Heroes, Gundas, Vamps & Good Girls
Hindi Pulp Cover Art by Shelle: 25 Postcards

For nearly four decades, Mustajab Ahmed Siddiqui a.k.a. “Shelle” has been painting lurid, action-packed covers for thousands of Hindi pulp novels—thrillers, social dramas, detective fiction, horror. They’re the ones you find stacked up in bookstalls at railway stations throughout North India, written by the bestselling authors in the country: Surender Mohan Pathak, Ved Prakash Sharma, Anil Mohan, Ranu, Colonel Ranjit, and many more.

Price: INDIA Rs 295/-
India: Available soon from landmarkonthenet.com
Outside India: Available soon

The 65 Lakh Heist
by Surender Mohan Pathak
translated by Sudarshan Purohit

Vimal never wanted to get involved in the heist. Now that he's been roped in, he just hopes he can finish the job without getting caught. His partners have other plans, however, and soon Vimal finds himself playing a deadly game with the kingpin of the Punjab underworld...

First published in 1977 and reprinted over fifteen times, Painsath Lakh ki Dakaiti is the fourth book in Surender Mohan Pathak's hugely popular 'Vimal' series, the book that launched a whole genre of anti-hero Hindi crime fiction. This is the first time SMP's work has been translated into English.

Price: INDIA Rs 195/-
India: Order from Landmark Bookstores
Outside India: Available soon
Watch an interview with Surender Mohan Pathak

Where Are You Going, You Monkeys? -- Folktales from Tamil Nadu
by Ki. Rajanarayanan
translated by Pritham K. Chakravarthy

Ki. Rajanarayanan has spent the last three quarters of a century collecting the weirdest and wildest tales of the karisal mannu, the drought-stricken red earth country of Tamil Nadu.
This book contains a gallery of jealous husbands and conniving goddesses, pious sparrows and randy mice, jewel-crazy girl ghosts and angry star demons, as well as a chapter of "naughty & dirty" folktales!

Price: INDIA Rs 350/-
India: Order from Landmark Bookstores
Outside India: Available soon
Watch Ki. Rajanarayanan telling the story of "The Mute Man Giving Witness"

Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings
by Kuzhali Manickavel

A centipede in a shoe, revelations in a shoebox, nosebleeds, exploding women, and a dead mouse named Miraculous populate this collection of thirty-five short stories from one of India's most original young writers.

"Not merely lyrical and strange, but also deadpan funny. I can't shake the feeling that I know this woman, personally--like we hung out at a party or something. But I don't, and we didn't. She's just that good."
--Miranda July

Price: INDIA Rs 195/- US $7.95
India: Order from Landmark Bookstores
Outside India: Available from Amazon.com

Zero Degree
by Charu Nivedita
translated by Pritham K. Chakravarthy and Rakesh Khanna

With its mad patchwork of phone sex conversations, nightmarish torture scenes, tender love poems, numerology, mythology, and compulsive name-dropping of Latin American intellectuals, Charu Nivedita's novel Zero Degree stands out as a groundbreaking work of South Indian transgressive fiction that unflinchingly probes the deepest psychic wounds of humanity.

"Zero Degree takes you apart and allows you to rearrange yourself as you please."
--Asha Menon in New Indian Express

Price: INDIA Rs 315/- US $9.99
India: Order from Landmark Bookstores
Outside India: Available from Amazon.com

The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction
selected & translated by Pritham K. Chakravarthy
edited by Rakesh Khanna

Mad scientists! Desperate housewives! Murderous robots! Scandalous starlets! Sordid, drug-fueled love affairs! This anthology features seventeen stories by ten best-selling authors of Tamil crime, romance, science fiction, and detective stories, none of them ever before translated into English, along with reproductions of wacky cover art and question-and-answer sessions with some of the authors. Grab a masala vadai, sit back and enjoy!

"There are two reasons to buy this book. One, it's a wonderful read and, two, it's the best-produced paperback in the history of Indian publishing."
--Mukul Kesavan in Outlook India

Price: INDIA Rs 395/- US $17.95
India: Order from Landmark Bookstores
Outside India: Available from Amazon.com

when this key sketch gets real tongue is fork hen is cock
when this key sketch gets real my baby eagle's dream comes true
drawings by Natesh

Chennai-based artist Natesh is perhaps better known for his installation artworks and colorful paintings, which have recently been exhibited in New Delhi. This collection of some seventy ink drawings of surreal combinations of hands, women, fish, tigers, eagles, and rhinoceroses showcases the amazing things Natesh can do with a simple black line.

Price: INDIA Rs 395/- US $17.95
India: Order from Landmark Bookstores
Outside India: Available from Amazon.com