Swati Kaushal is the bestselling author of Lethal Spice, Drop Dead, A Girl Like Me and Piece of Cake.

She was born in New Delhi, India, in a time before computers, cell phones, or social media. Despite these devastating privations, she has only happy memories of her childhood; of playing with her friends, of ice cream carts and orange bars, and of reading, reading, reading, to her heart’s content.

Swati grew up in Delhi reading mysteries and romances tucked inside her physics and chemistry textbooks, thereby shattering forever her chances of winning the Nobel prize in Physics or Chemistry.

Ah well...

For college, she headed to Lady Shriram College in New Delhi where she earned a BA in Economics and an honorary doctorate in samosas, chai and galpal bonding.

During a two-year stint at The Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Swati pursued her interests in marketing and mishti and masti and friends, graduating with a degree in marketing and a plan to revolutionize the world, one limited time offer at a time.

After six years of selling milk powder, dessert mixes and health beverages at Nestle, and a year of selling mobile phones at Nokia, Swati decided life was too short to not indulge her fantasy of writing something that required no budget approvals and had not a chance in hell of selling.

Et Voila, Piece Of Cake, which was a hoot to write, and became an instant bestseller and continues to provoke, confound, infuriate and entertain.

Swati’s second novel, A Girl Like Me, is a tribute to her awkward teenage years, chronicling through her heroine Ani Rai, the hardships, heartbreaks and redeeming friendships that are such a bittersweet rite of passage of teenage life.

Swati worked off the premise “who says a cop can’t be a girl?” to create Niki Marwah, the iconic heroine of her third novel, Drop Dead. Tough on crime but soft at heart, Niki pursues bad guys and romance with equal gusto, and was an instant hit with readers and critics, helping Swati get nominated for the Femina L’Oreal 2013 Women of Worth award.

Lethal Spice, Swati’s latest book and the second installment in the Niki Marwah series, is deliciously thrilling and absolutely un-put-downable, so you should put aside all other plans, buy it immediately, and start reading it right now.

And for those of you who're wondering what's next for Swati, the wait is almost over. Watch this space for news about her new, upcoming book A Few Good Friends!

Like most people in this world, Swati now has a computer, a cell phone and multiple social media accounts. But odds are you’ll still find her reading something she shouldn’t, stuck between the pages of something everyone tells her she should...