Learn from reading these profound, intricate and character-driven books

New Delhi: Those who enjoy reading, learn from reading about other people's experiences. In reality, reading can also aid in our efforts to understand the events of daily life that we go through but do not fully comprehend.

Fear and Lovely (Anjana Appachana)

Mallika is a painfully shy young woman growing up in the heart of a close-knit, sometimes stifling New Delhi colony. Though she is surrounded by love, her life is complicated by secrets that she, her mother, and her aunt work hard to keep.

After suffering a trauma aged nineteen, Mallika loses three days of her memory and slowly spirals into a deep depression. She must find a way out of this abyss, back to herself and those she cares about. But she must also hide her mental illness from her community.

In a narrative that unfolds elliptically from the perspectives of Mallika and the seven people closest to her, the astonishing story of these characters' lives emerges. Mallika's family, childhood friends, and the two men she loves are also hiding truths. As each gives voice to contend with their own struggles, secrets, and silences shatter.

As irreverent and funny as it is serious and anguished, Fear and Lovely is a tender, character-driven story of love, longing, terror, and healing that will keep you turning pages, and won't let you go.

The Big Bull of Dalal Street (Neil Borate, Aprajita Sharma and Aditya Kondawar)

"Respect the market. Have an open mind. Know what to stake. Know when to take a loss. Be responsible," this is what Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, India's iconic stock market investor, often used to say.

This book looks at the life of India's big bull, as Rakesh was famously known, both as a person and as a professional. Providing a fascinating account of his journey, it analyses the records of Jhunjhunwala's investments and interviews he has given over the years. More than just a biography, a large section of the book is devoted to understanding the stocks that made him rich and the mistakes he made. Looking at the journey of the legendary investor, the book offers retail investors some useful insights into the benefits of long-term investing, mistakes one should avoid in the stock market, risks associated with leveraged trades, among others.

The Return of Faraz Ali (Aamina Ahmad)

Faraz Ali still remembers the day he was abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister in Shahi Mohalla -- Lahore's notorious red-light district -- at the direction of his powerful father. Now his father, once more dictating his fate from afar, has sent Faraz back, installing him as the head of the Mohalla police station and charging him with a mission: to cover up the violent death of a young girl.

It should be a simple assignment to carry out, but for the first time in his career, Faraz finds himself unable to follow orders. As the city assails him with a jumble of memories, he cannot stop asking questions or winding through the walled city's labyrinthine alleyways chasing the secrets -- his family's and his own -- that risk shattering his precariously constructed existence.

Profoundly intimate and propulsive, The Return of Faraz Ali is a spellbindingly assured first novel that poses a timeless question: Whom do we choose to protect, and at what price?

The First Flood - Kalki (Translated by Nandini Krishnan)

The interest that Ponniyin Selvan generated when it was first serialised in Kalki, and the manifold increase in circulation of and subscription to the magazine, saw it published in multiple volumes soon after. Critics used the term 'Kalki Tamil' to describe its style where slang alternates with scholarship, wordplay with ecstatic prose, and vivid imagery. Kalki's words are crafted with care, his prose is lyrical and his linguistic manipulations are difficult to move into another tongue. Nandini Krishnan rises to the challenge by going back to the original text and rendering it anew without condensing or paraphrasing the narrative -- devices that are apparent in the existing translations. For ease of reading, and because every chapter is a cliffhanger, with plot twists and turns befitting an airport read, each of the original five volumes has been divided further, into shorter books that are easy to hold and carry around.

Volume One, The First Flood, introduces us to the world of the Cholas and quite incredibly marries a page-turner of a story with travelogue and history.

Being You - A New Science of Consciousness (Anil Seth)

The Sunday Times bestselling Being You is an accessible, inspiring, and eye-opening exploration of the brain by one of the most remarkable pioneers working in science today.

Somehow, within each of our brains, billions of neurons work to create our conscious experience. How does this happen? Why do we experience life in the first person? After more than twenty years of researching the brain, neuroscientist Anil Seth puts forward a radical new theory of consciousness, challenging our understanding of perception and reality and turning what we thought we knew about ourselves on its head.

Sovereigns of the Sea: Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire (Seema Alavi)

The book exemplifies a new kind of history-writing tradition that shifts the gaze away from the Euro-centric narrative of imperialism and capitalism and focuses instead on the Arab Sultans as agents of change. This is a refreshing change from the way historical books are usually written. The book makes an exciting foray into the 'micro-history' approach to narrate the story of the Ocean in more contingent ways. These micro-histories put more emphasis on individual experience, materiality, and the nature of space and time, thus providing a more textured perspective. Keeping a sensitive finger on the specific temporal and spatial moments in the maritime space, it explores their key role in shaping the politics of the Ocean and nurturing the Omani Sultanate.