Sujata Massey

"November, 1921. Edward VIII, Prince of Wales and future ruler of India, is arriving in Bombay to begin a four-month tour. The Indian subcontinent is chafing under British rule, and Bombay solicitor Perveen Mistry isn't surprised when local unrest over the royal arrival spirals into riots. But she's horrified by the death of Freny Cuttingmaster, an eighteen-year-old female Parsi student, who falls from a second-floor gallery just as the prince's grand...

"India, 1922: It is rainy season in the lush, remote Satara mountains southeast of Bombay, where the kingdom of Satapur is tucked away. A curse seems to have fallen upon Satapur's royal family, whose maharaja died of a sudden illness shortly before his teenage son was struck down in a tragic accident. The kingdom is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur's two maharanis, the dowager queen and the maharaja's widow. The royal...

After a party for her thirtieth birthday, Rei Shimura answers a mysterious invitation to a job interview. The task is to search for and authenticate an ancient Middle Eastern pitcher that disappeared from Iraq's national museum. The piece is believed to be in the hands of a wealthy Japanese collector, whose passion for beauty extends to Rei herself. When a typhoon hits Tokyo, and Rei finds herself trapped along with the object of her investigation,...

Taking a freelance assignment from a Washington, D.C., agency with possible ties to the CIA, Japanese-American investigator Rei Shimura goes undercover as a clerk in a big Tokyo department store to unmask a killer.