Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman’s days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father’s constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother’s increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his... (more)

The Lion's Game

by Nelson Demille

John Corey and Asad Khalil have both lived hard-knock lives. As revealed in Nelson DeMille's monster bestseller Plum Island, the gruff, wisecracking NYPD homicide cop Corey stopped a hail of bullets--but he couldn't stop his wife from walking out on him. Asad, raised under Muammar Qaddafi's eye after his dad's murder, lost his surviving family in the 1986 bombing of Libya. He's heard the nasty rumors about his mom... (more)

Sahara

by Michael Palin

Michael Palin's epic voyages have seen him circumnavigate the globe, travel from the North to the South Pole and circle the countries of the Pacific Ocean. This was perhaps the greatest challenge yet: to cross the vast and merciless Sahara desert. Shrugging aside the perils of camel stew and being run over by the Paris-Dakar rally, he travels through some of the most spectacular landscapes on earth. For the... (more)

The Shadows of Ghadames

by Joëlle Stolz

“Stolz invigorates her tale with elegant prose and a deft portrayal of a girl verging on adolescence. The vivid backdrop is intoxicating, but the story’s universal concerns will touch readers most.” — Booklist, Starred

Mackenzie's Pleasure / Defending His Own

Mackenzie's Pleasure / Defending His Own

by Linda Howard

Barrie needed a saviour. The terrorists holding her hostage surely wouldn''t tolerate her silence much longer. Instead they would silence her. Then out of the darkness he arrived. Rugged and dangerous, he led her straight into his sheltering arms.'

A Way From Home: A Novel

by Nancy Clark

It is 1992, and the Lowe family is living in a centuries-old castle in Prague. Alden Lowe works at the Czech Ministry of Finance and his wife Becky advises women entrepreneurs. With their daugher Julie, they appear a fortunate American family, but after twenty years with Alden, Becky shocks the family by fleeing to Libya, where she intends to reunite with a man who has loved her since before her marriage. In its... (more)

The Lost Oasis: The Desert War and the Hunt for Zerzura

The Lost Oasis: The Desert War and the Hunt for Zerzura

by Saul Kelly

The Lost Oasis tells the true story behind The English Patient . An extraordinary episode in World War II, it describes the Zerzura Club, a group of desert explorers and adventurers who indulged in desert travel by early-model-motor cars and airplanes, and who searched for lost desert oases and ancient cities of vanished civilizations. In reality, they were mapping the desert for military reasons and espionage.... (more)

Literature from the "Axis of Evil": Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations

Literature from the "Axis of Evil": Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations

Short stories and fiction excerpts from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, and other countries from whom the government would rather we didn't hear. "Not knowing what the rest of the world is thinking and writing is both dangerous and boring. "—Alane Mason, founding editor, Words Without Borders During the Cold War, writers behind the Iron Curtain—Solzhenitsyn, Kundera, Milosz—were translated and... (more)

The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East

The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East

by Neil MacFarquhar

Since his boyhood in Qadhafi’s Libya, Neil MacFarquhar has developed a counterintuitive sense that the Middle East, despite all the bloodshed in its recent history, is a place of warmth, humanity, and generous eccentricity. In this book, he introduces a cross-section of unsung, dynamic men and women pioneering political and social change. There is the Kuwaiti sex therapist in a leather suit with matching red... (more)

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In the Country of Men

by Hisham Matar