THE GOOD GIRLS

A masterly inquest into how the mysterious deaths of two teenage girls shone a light into the darkest corners of a nation.

The girls’ names were Padma and Lalli, but they were so inseparable that people in the village called them Padma Lalli. Sixteen-year-old Padma sparked and burned. Fourteen-year-old Lalli was an incorrigible romantic.

They grew up in Katra Sadatganj, an eye-blink of a village in western Uttar Pradesh crammed into less than one square mile of land. It was out in the fields, in the middle of mango season, that the rumors started.

Then one night in the summer of 2014 the girls went missing.

"Sonia Faleiro’s meticulously researched investigation results in a powerful, unflinching account of misogyny, female shame and the notion of honour."—The Observer

"The Good Girls is a compassionate, timely and necessary book that explores the issues of sex, violence, shame, honour and what it is to be a girl growing up in modern India."—Literary Review

"A modern day Rashomon."--Kirkus

Sonia Faleiro an Indian writer of narrative non-fiction is the author of  Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars, which was named a book of the year by the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Economist, NPR and Time Out. Her writing has received support from the Pulitzer Centre and The Investigative Fund, and appears in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Harper's, and Granta. Sonia is the founder of the literary mentorship program South Asia Speaks, and the co-founder of  Deca, a global cooperative of award-winning journalists. She lives in London.

Additional Information:

• Author: Sonia Faleiro
• 368 pages, Hardcover
• 8 1/3 X 5 1/2 inches
• Published 2021