Meet Alka Joshi Author of Six Days in Bombay (and The Henna Artist)

This event is free to attend. Seating is first come, first served.

Meet the author, find out about a terrific new book, ask questions and hear directly from the author, and get personalized signed books!

Bookshop West Portal welcomes the return of historical fiction mastermind Alka Joshi for her new standalone novel Six Days in Bombay! Don't miss out on this brand new plot from the author of The Henna Artist. Join us for an evening of conversation with Alka Joshi and local novelist Ritu Mukerji, author of M**der by Degrees.

You don't need to have read the book to enjoy the event! We do recommend reserving your copy ahead of time:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Henna Artist, this sweeping novel of identity and self-discovery takes readers from Bombay to Prague, Florence, Paris and London, to uncover the mystery behind a famous painter's death.
When renowned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to make a quick recovery, and her nurse, Sona, is excited to learn more about the vivacious artist who shares her half-Indian identity. Sona, yearning for a larger life, finds herself carried away by Mira's stories of her travels and exploits and is shocked by accounts of the many lovers the painter has left scattered throughout Europe. When Mira dies quite suddenly and mysteriously, Sona falls under suspicion, and her quiet life is upended.
The key to proving Sona's innocence may lie in a cryptic note and four paintings Mira left in her care, sending the young woman on a mission to visit the painter's former friends and lovers across a tumultuous Europe teetering toward war. On the precipice of discovering her own identity, Sona learns that the painter's charming facade hid a far more complicated, troubled soul.
In her first stand-alone novel since her bestselling debut, The Henna Artist, Alka Joshi uses the life of painter Amrita Sher-Gil, the "Frida Kahlo of India," as inspiration for the story's beginning to explore how far we'll travel to determine where we truly belong.

Born in India and raised in the U.S. since she was nine, Alka Joshi has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of Arts. Joshi's debut novel, , immediately became a NYT bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub pick, was Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, & is in development at Netflix as a TV series. The Secret Keeper of Jaipur (2021) and The Perfumist of Paris (2023) completed the Jaipur Trilogy . Her fourth novel, Six Days in Bombay, will be released in February 2025. She is currently working on her fifth novel. In 2024, Joshi was selected for the Forbes 50 over 50 List, celebrating women who are shattering age and gender norms across all sectors of the American economy and culture.

Ritu Mukerji was born in Kolkata, India, and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. From a young age, she has been an avid reader of mysteries, from Golden Age crime fiction to police procedurals and the novels of PD James and Ruth Rendell. She received a BA in history from Columbia University and a medical degree from Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. She completed residency training at the University of California, Davis and has been a practicing internist for fifteen years. She lives in Marin County, California, with her husband and three children. is her debut novel. Stay tuned for the follow up!

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