Beside the Syrian Sea

Beside the Syrian Sea
Author: James Wolff
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2018-03-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1908524995

Jonas works for the UK secret service as an intelligence analyst. When his father is kidnapped and held for ransom by ISIS gunmen in Syria, he takes matters into his own hands and begins to steal the only currency he has access to: secret government intelligence. He heads to Beirut with a haul of the most sensitive documents imaginable and recruits an unlikely ally – an alcoholic Swiss priest named Father Tobias. Despite barely surviving his previous contact with ISIS, Tobias agrees to travel into the heart of the Islamic State and inform the kidnappers that Jonas is willing to negotiate for his father’s life. When the British and American governments realise they may be dealing with betrayal on a scale far greater than that of Edward Snowden, they try everything in their power to stop Jonas, and he finds himself tested to the limit as he fights to keep the negotiations alive and play his enemies off against each other. As the book races towards a thrilling confrontation in the Syrian desert, Jonas will have to decide how far he is willing to go to see his father again.

How to Betray Your Country

How to Betray Your Country
Author: James Wolff
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2021-04-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1913394522

PW STARRED REVIEW: “Brilliant sequel to 2018’s Beside the Syrian Sea. James Wolff skillfully portrays an espionage agent on the verge of losing himself to his demons. This is spy fiction like no other.” Publishers Weekly ------- April thriller of the Month: "Wolff’s examination of the crises of conscience caused by spying, however, make this a distinctly more thought-provoking novel than is customary in the genre. Turkish delight.” The Times------ Disgraced British spy August Drummond is on his way to Istanbul when he sees a passenger throw away directions to a cemetery just moments before being arrested. August can’t resist the temptation to go in his place. But when he comes face to face with a terrifying figure from Islamic State, he realizes he’s about to confront the greatest challenge of his career...

The House in the Cerulean Sea

The House in the Cerulean Sea
Author: TJ Klune
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250217326

A NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER! A 2021 Alex Award winner! The 2021 RUSA Reading List: Fantasy Winner! An Indie Next Pick! One of Publishers Weekly's "Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2020" One of Book Riot’s “20 Must-Read Feel-Good Fantasies” Lambda Literary Award-winning author TJ Klune’s bestselling, breakout contemporary fantasy that's "1984 meets The Umbrella Academy with a pinch of Douglas Adams thrown in." (Gail Carriger) Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He's tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world. Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light. The House in the Cerulean Sea is an enchanting love story, masterfully told, about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours. "1984 meets The Umbrella Academy with a pinch of Douglas Adams thrown in." —Gail Carriger, New York Times bestselling author of Soulless At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Escape from Aleppo

Escape from Aleppo
Author: N. H. Senzai
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-06-09
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1481472186

After Nadia is separated from her family while fleeing the civil war, she spends the next four days with a mysterious old man who helps her navigate the checkpoints and snipers of the rebel, ISIS, and Syrian armies that are littering Aleppo on her way to meeting her father at the Turkish border.

Eagle in the Sky

Eagle in the Sky
Author: Wilbur Smith
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction Ltd.
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2018-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1785765779

An action-packed story of love, duty and destiny, by global sensation Wilbur Smith. 'A master storyteller' - Sunday Times 'Wilbur Smith is one of those benchmarks against whom others are compared' - The Times 'No one does adventure quite like Smith' - Daily Mirror The higher you fly, the harder you fall . . . From a young age it's clear that David Morgan is a 'bird', a natural pilot, most at home in the air. His family want him to take over the family business, but David is determined to follow his destiny, and joins the South African Air Force, where he is commended for his skills. When he meets Debra, a beautiful young Israeli writer, David once again feels the pull of destiny. He joins the Israeli Defence Force and finds himself caught up in the country's struggles. But when the war separates him from Debra, David feels his two destinies pulling him apart. Can he become the man he always dreamed of being, without losing the woman he's fighting for?

The Misogynist

The Misogynist
Author: Piers Paul Read
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2011-07-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1408809893

Jomier has reached the age of retirement, his children are grown up and his wife, after having an affair, has left him. Embittered and humiliated, he lives alone in London, mourning the disintegration of his marriage as he broods about the past and the present. When he falls for Judith, things begin to improve. Yet he still cannot escape his old habits and it is only when his daughter falls ill that he begins to reassess his feelings towards those he loves and his ability to forgive. Darkly humorous, ruthlessly satirical and surprisingly moving, The Misogynist is a perceptive exploration of the ways in which we can unintentionally let past disappointments affect our present, and how difficult it can be to move forward.

The Wrong End of the Telescope

The Wrong End of the Telescope
Author: Rabih Alameddine
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-09-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802157823

WINNER OF THE 2022 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION By National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island. Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of thirty years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camp's children. Soon, a boat crosses bringing Sumaiya, a fiercely resolute Syrian matriarch with terminal liver cancer. Determined to protect her children and husband at all costs, Sumaiya refuses to alert her family to her diagnosis. Bonded together by Sumaiya's secret, a deep connection sparks between the two women, and as Mina prepares a course of treatment with the limited resources on hand, she confronts the circumstances of the migrants' displacement, as well as her own constraints in helping them. Not since the inimitable Aaliya of An Unnecessary Woman has Rabih Alameddine conjured such a winsome heroine to lead us to one of the most wrenching conflicts of our time. Cunningly weaving in stories of other refugees into Mina's singular own, The Wrong End of the Telescope is a bedazzling tapestry of both tragic and amusing portraits of indomitable spirits facing a humanitarian crisis.

No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria

No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria
Author: Rania Abouzeid
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393609502

Winner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award Finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize “Rania Abouzeid has produced a work of stunning reportage from the very heart of the conflict, daring to go to the most dangerous places in order to get the story.” —Dexter Filkins, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Forever War Award-winning journalist Rania Abouzeid dissects the tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict through the dramatic stories of four young people seeking safety and freedom in a shattered country. Hailed by critics, No Turning Back masterfully “[weaves] together the lives of protestors, victims, and remorseless killers at the center of this century’s most appalling human tragedy” (Robert F. Worth). Based on more than five years of fearless, clandestine reporting, No Turning Back brings readers deep inside Bashar al-Assad’s prisons, to covert meetings where foreign states and organizations manipulated the rebels, and to the highest levels of Islamic militancy and the formation of the Islamic State. An utterly engrossing human drama full of vivid, indelible characters, No Turning Back shows how hope can flourish even amid one of the twenty-first century’s greatest humanitarian disasters.

From a Low and Quiet Sea

From a Low and Quiet Sea
Author: Donal Ryan
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525505024

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE "Beautiful and affecting" -- David Nicholls, author of One Day A moving novel of three men, each searching for something they have lost, from the award-winning and Man Booker nominated author Donal Ryan. For Farouk, family is all. He has protected his wife and daughter as best he can from the war and hatred that has torn Syria apart. If they stay, they will lose their freedom, will become lesser persons. If they flee, they will lose all they have known of home, for some intangible dream of refuge in some faraway land across the merciless sea. Lampy is distracted; he has too much going on in his small town life in Ireland. He has the city girl for a bit of fun, but she's not Chloe, and Chloe took his heart away when she left him. There's the secret his mother will never tell him. His granddad's little sniping jokes are getting on his wick. And on top of all that, he has a bus to drive; those old folks from the home can't wait all day. The game was always the lifeblood coursing through John's veins: manipulating people for his enjoyment, or his enrichment, or his spite. But it was never enough. The ghost of his beloved brother, and the bitter disappointment of his father, have shadowed him all his life. But now that lifeblood is slowing down, and he's not sure if God will listen to his pleas for forgiveness. Three men, searching for some version of home, their lives moving inexorably towards a reckoning that will draw them all together.

Tender Mint

Tender Mint
Author: Samih al Qasim
Publisher:
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2017
Genre: Jordan
ISBN: 9789492051318

In september 2011 verhuist Lynn Alleva Lilley (USA) met haar man en twee kinderen naar Amman, Jordanië. Ver weg van haar geboorteland en van haar vader, die ziek op dat moment is probeert ze een thuis te maken voor haar gezin in de onbekende stad. Daar gebruikt ze haar fotografie om dit, voor haar, vreemde land vertrouwd te maken. Gedurende drie jaar fotografeerde ze het Jordaanse volk, Syrische en Iraakse vluchtelingen, dieren in private dierentuinen of boerderijen, de vogeltrek en landschappen. Thema?s als misplaatsing, beknelling en adaptatie zijn sterk terug te vinden in dit boek. Haar vervreemdende beelden drukken tegenstrijdige emoties uit als verzorging en pijn, lijden en berusting, eenzaamheid en gezelschap, schoonheid en verval.