India in 1951: after wilfully ignoring orders from her superiors, Persis Wadia, India’s first female police detective, has been exiled from Bombay to the wild and mountainous state of Nagaland.
As India’s first post-Independence election looms, and tensions rise across the country, Persis finds herself banished to the Victoria Hotel, a crumbling colonial-era relic, her career in ruins.
But when a prominent local politician is murdered in his locked room at the Victoria Hotel, his head missing – a case appears quite literally on her doorstep.
As the political situation threatens to explode into all-out havoc, Persis has only days to stop a killer operating at the very edge of darkness.
The Edge of Darkness by Vaseem Khan is published in paperback on 24 September, 2026. It’s the sixth book in his Malabar House series.
Read Vaseem’s feature about the history of the area once known as the Naga Hills and the tribes who lived there.
Historia’s list of over 200 books coming out in 2026 has much more of this year’s new historical fiction for you to browse.
