• Crime - English

    The Chessboard Killer

    July 16, 2025 - By 

    Radhika Iyer One The monsoon had just started whispering over Chennai when Rudra Iyer walked into the Madras Chess Club for his final pre-tournament practice. The marble floor of the hall was damp from the humid wind sneaking in through the old lattice windows, and the scent of wet books, sweat, and varnished wood gave the room an odd comfort he had always known. At twenty-four, Rudra was already a Grandmaster and the brightest Indian hope in the upcoming Tamil Nadu International Grandmasters Open. But today, something felt misaligned. On the board, he played a quiet e4, the most classic…

  • English - Suspense

    The Lake House Murder

    July 8, 2025 - By 

    Devika Chatterjee Chapter 1 The mist rolled in early that morning, curling like silk threads over the dark waters of Naini Lake. Vihaan Kashyap stood by the promenade, his gloved hands wrapped around a steaming cup of chai from a roadside stall. The scent of pine and damp earth clung to the cold air. It had been three days since he arrived in Nainital, hoping for silence, detachment, and the unfamiliar comfort of anonymity. The lake, rimmed by colonial rooftops and shuttered windows, had offered just that—until now. As he sipped slowly, Vihaan caught sight of the headline splashed across…

  • Crime - English - Horror

    The Perfumer of Hazratganj

    July 6, 2025 - By 

    Shamsuddin Ansari Chapter 1: The First Scent It was the smell that reached her before the crime scene did—sharp, floral, unsettlingly sweet. Inspector Ayesha Rizvi paused at the mouth of the narrow alley in Hazratganj, where the rainwater had begun to pool like slow-moving ink. The yellow tape fluttered in the humid breeze, but it was the fragrance in the air—unfamiliar, exotic—that made her stomach tighten. The dead girl lay beneath a crimson shawl, one hand stretched toward a rusted shutter, as if she had tried to knock before she died. On her chest, placed deliberately, was a glass vial…

  • English - Suspense

    The Midnight Tutor

    July 1, 2025 - By 

    Aditi Roy Sharma 1 Samar Ghosh stared blankly at the glowing screen of his laptop, its harsh blue light reflecting off his glasses as the world outside his hostel window drifted into silence. The ceiling fan above creaked lazily, slicing through the thick summer night air of the campus. Around him, the room was cluttered with open textbooks, crumpled notes, and half-finished instant noodles—a portrait of academic exhaustion. But it wasn’t the unfinished code on his terminal or the pending assignments that held his attention tonight. It was the crushing weight of falling behind. Once hailed as a prodigy from…

  • English - Crime

    Blood on the Canvas

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Amit Mehra Chapter 1 — The Vanishing Masterpiece The Galerie du Ciel, nestled along a quieter bend of the Seine where the gaslights flickered like trembling brushstrokes upon the dark water, glowed with opulence on that fateful night. From sleek black sedans to vintage carriages, Paris’s elite arrived in waves, their jewels glinting like captured stars beneath the crystalline chandeliers that adorned the gallery’s vaulted ceiling. Inside, the air was heavy with the mingling scents of aged mahogany, jasmine perfume, and the faint, metallic tang of antique frames polished to perfection. At the very heart of the grand hall, beneath…