Suffering from the ‘so many books and so little time’ syndrome? Here are 5 books that you can spend your lazy winter afternoons with.

1. Dragon Aunty Returns by Debeshi Gooptu 

A Bengali woman meets a Punjabi mirchi in a swanky residential complex of Gurgaon. Mrinalini can’t tolerate the boisterous Punjabi dragon. The only problem is, they become friends. How long will this adventurous friendship survive?

2. The House of Jaipur by John Zubrzycki

The House of Jaipur has been synonymous with exquisite maharanis, polo-playing maharajas and playboy princes, fabulous jewels and opulent palaces. But behind the glittering facades lie stories of forbidden love, forged wills and missing treasures, of lives cut short by alcoholism and of bitter family feuds over assets worth thousands of crores. Revealed for the first time are the untold stories of life behind the palace doors.

3. The 12 Commandments of Being a Woman by Tahira Kashyap Khurrana

In this funny, wise and outrageously frank book, Tahira Kashyap Khurrana talks of lying in school about getting her periods, falling in love at eighteen with her future husband, her obsession with having a triple D bra cup, going on the world’s craziest diets and accidentally getting pregnant because of a Chinese meal. And in doing so, she touches every woman’s secret heart . . .

4. Mahabharata by Arshia Sattar

Arshia Sattar’s Mahabharata is one of the most outstanding retellings of this epic ever written. Sattar, an acclaimed translator of the Ramayana, has gone deep into the original and written an account that is so rich, so observant and so moving that it will enthral you.

5. The Other Wife by Andaleeb Wajid

Rashida gets a rude shock when her husband decides to marry a younger girl. She can’t accept the girl, nor leave her husband. However, fate has other plans. Could she ever learn to live with the other wife?