• Crime - English

    The Music Room Murder

    Alok Mukherjee I The Mallick mansion stood like a fading relic on one of South Kolkata’s quieter streets, its grandeur worn down by decades of neglect, yet still capable of stirring awe in those who crossed its threshold. Rajat Mallick, the current custodian of this ancestral home, walked through its corridors with a nervous air, his mind fixed on the night ahead. The music room, once the pride of his forefathers, had not seen such a gathering in years. High ceilings lined with fading frescoes, Belgian chandeliers that flickered with uneven light, and carved wooden panels heavy with dust spoke…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Glass Horizon

    Aaratrika Roy The evening the horizon cracked, the sea smelled like rusted coins and wet moss, and the sky wore the color of old bruises, and I stood on the seawall gripping my father’s compass like it might point me toward a version of myself that wasn’t stuck between everybody’s pity and my own silence; gulls shrieked overhead, kids played cricket on the sand with a plastic bat that had lost its stickers years ago, Naina texted three times to ask if I was still “brooding like a Victorian ghost” and I didn’t answer because the word brooding felt exactly…

  • English - Horror

    The Forgotten Carnival

    Evelyn Hart Part 1 – The Road Into the Woods The forest road narrowed like a throat as they drove deeper into it, the canopy closing overhead until sunlight became a dim green wash, a trickle of light spilling between branches that seemed too eager to entwine. The rental car rattled over roots breaking through the old asphalt, and every so often the trees opened to reveal brief glimpses of moss-slick boulders or dry creekbeds that wound like scars across the earth. In the backseat, Priya leaned forward between the front seats, her voice sharp with that mix of excitement…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Secret Playlist of Juhu Beach

    Sourav Moitra One Twilight always made Juhu Beach look like a painting someone had brushed in haste—the sky neither day nor night, streaked with orange fading into violet. The waves came and went with their tired rhythm, dragging along whispers of the city, mixing them with the smell of roasted corn and sea salt. Amid the children chasing plastic balls and the couples leaning into each other as if the world had shrunk into just two bodies, sixteen-year-old Viraj Mehta sat cross-legged, his toes buried in the sand, staring at the horizon. He often came here after school, not because…

  • Crime - English

    Murder at the Monastery

    Pramit Deshmukh 1 The hills of Dharamshala carried a silence unlike any other. It was not the silence of emptiness, but one layered with murmurs of prayer wheels, the occasional clang of temple bells, and the distant rustle of pine forests swaying with the mountain wind. In the early mornings, the mist floated across the ridges like drifting spirits, veiling and unveiling the town in turns. Pilgrims wound their way to monasteries, their maroon robes a steady rhythm against the gray stone paths. The air smelled faintly of incense and butter lamps, mingled with the earthy dampness of rain-kissed soil.…

  • English - Horror

    Whispers of the Shyambazar House

    Anirban Sen The tram rattled past Bagbazar and screeched towards Shyambazar, its iron wheels sparking against the stubborn tracks as dusk settled over North Kolkata. The air smelled of roasted peanuts, incense smoke, and an old kind of weariness that clung to the city’s bones. Ananya adjusted her satchel against her shoulder and stepped off at the crossing where five roads tangled together like restless veins. She had been summoned by the trustees of an old zamindari estate, tasked with sorting through a century’s worth of brittle manuscripts and letters that had been abandoned in the crumbling mansion known simply…

  • English - Romance

    When the Rain Spoke Our Names

    Rhea Kapoor Part 1 – The Meeting The rain had been falling since dawn, a steady curtain that blurred the tram lines and softened the edges of College Street’s crowded bookstalls. Water pooled in the cracks of the old pavements, making each step a careful negotiation between slipperiness and stubborn mud. Ayaan tightened the strap of his worn leather satchel and ducked under a bamboo-and-plastic canopy where secondhand books leaned against one another like old companions. His hair, damp and curling from the downpour, clung to his forehead, but his eyes held that restless brightness of someone always in search…

  • English - Fiction - Suspense

    The Shadow Broadcast

    Arjun Mehra he Shadow Broadcast By Arjun Mehra Part 1 – The Leak Rain glazed the pavements of London in a silver film that distorted neon into restless pools of color. At three in the morning, the newsroom of the Daily Standard lay deserted except for Eleanor Hart, who hunched over her terminal with the exhausted determination of someone unwilling to surrender to sleep. She had been chasing a dead lead on parliamentary lobbying, convinced that hidden money had been funneling itself into the corridors of Westminster. But the screen in front of her no longer displayed budget spreadsheets or…

  • English - Travel

    Under the Tuscan Rain

    Karan Sehgal Part 1: The Smell of Olive Pits The rental car smelled faintly of olive pits and cold metal, like someone had bottled last summer and left it under the seat to ferment. It was a squat white Fiat Panda, dented on one door and stubborn in second gear, the kind of car that looks offended by hills. The clerk at the Florence airport, a woman with a swift smile and a tattoo of an anchovy on her wrist, handed me the keys and said, “She hates rain but loves radio.” When I asked what station the car preferred,…

  • English - Romance

    The Window Between Us

    Elina Ray Part One – The First Glance Anaya had never thought much about the way the late afternoon light struck the tall glass windows of her office building. She had been working here for nearly seven years, and the reflections had become part of the background noise of her days—the sun falling at angles, the mirrored glow of another tower staring back at her, the distant silhouettes of people she did not know framed in their own cubicles across the street. The city moved like a restless animal outside, traffic humming below, horns breaking against the hush of the…