State of Fear (HarperCollins, Rs 250) by Michael Crichton describes itself as a work of fiction in which the ?characters, corporations, institutions, and organizations? are imaginary...However, references to real people, institutions, and organizations that are documented in footnotes are accurate.? Then Crichton adds, intriguingly, ?Footnotes are real.? This new techno-thriller from a master of the genre connects four apparently disparate events. In Paris, a physicist dies after performing a laboratory experiment for a beautiful visitor. In the jungles of Malaysia, a mysterious buyer purchases deadly cavitation technology, built to his specifications. In Vancouver, a small research submarine is leased for use in the waters off New Guinea. And in Tokyo, an intelligence agent tries to understand what it all means.

Aftermath: An Oral History of Violence (Penguin, Rs 250) by Meenakshie Verma is dedicated to ?all the people who took time off from their everyday activities to talk to a stranger about their close encounters with violence and how they have grappled with ?normal? life thereafter?. Verma, a cultural anthropologist, gathers ten individual testimonies, ranging from the Partition of 1947 to Gujarat 2002, to explore the variously inflected relationships between collective violence and individual lives and memories, particularly ?selected? memories. Verma is also centrally interested in the role of right-wing movements in generating such violence. This is a potentially excellent book, which ought to have been longer and more daring in its interpretation of the oral narratives.

Stardust:Vignettes from the Fringes of the Film Industry (Penguin, Rs 275) by Roopa Swaminathan is a pop-subaltern history of the Indian film industry ? readable, if a tad self-indulgent. It chronicles little anecdotes from the margins of the industry, involving fans, extras, dancers, technicians and assistants.

There is Nacchamathu, an engineering graduate who would rather be a member of the Rajnikant Fan Club than work in a MNC; or Srimati, headmistress and grandmother of four, who is desperate to be in films, even if it is as an extra. There are interesting epigraphs for each section, as this one by Michelangelo: ?The great danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it. But that is too low and we reach it.?