Payal Dhar

About Payal Dhar

Payal Dhar writes fiction for children and young adults, and has a number of books under her belt. She’s also a freelance editor and writer, and writes on computers, technology, books, reading, games, travel and anything else that catches her interest.

The Yard - Aliyyah Eniath — Aliyyah Eniath’s The Yard not only tells the story of an enduring love, but also offers an enticing glimpse into the lives of an extended Trinidadian Indian family. In the 19th century, after Britain abolished slavery, indentured labour from colonies far and wide came forth to fill in for menial […]

The Yard – Aliyyah Eniath

Must-Read Contemporary Fiction General Fiction by Payal Dhar

The Simla Paintings and Other Stories - Rita Joshi — What makes a good anthology of short stories? This is a deceptively tricky question. If you had a bunch of random stories that were brilliant individually but had no common thread, or if you had some ordinary stories that were cleverly woven into a single theme, would either of these […]

The Simla Paintings and Other Stories – Rita Joshi

Read if you must Anthology Short Stories by Payal Dhar

This book should, by all rights, be called The John Watson Connection—but more on that later! Even though neither Watson nor Sherlock Holmes figures in the four stories that comprise this collection, the Sherlockian tradition of solving the impossible is very much alive in it. The stories, two each from […]

The Sherlock Holmes Connection – Martin Widmark, Anushka Ravishankar, Katarina ...

Worth a read Middle Grade Mystery by Payal Dhar

The Spy Who Lost Her Head - Jane De Suza — Sequin-sandalled Gulabi arrives in Mumbai from her village, armed with fourteen suitcases—all filled with suitably garish clothes—with a single-minded agenda at hand. She must find a suitor within six months or succumb to an arranged marriage with a man chosen by Mummyji and Papaji. Her heart’s desire is to snag […]

The Spy Who Lost Her Head – Jane De ...

Readable General Fiction Humour by Payal Dhar

When She Went Away - Andaleeb Wajid — Sixteen-year-old Maria Sulaiman has a nasty shock when she wakes up one morning and finds her mother gone. There’s a brief note on the fridge: ‘Leaving you and the kids. Khudahafiz.’ And thus begins a tumultuous year in her life, when everything she knew, everything she took for granted, is […]

When She Went Away – Andaleeb Wajid

Must-Read Young Adult by Payal Dhar

Dear Mrs Naidu - Mathangi Subramanian — My scepticism-meter goes through the roof whenever I hear about children’s novels about the ‘underprivileged’ written by authors who have lived and worked in the first world, even if they’re of Indian origin. The exoticization of India’s ‘great unwashed’ has unfortunately found its way into children’s literature, and lately into […]

Dear Mrs Naidu – Mathangi Subramanian

Worth a read Middle Grade by Payal Dhar

Smitten - Ranjit Lal — If you’re looking for a light, frothy young adult novel, Ranjit Lal’s Smitten isn’t it. This is a novel that will leave you disgusted, enraged and saddened. The reason is simple: child sexual abuse (CSA) is a disturbing subject and, unfortunately, we live in a world where it is a […]

Smitten – Ranjit Lal

Worth a read Young Adult by Payal Dhar