From the author of the award winning novels, Love Comes Later and An Unlikely Goddess, comes a new book of fiction, No Place for Women. The second book in the Crimes in Arabia series, the book makes the reader experience the underbelly of life in one of the richest regions on Earth.
Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar, a Doha-based award-winning author will launch her latest book at Jones the Grocer, The Gate Mall on Monday (tomorrow) at 7:30pm.Signed copies of her latest title will be available for purchase.
The plot of the book involves Ali, a detective. Finding a missing construction worker makes Ali a good man but not a stellar detective, at least not in the eyes of the national intelligence unit. His assignment to a new vice squad could be the road to redemption. When his undercover agent discovers the dead body of an expat teacher, what began as a safe bet puts his reputation on the line.
Soon the burned remains of another woman are found in the desert, and Ali and Manu have no choice but to enlist the help of his fiancee Maryam to explore how the two murders may be connected. Do they have the country’s first serial killer on their hands?
And, if so, how can they ever hope to stop him? Set against the backdrop of the Arabian Gulf, readers are drawn into a world of intrigue, romance, and danger. This is the second book in the Crimes in Arabia series.
Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar is a South Asian American who has lived in Qatar since 2005. Moving to the Arabian Desert was fortuitous in many ways since this is where she met her husband, had two sons, and became a writer.
She has since published eight e-books, including a memoir for first time mothers, Mommy But Still Me; a guide for aspiring writers, So You Want to Sell a Million Copies; a short story collection, Coloured and Other Stories; and a novel about women’s friendships, Saving Peace.
Her coming of age novel, An Unlikely Goddess, won the SheWrites New Novelist competition in 2011.
Her recent books have focused on various aspects of life in Qatar. From Dunes to Dior, named as a Best Indie book in 2013, is a collection of essays related to her experiences as a female South Asian American living in the Arabian Gulf.
Love Comes Later was the winner of the Best Indie Book Award for Romance in 2013 and is a literary romance set in Qatar and London.
The Dohmestics is an inside look into compound life, the day-to-day dynamics between housemaids and their employers. It explores the ups and downs of six women thrown together by fate in the quintessential Middle Eastern compound; a neighbourhood enclosed by a boundary wall with a security gate. Emma, Nouf, Rosa, and Maya are part of the sophomoric fishbowl no one can escape, where rumours can ruin marriages or jobs.
Daily life is an array of coffee mornings, book clubs, and single parenting for Emma whose pilot husband is away more than at home. She can barely remember the workaholic professional she was before becoming a trailing spouse.
Noof, a female Arab lawyer, struggles between her traditional values and Western education. She’s a mother, wife, and friend, like society expects of her, but she wants to establish an identity of her own.
The Unlikely Goddess is the story of Sita, a young South Asian girl growing up in America looking for love while wanting to stand on her own two feet.
Sita is the firstborn, but since she is a female child, her birth makes life difficult for her mother who is expected to produce a son. From the start, Sita finds herself in a culture hostile to her, but her irrepressible personality won’t be subdued. Born in India, she immigrates as a toddler to the US with her parents after the birth of her much anticipated younger brother.
Sita shifts between the vastly different worlds of her WASP-dominated school and her father’s insular traditional home. Her journey takes us beneath tales of successful middle class Indians who immigrated to the US in the 1980s. Sita’s struggles to be American and yet herself, take us deeper into understanding the dilemmas of first generation children, and how religion and culture define women.
Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar has published eight e-books so far.
