Book 1 of 5: Murder Mystery

Matthew Scudder, a policeman turned PI, is your classic detective, with a troubled private life and a history with the bottle. His stories are pacy, with characters that come to life (and death) in the gritty, grimy underbelly of the New York city streets. Eight Million Ways to Die is my favourite, it's Matthew Scudder no 5, but you could also start with the first one - The Sins of The Fathers. More murder mysteries from around the globe, here as well.

Book 2 of 5: Thriller

Follow Court Gentry aka the Gray Man, from the dusty battlefields of Iraq, Turkey and Tsibili to Paris. Working as a private assassin, the Gray Man must battle both governments and terrorist groups, in short - the action never ends. Fans of Lee Child will find The Gray Man is a worthy successor to Jack Reacher - carving out his own moral compass even as he airdrops from helicopters, scanning situations through the sniper scope of his fifty calibre rifle. Also on Netflix.

Book 3 of 5: An Unusual Epic

A Thousand Ships has been one my most compelling reads this year. Like many readers of western fare, I grew up with stories of the world’s best-known epics, the Odyssey and the Iliad, and saw them splashed worin translation, across millions of pages of picture books, novels and films. But here, in 384 pages, I feel like I’m looking at the real story, the one they never told me, the one that happened off the battlefields of Troy. Thank you Natalie Haynes for this re-telling. As your character of Calliope the Muse of poetry, says – ‘There are so many ways of telling a war: the entire conflict can be encapsulated in just one incident. One man’s anger at the behaviour of another, say. A whole war – all ten years of it – might be distilled into that. But this is the women’s war, just as much as it is the men’s, and the poet will look upon their pain – the pain of the women who have always been relegated to the edges of the story, victims of men, survivors of men, slaves of men – and he will tell it, or he will tell nothing at all. They have waited long enough for their turn.’

Book 4 of 5: Coming of Age Romance

All the Right People has the gooey, gossipy feel of a Sex and the City set in Mumbai and Delhi. The action follows Shaan, Aria and Tara who go to school together and grow up to be best friends, with all the complications that ensue with families and finding love. For me, the most interesting part was the reverberations of real life everywhere in the book – from a Shahrukh Khan kind of film star character, who performs at star weddings to a Vidhie Mukerjea-like likdisgraced daughter of a jailed industrialist. Debut author Priyanka Khanna has been a features writer at Vogue and she writes with the comfortable confidence of knowing her world.

Book 5 of 5: A Snarky Startup Story

Three friends create a startup. Cyrus and Asha are married to each other, he is a visionary guru, she is a tech genius, and their friend Jules is the perfect support. I loved the premise of their startup – a platform that connects people through curating non-religious rituals for them. It quickly becomes a hit – getting accepted into a quirky Silicon valley accelerator. Then fame and fortune fray the relationships and roles in this once idealistic enterprise. The Startup Wife is cutting-edge contemporary, and brings in weighty themes like friendship, racism, marriage, religion, traditions and the tech world, in a snarkily thought-provoking way.

What I’m Reading This Week: I just finished Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor. It reads like a Netflix script - Succession meets Gangs of Wasseypur.

The writing is pedestrian, and at 768 pages it could do with some paring down, specially in the latter half.

But I couldn’t put it down.

What’s most stunning is how remarkably real life everything is –right from a chauffeur taking the blame for a billionaire businessman’s son’s drunken driving to politicians profligate progeny. Afterwards I wanted to google everything and discuss all the bits and pieces with other readers. Thank you Juggernaut Books for an advance copy - this book releases in India on January 3, and is definitely one to look out for.

After the gangsters and guns of Age of Vice, I’ve switched gears to the quietly contemplative Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat.

I’ve read Pariat’s short stories set in the North East before, and always wanted more, so I am looking forward to staying with this book, following the narrator from Delhi, to her home in Shillong, moving onto others travellers and worlds, and going slow through it all, savouring Parihat’s luminous and limpid prose.

Next week, I bring you a selection of audio books for your listening pleasure- for the next time you are on the move, walking or when you are stuck in a queue, on a flight or a long commute.

Until then, Happy Reading!

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com

The views expressed are personal