Altar of Ashes, a debut novel by a respected author of non-fiction, opens with two hunters witnessing a horror in the backwoods of Indiana: the rite of sati, with the bride on the funeral pyre a 10-year-old girl. The book, which pokes a multicultural hornet’s nest, was launched at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair. The inciting incident draws the local prosecutor into a spectacular case revolving around religious toleration and cultural bigotry, which sweeps the town into a vortex of national p...

Two deer hunters happen upon their worst nightmare: a young girl cruelly burned to death in a forest to the accompaniment of a cheering crowd. And with this, the world changed. The subsequent trial consumes a small town in Indiana, enthralls a ravenous press and transfixes the wider nation.The principals involved are existentially torn; a prosecutor by his irresistible outrage, overweening professional ambition, and a failing marriage; his beautiful second chair by her conflicted A...