Desperate Straits... Plus-1

"Desperate Straits... Plus-1" brings us two fantasy female-led tales of devious Indian femininity and the European men who succumb to it.

We open with Berndt Schuster's "A Reversal in Chennai and the misadventure of an American - divorced, disgraced, and shunned by wife, family and friends and with his promising career with the US Government gone sideways - who accepts the position as Head of the Visa Department in the American Consulate in far off Chennai... Only to develop a new and utterly bewildering fixation with his prematurely matronly housekeep that sees him lured into what he sees as a harmless and reciprocal role-play between them in which they swap roles... A swap he is not to know will NEVER find itself reversed!

"Desperate Straits" from Estelle Marchant follows and brings us the tale of a man betrayed and brought low by the women in his life. Deserted by both wife and daughter, out of a home, a livelihood and, for a while, his mind; what does a man in his early-fifties with nothing but his still intact looks do to sustain himself...? The answer is to reply to an ad for an assistant to an Indian CEO who is also offering a live-in position. A female CEO, though her applicant is not to know it yet, who has been looking for a man with his potential for service the whole of her life.

Two works of fantasy, but believable, female-led fiction for readers who prefer their imaginations stroked rather than hammered.