Intrigue and murder
In the book The Bangalore Detectives Club, Kaveri, a curious 19-year-old with a love for maths, moves to Bangalore to settle into a life of married respectability. And it seems like it’s going to be an uneventful existence until she and her husband attend a dinner party that ends with a murder. Kaveri jumps in to solve it, and we have a well-paced, eng-aging mystery with a Nancy Drew-meets-Tuppence Beresford heroine. With each book, urban ecologist Harini Nagendra proves her creative approach and deep love for Bengaluru. Her previous book, Cities And Canopies, captured the relationships between the city, its residents and its trees. In The Bangalore Detectives Club, she gives us a feel of the city in the 1920s—the people, the lost lakes and wetlands and garadi mane (wrestling schools) on street corners. Despite the setting, the streets and establishments in which her characters chase murderers feel as warmly familiar as they do today. —Shalini Umachandran
Horrific yarns
I love horror, and over the past couple of years, have branched out from the more established mediums like books, TV shows and films to the world of podcasts.We have all grown up listening to horror and ghost stories, and the spoken word seems a perfect medium to tell tall tales. The podcast I have been hooked on to recently is Haunted Places on Spotify. It has a fairly straight-forward concept—it tells the stories of haunted places around the world. It could be a house, a chapel or a host of urban legends. Hosted by voice actor Greg Polcyn, it is part of a bouquet of podcasts on strange things by the platform Parcast. Haunted Places consists of supremely eerie episodes that give the spooky backstories of each place, along with a guided tour of the venue. Check out the latest episode, about the supremely disturbing Japanese urban legend of Hanako-san. —Bibek Bhattacharya
Also Read: Four things we love, and think you will too
New hand-crafted gin
There’s a new London dry gin in town: Beam Suntory recently launched its brand Sipsmith in India. Founded in 2009 in London, this is one of the few gins that is hand-distilled and hand-crafted in a unique three-step process, lending it a distinct taste. Distilled first in copper stills, it is then infused with 10 botanicals through a one-shot method that gives Sipsmith its unique flavour. As the gin distils, only the purest “heart cut” of each distillation is bottled. I tasted the gin at a recent launch event, while also trying my hand at using it to make a martini. Sipsmith can be tried as a sipping gin, on the rocks, but it also serves as an amazing base for everything from a classic gin and tonic to cocktails like a gin and basil smash. Sipsmith is available across multiple markets—Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru; prices range Rs. 5,485-7,000 (700ml) —Nitin Sreedhar
With a twist
The Pelikan Twist P457/B Fountain Pen came into my life while I was researching a recent cover story on stationery. I consider myself a stationery nerd but there’s a certain amount of impostor syndrome because I moved to gel pens years ago and didn’t look back. So I decided to go looking for an entry-level fountain pen that would be easy to use and refill— and yet be of a slightly higher grade than the China-made pens flooding the market. The Pelikan Twist (Rs. 1,080 on Amazon.in currently) was recommended by one of the stationery nerds I spoke to for the story and I ordered it immediately, falling in love with the fun design and colours—this was not a pen that took itself too seriously. Having used it for over two weeks now, I am in love with my Rose Gold Pelikan Twist, which came with two ink cartridges. Another plus: It is easy to use regardless of whether you are left-handed or right-handed. —Shrabonti Bagchi
