Fiction

Victims for Sale

by Nish Amarnath

Description

A fledgling TV reporter fights to expose a crime ring where mentally challenged women are sexually abused and forcibly sterilized.
Sandy swaps a TV gig in Mumbai for life as a media researcher and BBC stringer in London, where she arranges to live as a paying guest with the Sawants, The Sawants are a regular quiet Indian family. Or so she thinks. But her first night at the Sawants' home finds her waking up to a young woman with a knife at her throat...and a dark secret. An ominous stranger is found snooping on the Sawants' porch, weeks later. The family seems to be hiding something. It's only after Sandy runs a sting operation on a care home for differently-abled women that she makes a connection between an institute acting as a front for a sinister nexus and the odd family she lives with. Chasing the truth up a trail of brutal murders, Sandy must expose the predators and step up to the deranged kingpin of a thriving sex racket. Before time runs out.
For fans of Stieg Larsson's 'The Girl Who Played with Fire' and Sophie Hannah's 'A Room Swept White', this debut psychological thriller and crime suspense novel, set in London, is a strident expose on an under-reported form of social injustice where the line of distinction between the betrayer and the betrayed increasingly fades into oblivion.

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Rights Information

The author owns all book rights outside the Indian subcontinent.

Marketing Information

1. Nominated for the Mumbai Film Festival Word-to-Screen Award in 2018.

2. Victims for Sale has been presented/read at U.S. State Department affiliates, British Council outposts, New York Writer's Workshop forums, Algonkian NYC's New York Pitch Conference (which is one of the top ten literary conferences across North America), etc.

3. Victims for Sale has received patronage from affiliates of FICCI, or the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, particularly FICCI Ladies Organization chapters across India. In this regard, it marked the inauguration of a number of FICCI Ladies Organization book clubs across India in 2018 and 2019.

4. Victims for Sale has been discussed on various media, including NDTV, which is India's Number 1 news channel, ITV (Gold) in the U.S., Radio One 94.3 FM's 'Good Morning Delhi show' (which has at least 1 million listeners across India's capital), etc.

5. Victims for Sale has enabled the author to share her voice on various socio-cultural and human rights issues at the United Nations associations as well as a number of educational and literary forums across the U.S. and India.

6. The book has received critical acclaim, by way of blurbs / endorsements, from Shamus Award-nominated U.S. author Charles Salzberg, American mystery writer John Dobbyn, and British novelist and filmmaker, Adam Hamdy.

7. In 2020, Victims for Sale found representation for TV/ film/ on-screen adaptation from the Story Ink.

Reviews

"Reminds you of a David Fincher movie.” - HT Media.

"A perfect companion for a mystery-solver’s mind." - The Free Press Journal.

“A thriller that accentuates the cadence of a finely crafted literary oeuvre.” - ITV America.


"Nish Amarnath's new book gives you the chills, showing how crime can unfold in both lethal and cosy setups." - The Hindu.

"An intensely gripping thriller with a compelling psychological component that is unusual in crime fiction.'- N. Ram, journalist and chairman of the Hindu group of publications.

“A deeply moving and disturbing story that artfully brings to light the ills of trafficking and the trauma of abuse that women, especially the mentally challenged, face amid an emphasis on family honour among South Asian families in the UK." - Sunetra Choudhury, NDTV.


"Engaging, shocking, and liberating. The greatest achievement of 'Victims For Sale' is not only its discovery of an unheard-of epidemic in our midst, but also the trust it invests in a young journalist who is herself teetering on the edge of a precipice." - Prannay Pathak.


“Amarnath, [while American], manages to break the stereotypes associated with the notion that Indian[-origin] authors are typically blatantly boring with their subject matter.” - The Attic Life.

Author Biography

Nish Amarnath is a New York-based journalist and an author of three published books, including a business biography and a monologue blurbed by Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind. Her latest book, Victims for Sale, a psychological thriller and crime suspense novel published by HarperCollins to considerable success in India, was nominated for the prestigious Mumbai Film Festival Word-to-Screen Award. Outside India, Victims for Sale received critical acclaim in the U.S., UK and Canada. This novel was endorsed by British novelist and film producer Adam Hamdy, and Shamus Award-nominated Charles Salzberg, who described her work as “reminiscent of the prose of Megan Abbott.” The success of Victims for Sale has allowed Nish to share her voice on social, cultural, and human rights issues at multiple platforms, including United Nations associations, U.S. State Department affiliates, NDTV, PBTV London, ITV America and British Council outposts. The book has also enabled her to tangibly mobilize institutional and governmental support for neurodivergent and differently-abled individuals. She has worked with the Government of Bangladesh for improved resource capabilities for children with autism and their families, and with the Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialties Center on campaigns against soaring insulin prices as well as mental health and resource access among individuals of color with Type-1 diabetes.


Other awards in writing include the Scholastics Fiction Prize (won), the AMMYs Award across North America (nominated), the Columbia University James. W. Robins Fellowship (won), the Young Journalists’ Program (selected by the German Embassy in Washington, D.C.) and two separate medallions from the Prime Minister of India and the President of India (won) for a collection of apologue-based short stories on cultural appropriation selected from roughly 400,000 entries across 80 nations. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington D.C.- based literary journal, Del Sol Review, Medium, the Radical Humanist, Yahoo! and the Big Thrill Magazine, where she interviewed and profiled authors like Christina Dodd. Beyond the contours of her current full-time editorial role at a newsroom in Manhattan, she’s also a part-time faculty member at the New York Writer’s Workshop. She was previously a managing editor of a prolific European magazine publishing group. She holds post-graduate degrees in journalism and media sociology from Columbia University and the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she was a Margot Naylor Scholar. Her website is www.nishamarnath.com

The Glass Slipper Literary Agency

The Glass Slipper Literary Agency

The Glass Slipper Literary Agency is a full-service literary agency that seeks to excavate, unearth and unveil stories that provoke, trigger, inflame, inspire and awaken, bringing diverse, marginalized and globally appealing voices to the world. We work with authors and publishers across the Americas, Europe, UK, and South Asia. We aim to change the face of the publishing industry by increasing diversity and evoking marginalized and underrepresented voices, including BIPOC,  LGBTQIA, neurodivergent, and/or differently-abled authors.   We proactively nurture writers across the world and take them through every stage of the roller-coaster that is intrinsic to getting published and/or having your work optioned for on-screen adaptation spanning films, TV shows, web series, and more. We believe in developing and furthering the careers of our authors, also helping them build a solid presence across all traditional and non-traditional media, worldwide. Beyond the contours of traditional representation to publishers, we brainstorm potential new projects, orchestrate all book rights for our clients, including translation, republication and entertainment rights, and actively pitch our authors and their works for slots in prime TV shows, print and electronic media outlets, including but not limited to, interviews, Q&As, book reviews and longer-form features on our writers and their works.

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher/Imprint HarperCollins / Harper Black
  • Publication Date January 2018
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9789352776016 / 9352776011
  • Publication Country or regionIndia
  • FormatPaperback
  • Primary Price 15.99 USD
  • Pages336
  • ReadershipGeneral
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Original Language TitleVictims for Sale
  • Original Language AuthorsEnglish
  • Copyright Year2018
  • Dimensions20x14 cm

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