Chapter 1 Grace Sayers sat on the park bench, clutching her paper cup close to her chin for warmth. She was watching the small coffee van parked across from her, enjoying the dramatic puffs of steam as the coffee machine exhaled, the smooth gliding of steel on perfectly fitted steel as the man slotted the filter into place, the sound of metal tapping on wood as he loosened the ground beans. A woman about her daughter’s age was chatting to the man making coffee. They were both laughing as sh...| Hachette UK
I Monday, July 26, 2021 Sunny sat wedged between Halajan and the back door of the old Mercedes convertible, the large pink elephant slumped on her lap as if it were a petulant child. There had barely been room for her luggage, what with the entire family insisting on coming along to greet her at the airport, showering her with flowers and balloons and kisses and more than a few tears. Fitting everyone in the car to go home was like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube. Despite the dust...| Hachette UK
New Delhi, 2004 Five pavement-dwellers lie dead at the side of Delhi’s Inner Ring Road.It sounds like the start of a sick joke.If it is, no one told them.They die where they slept.Almost.Their bodies have been dragged ten meters by the speeding Mercedes that jumped the curb and cut them down.It’s February. Three a.m. Six degrees.Fifteen million souls curl up in sleep.A pale fog of sulfur lines the streets.And one of the dead, Ragini, was eighteen years old. She was five months preg...| Hachette UK