Ajay Chowdhury, the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize, is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director. His children’s book – Ayesha and the Firefish, was published in 2016 and adapted into a musical which premiered in San Francisco. 
 
 
The Waiter (Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month), was published in 2021, and is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures.The Cook (Guardian Top Crime Books of the Year) was published in May 2022 to excellent reviews and deals with the issue of homelessness. The third book in the series – The Detective (Sunday Times Top Crime Books of the Year) – is about government surveillance and AI. The Spy (Longlisted Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing), the fourth book, sees Kamil infiltrate a terrorist cell. The Shadow (A Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) is the latest book in the series.

Ajay Chowdhury

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Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

My friend, Fionn, was being held hostage in, I don't know, Unganga Nanga, and the Government was refusing to send in a team of marines to extract him. Pack of focking cauliflower worriers. 
 
I wouldn't have minded being bound and gagged in a basement - just for some peace and quiet. My wife was up the spout again. My daughter had grown into a mix between Suri Cruise and a Chucky doll. And one or two other chickens - well, birds - were coming home to roost. 
 
Suddenly, I realized what I had to do - go and get Fionn back. 
 
Except what I didn't realize was that Unganga Nanga was no country for old tens.

Keeping Up with the Kalashnikovs

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is broke and out of love. His wife has gone to America, taking his daughter with him; his mother has become a celebrity chef on daytime television, with a particular skill for handling phallic ingredients; and his father continues to languish in Mountjoy Jail. 
 
To cap it all, Immaculata, a Nigerian girl whom Sorcha has been sponsoring by direct debit for fifteen years, has turned up on his doorstep. Things couldn't get worse. 
 
But the long road back begins high in the Pyrenees, in the tax haven of Andorra, where Ross must spread the Gospel of rugby to the strange, primitive natives who have only ever heard of soccer, skiing and duty free shopping. There, he meets Conchita, a beautiful, sultry psychoanalyst, who persuades him to look inwards and find out what it is that makes him tick. Sorry, thick.

Mr S and the Secrets of Andorra's Box

So there I was roysh, life focked, reputation focked, finances focked - 
everything completely focked, roysh, and we're talking big time. 
And it's all Fionn's fault, basically. He's the four-eyed focker who told me that, like, the first time you do it, roysh, you're firing blanks. Like an unloaded Uzi - 
seriously impressive, hard as fock and totally ready for action, but the safety's, like, on, you know. Well that was a pile of stinking turds for storters. And of course it's muggins here who ends up with the kid - life is SO focking unfair. On top of all that, roysh, the goys stort to, like, totally lose it - JP has gone all Jesus on my orse, Oisinn is basically trying to fock over Interpol and Christian is talking about weddings and, I don't know, love and stuff. I mean, I am seriously beginning to feel like I am the only good-looking, loaded, sane goy in the whole of, like, Dublin.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress

It was no country for young men. Or women ... 
 
Unemployment, emigration and do-it-yourself hair colour kits were once again a fact of life. Taxes were on the up, the IMF were on the way and there was a cash for gold outlet in Foxrock Village. 
 
But the signs for recovery were good - for me, at least. I was the chief executive of one of the few businesses turning a profit in this town, a shredding company helping to dispose of the Celtic Tiger's dirty little secrets. And I was getting plenty of love action - as the boy-toy of an attractive sixty-year-old woman who was totally rolling in it. I never imagined myself ending up as a gigolo. But, as the saying goes, where there's a will, there's a way-hey-hey! 
 
With presents galore, sex on demand and a hot meal on the table every night, life was storting to look up again. All I had to do to aovid focking it up was to keep my chinos buttoned. And, well, you can probably guess how that went.

NAMA Mia!

A love affair born in rural Ireland! Two mismatched lovers, locked in a relationship that will change both of them . . . forever! 
 
 Ross O'Carroll-Kelly was brought up to believe that Gaelic games were invented for people too stupid to understand the laws of rugby. Little did he know that one day he would become a legend of Kerry football. 
 
 But then, his life has taken a lot of unexpected twists and turns. 
 
 His father is the Taoiseach of the country. His wife is an actual Government Minister. And his suddenly teenage daughter is heading for the Gaeltacht - and her very first rugby boyfriend. 
 And then there's Marianne . . . 
 
 Of course, Ross was too busy becoming a Gaelic football star to realise that his family - like the entire country - was being pushed towards a cliff edge. And he was the only man capable of saving Ireland's democracy. 
 
 Which is just like, 'Fooooooock!'

Normal Sheeple

Fame. Fortune. Screaming girls. The adoration of strangers. I've had it all before, yet nothing could have prepared this Horny Little Devil for his new life in the City of Angels. Sacked as the coach of the Andorra rugby team and on the run from the sister I never knew I had, I decided to head west, vowing to win back my wife and daughter from a risk assessor predicting economic doom for the world. Imagine my shock when I discovered that my old dear, on a nationwide book tour, was already busy charming America out of its collective elasticated pants. 
 
With Trevion, a 1991 Gulf War-veteran-turned-celebrity-Svengali, on my side, not to mention my brand new bromance with a gym instructor called Harvey, I was determined to become more famous than even her. But one nose job and one abdominal resculpt later, I no longer knew where reality ended and reality TV began ...

Rhino What You Did Last Summer

The No 1 Bestseller! 
 
When a shameless rugby legend and a distinguished grey lady get together sparks are bound to fly. 
 
And when that legend is South Dublin's favourite socialite, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, and the grey lady is the Irish Times, the result is, well, legendary. From locked-in in Donnybrook to locked-down in Killiney, Ross and the old gal have been through a lot. Now, you can enjoy the very best of his efforts to keep her entertained . . . 
 
- His adventures with the Mount Anville Moms WhatsApp group 
- His daughter Honor's infamous production of South Side Story 
- His father's court battles with Denis O'Brien 
- His wife Sorcha's efforts to force her banana bread on the neighbours 
- His son Ronan's attempt to make it as a Mixed Martial Arts fighter 
 
From the sheer joy of taking his feral triplets to their first Ireland v. England match, to the sheer misery of Kiely's pub (his spiritual home) closing down, to the pants-shitting tension of taking Honor to Electric Picnic - they're all here! 
 
And this new edition includes all new material from 2021 - lest we forget! 
 
As the Grey Lady herself would no doubt say: 'That was some ride, Ross!' 
 
 
 ______________________________ 
 
 'The single greatest chronicler of our times' Irish Independent 
 
'A terrific collection' Pat Kenny, Newstalk

RO’CK of Ages

From boom days to Zoom days

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly thought he had it all: 
 
Nice gaff, cool cor, plenty of dosh, a stake in Dublin's trendiest nightclub and a face that made boyfriends jealous. To say nothing of a beautiful wife and kids ... 
 
All that remained was for him to totally fock it up: 
 
And I mean, totally ... 
 
But did he see it coming? Of course not - too busy using his killer lines on the Seoige sisters: 
 
And then it hit me, all at once, on a lonely night in the Ice Bar ...

This Champagne Mojito is the Last Thing I Own

'The name's O'Carroll-Kelly. Ross O'Carroll-Kelly.' 
 
As the great James Bond said, 'History isn't kind to men who play God.' How right the dude ended up being. 
 
My secret double-life was finally catching up with me. Sorcha wanted a divorce. I was facing jail time for taking my orse out in a pub in Cork. And there was a very good chance that my sister-in-law's surrogate baby was actually mine? One by one, all of the goys turned their backs on me. Then came an unexpected plot twist. From beyond the grave, Fr Fehily - the M and the Q to our Leinster Schools Senior Cup-winning team - sent us all on one final mission . . . To walk the Camino - or die trying! 
 
It's, like, double oh fock!

Camino Royale

I woke up from a coma to a country that had changed beyond recognition and the gords waiting to talk to me. 
 
They were obviously pretty interested in finding out who shot me. The problem was that I couldn't actually remember. The entire incident was a basic blank. 
 
The good news was that whoever pulled the trigger had missed my vital organs by inches - including the most vital one of all. I decided there and then that I wasn't going to waste another minute of my life. There were thousands of beautiful women out there who had never known the pleasure of my company - and that was going to change, the minute my wounds healed. 
 
But the path to hot love seldom runs smoothly. I had problems to deal with. A daughter who hated my basic guts. A son who was growing up way too fast. A soon-to-be-ex-wife who was resorting to increasingly desperate measures to stop the bank from repossessing the house. Oh, and the Gords were having one or two problems believing my story ...

The Shelbourne Ultimatum

South Dublin's favourite son thought he could face any challenge - until he was asked to cross the bridge over the River Dargle. 
 
For Ross O'Carroll-Kelly - schools rugby hero, celebrated bon vivant and lover of beautiful women - life has suddenly become complicated. 
 
His father has been accused of rigging a General Election, his seventy-year-old mother is about to bring six surrogate babies into the world, and his daughter is being hailed as 'Ireland's answer to Greta Thunberg', telling everyone who cares to listen that the end of the world is nigh. 
 
As if that wasn't bad enough, the Greatest Rugby Player Never to Play for Ireland has a nagging sense that he has to more to contribute to the beautiful game. 
 
Now he's been offered a job coaching an underachieving school who've been waiting almost a century for their moment of glory. The challenge is to persuade a collection of jokers, chokers and forty-a-day smokers that they have what it takes to win the Leinster Schools Senior Cup. 
 
The only drawback ... the school is in Bray!

Braywatch

Sportsman. Lover. Bon vivant. Cad. Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is many things to many people. But ten years after he lifted the Leinster Schools Senior Cup, Ireland's most beloved rogue remains one of its most misunderstood figures. His accomplishments on the rugby field - and in the bedroom - remain the stuff of legend, but the truth about him remains hidden by the accretion of myth. 
 
Now, for the first time, the lid is lifted on the enigma that is South Dublin's most eligible married man. In more than a hundred interviews with his family and friends - those who've loved him, hated him and slept with him - the first ever composite portrait of the Celtic Tiger's most famous cub emerges. 
 
From the mother who didn't want him to the father who wanted him too much, from the friends who shared his misadventures to the women who shared his bed - or, failing that, a back alley or bus shelter - this searingly honest biography fills in all the blanks in the life of the self-styled Cock of Foxrock.

We Need To Talk About Ross

For everyone else things may be shrouded in gloom but amidst the splendour of our Killiney mansion, Honalee, life goes on. 
 
I've decided that it's time to possibly do right by Sorcha and put our marriage back together. Meanwhile my son has hitched his future to a family of commoners, my old dear is involved in a dodgy love affair, and my daughter has turned into an insufferable little madam. Oh, yeah, and I'm about to become a grandfather at 31. 
 
Suddenly I'm wresting with duty, loyalty ... and the thousands of women out there who still desire the pleasure of my company.

Downturn Abbey

At the age of 33, I had three new-born future Ireland internationals to feed, a daughter in need of psychiatric evaluation and a teenage son obsessed with uncovering the shameful secrets of our family's 1916 past. 
 
Throw into the mix a sister missing in Orgentina, a wife struggling to lose the weight from her orse and an interfering father-in-law living under my roof. 
 
And just when I thought it couldn't get any more difficult, a moment of madness involving - what else? - the opposite sex persuaded Sorcha that I needed to have the unkindest cut of all.

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