Jaishree Misra

Jaishree Misra is an Indian author whose debut novel Ancient Promises was published and sold worldwide by Penguin UK and became a major bestseller in India. It is now a prescribed text on several University BA Eng Literature courses. Subsequent books were a comedy of manners called Accidents Like Love and Marriage and a novel about bereavement called Afterwards. Her fourth novel, Rani is historical fiction based on the life of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. This was published by Penguin in December 2007 and banned soon after by the Uttar Pradesh state government in India. In 2009, Misra signed a three-book deal with Avon, the commercial fiction imprint of Harper Collins UK. The first of these books, called Secrets and Lies, was published in June 2009 while the next in the series, Secrets and Sins was released in July 2010. Secrets and Lies appeared on the Heatseekers list in Britain's Bookseller magazine's best-seller lists in the summer of 2009. The third book, A Scandalous Secret, was released in May 2011, at the Hay-on-Wye festival. Misra went on to edit an anthology of writings on the subject of motherhood as a fund-raising project for Save the Children India which was published by the feminist publishing house Zubaan in 2012. In January 2015, Misra's eighth novel A Love Story for My Sister was published by Harper Collins. Part-historical and part-contemporary, it explores Stockholm Syndrome through the story of General Wheeler's daughter, Margaret, who was kidnapped during the 1857 Uprising. Misra's ninth book, 'A House for Mr Misra', is her first work of non-fiction. A memoir of the two years she and her husband spent living in Kerala while trying to build a studio on the beach, it is filled with personal anecdotes and also paints an amusing picture of present day life in Kerala. Jaishree Misra has an MA in English Literature from Kerala University and two post-graduate diplomas from the University of London, the first in Special Education and the second in Broadc