What happens when technology understands not only what we do, but also what we desire, conceal and fear losing?
A dating app can introduce two strangers. It can also create the perfect setting for deception. A cyberattack can steal data, but it can be even more destructive when it targets a person’s career or reputation. Artificial intelligence can help nations make faster decisions; but what happens when intelligent systems begin influencing the people supposedly controlling them?
These questions connect my novels, from Love Swipe Blackmail and Shadow Play: Love & Blackmail to the AI-centred geopolitical thriller I am now developing.
Readers attending the Gomti Book Festival 2026 in Lucknow will be able to find my two published novels at the Anecdote Publishing House stall. The stall number and other location details will be added here once they are declared by the organisers.
Who Is Nitish Bhushan?
I am an Indian thriller writer with two and a half decades of experience in the information technology industry. That professional background has allowed me to observe technology not simply as a collection of systems and machines, but as something that changes how people work, communicate, compete and trust one another.
I write thrillers that blend technology, relationships and moral dilemmas.
My stories are located in recognisable contemporary settings: offices, homes, dating platforms, corporate networks, media organisations and institutions responsible for protecting sensitive information. The characters are not superheroes or invincible secret agents. They are professionals, friends, partners and family members who make understandable choices; and then discover that those choices have consequences they did not anticipate.
Technology changes the game. Human choices make it dangerous.
That is the territory connecting the books I have written and the stories I intend to write next.
What Does Nitish Bhushan Write About?
Technology in my novels is rarely the real villain.
A dating app cannot betray a relationship on its own. A computer network does not decide to destroy someone’s reputation. Even an artificial intelligence system reflects the intentions, information and authority given to it by people.
The real conflict begins when technology encounters ambition, desire, resentment, insecurity or a hunger for power.
My novels explore questions such as:
- How much can we truly know about someone we meet online?
- Can love survive a betrayal even when the betrayal remains incomplete?
- Why would someone attack a reputation instead of stealing money?
- Is an insider dangerous because of access, or because of an unresolved grievance?
- Can an institution contain a cyberattack without understanding the human conflict behind it?
- What happens when AI learns enough about our vulnerabilities to influence our decisions?
The thriller provides the pace, suspense and uncertainty. The human dilemma gives the story its emotional weight.
Love Swipe Blackmail: When One Swipe Threatens More Than a Relationship
Love Swipe Blackmail begins with a choice that appears private and manageable.
Ravi and Vandana are successful professionals who love each other and appear to be moving steadily towards marriage. Yet Ravi remains conflicted by desires he has not fully confronted. Encouraged by his friends, he downloads a dating app and connects with someone.
Then another person discovers what he has done.
What begins as a secret threatens to become blackmail. But Ravi and Vandana are not the only people with concealed histories, divided loyalties and difficult decisions to make. The novel brings together three couples and two mysterious women in a story about love, friendship, betrayal and the consequences of believing that a digital action can remain separate from real life.
The technology in the novel is familiar. Millions of people use dating apps and communicate with strangers online. That familiarity is precisely what makes the danger believable.
The story does not suggest that technology invented temptation. It asks what happens when technology amplifies access, preserves evidence and allows another person to weaponise a private weakness.
Readers who enjoy relationship-driven suspense, morally complicated characters and unexpected reversals will find Love Swipe Blackmail an accessible entry into this fictional world.
Shadow Play: Love & Blackmail: When the Attack Targets Reputation
Shadow Play: Love & Blackmail expands the world introduced in the first novel.
The stakes move beyond an individual relationship. Careers are threatened by eerily similar cyber breaches. Fake companies, social engineering, honey traps, media influence, insiders and intelligence operatives become part of a much larger game.
Yet the central vulnerability remains human.
Many cyber stories focus on malware, stolen data or financial loss. Shadow Play explores a different possibility: what if the objective of an attack is not to steal anything?
What if the real aim is to ruin a career, damage a reputation, fracture a partnership or force an institution into making a particular decision?
This is the idea of the “no-loss” attack. Nothing obvious may disappear from the victim’s systems, yet the victim can still lose authority, credibility, relationships and control over the narrative.
The novel treats cybercrime as a form of human behaviour rather than only a technical event. Systems provide access, but grievances, loyalties and ambitions determine how that access is used. Sometimes the most dangerous person is not the anonymous hacker outside an organisation. It is someone inside—or someone who understands the people inside.
Readers will encounter returning characters from Love Swipe Blackmail, including Ravi, Vandana, Raaj and Simi, alongside a broader web of characters whose personal and professional motives are not always what they appear to be.
Although Shadow Play can be enjoyed as a thriller in its own right, reading Love Swipe Blackmail first will give readers the complete progression of the relationships and conflicts.
Why Technology-Thriller Readers May Enjoy These Books
My novels are written for readers who like fast-moving stories but also want the conflict to feel connected to the world around them.
You may enjoy them if you are interested in:
- Technology used as a tool of persuasion, surveillance or manipulation
- Cyber incidents driven by human motives
- Relationships tested by secrets and divided loyalties
- Corporate environments in which reputation can be as valuable as data
- Contemporary Indian characters and settings
- Moral dilemmas without simple, comfortable answers
- Plots in which an apparently small decision produces much larger consequences
You do not need a technical background to read either novel. The technology supports the conflict; it does not overwhelm the story with jargon.
At their core, both books are about people making choices under pressure.
Will the Books Be Available at Gomti Book Festival 2026?
Yes. Love Swipe Blackmail and Shadow Play: Love & Blackmail will be available at the Anecdote Publishing House stall during Gomti Book Festival 2026.
The festival is scheduled to take place in Lucknow from 12 to 20 September 2026. Readers can visit the Anecdote Publishing House stall to find both books and begin the series from the first instalment.
Anecdote Publishing House stall number: To be announced by the organisers.
Author interaction or appearance: No appearance is being announced at present. If an interaction, signing or other appearance is confirmed, the date, time and venue will be added near the top of this page.
What Comes After Shadow Play?
The third part of the series moves from personal and corporate vulnerabilities into the world of artificial intelligence and geopolitical conflict.
The forthcoming thriller is being developed against the background of technological competition between India and China. It will explore AI systems, cyber intelligence, information warfare and the growing difficulty of determining whether an apparently human decision has been shaped by an intelligent system.
Its scale will be larger, but it will continue the same thematic progression.
Love Swipe Blackmail asks what technology can do to intimate trust.
Shadow Play asks what technology can do to careers, reputations and institutions.
The third novel will ask what happens when AI understands human vulnerabilities well enough to exploit them at national and geopolitical scale.
It will also examine a question that is becoming increasingly urgent: if an intelligent system manipulates a human being into making a decision, who is responsible for the consequences?
The machine? Its creator? The institution deploying it? Or the person who believed the decision was entirely their own?
Begin the Journey at Gomti Book Festival 2026
For me, these novels form one expanding conversation about technology and human choice.
The story begins with a swipe, grows into a web of cyber deception and will move next into AI-driven geopolitical conflict. But through every stage, the central concern remains the same: technology becomes most powerful, and most dangerous, when it understands what people want, what they hide and what they fear losing.
If that is the kind of thriller you enjoy, look for Love Swipe Blackmail and Shadow Play: Love & Blackmail at the Anecdote Publishing House stall at Gomti Book Festival 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I find Nitish Bhushan’s books at Gomti Book Festival 2026?
Both novels will be available at the Anecdote Publishing House stall. The stall number will be added once the organisers announce the final allotment.
Will Nitish Bhushan appear at Gomti Book Festival 2026?
No author appearance is being announced at present. If a signing, interaction or appearance is confirmed, its date, time and location will be published on this page.
Which Nitish Bhushan book should I read first?
Begin with Love Swipe Blackmail. Shadow Play: Love & Blackmail expands the characters, relationships and conflicts introduced in the first novel.
Are these books suitable for readers without a technology background?
Yes. The novels use dating apps, social engineering, cybersecurity and digital deception as sources of conflict, but the stories remain centred on people, relationships and moral choices.
What is Nitish Bhushan writing next?
The third part is an AI-centred geopolitical thriller involving India–China technological competition, cyber intelligence and the use of artificial intelligence to understand and exploit human vulnerabilities.