The Burnings by Himanjali Sankar [Paperback]

'They will succumb – to the fire or to the madness within.' As inexplicable fires rage across the country, Shalini receives a frantic call from her first love, Akshar – a man she hasn’t seen in years. She rushes to his side, only to find him a shadow of his former self: broken, tormented by regret and wasting away in the decaying grandeur of his ancestral mansion in the hills. Soon after Shalini steps through its doors, she senses that something isn’t right. The lonely mansion’s older residents linger in eerie ways, harbouring secrets as oppressive as the smoke in the air, and the few living souls who cross her path – Akshar’s beautiful but peculiar childhood sweetheart, the occasional visitors and even some of the locals – are steeped in menace. A locked room beckons Shalini, while something haunts the corridors at night, as if listening to her every move. Shalini must confront the mansion’s malevolent legacy and her own dark past – but doing so could come at an unthinkable price. Will she break free, or become another ghost in this house of horrors?