straight away. While I was reading Jonathan Unleashed by the luminously witty Meg Rosoff, that peerless writer about children, young folk and dogs, I was casting sidelong glances at my sons, hoping that by some magic, they’d transform into dogs, just for a week or so. Just for a bit, I should love to be in the company of canines like the super-intelligent ‘city’ collie Dante and the sweet-natured spaniel Sissy who light up this book with the ‘Byzantine quality of their inner lives’.

We meet our hero Subroto Bandhopadhyay, Stoob to you and I, on a holiday in Thailand with his friend Ishani and their families. While we expect the sun, sand and surf to keep the twelve-year-old occupied, it isn’t turning out to be as relaxing as Stoob would like—he has an embarrassing story to narrate, an incident, which involves a girl, Mala Kapoor. Stoob is turning out to be a fun and engaging series. Stoob, Ishani and Rehan are such well chalked out characters, with lots in common, yet plenty to set apart one from another. Rehan is your typical nerd who googles everything and seems to know way lot more than what everyone else around does.

The stories in Gumrah come from a TV show of the same name hosted by Channel V, owned by Star India. The foreword by Chetan Bhagat seeks to provide a context for the narratives. It also outlines the purpose of the book, which is to warn of the dangers of the teenage years, and therefore the importance of being aware and responsible. The first story, ‘Soulmate’, is the narrative of sibling rivalry turned tragic. A case of unrequited teenage love, insecurity at home and in school, and subconscious resentment of a younger sibling, lead a girl to murder her younger sister in a fit of rage.

Have you ever had a dream that’s left you amazed, baffled, terrified, elated, confused, sweating, or feeling any other adjective in abundance?! The dream world is a truly happening place. Funny dreams, weird dreams, scary dreams, lucid dreams, sad dreams, lonely dreams, sometimes even lifechanging dreams. If you’ve ever had the experience of waking up from an incredibly vivid dream, or one that is only hazily etched in memory, you know partly what this book is about! Shobha—the epicenter of Sandhya Rao’s Dream Writer—is a dreamy girl. She sees many dreams, but…