Hoffman, however, things are not quite as ordinary as they seem. Quickly, these scenarios are flung down a surreal rabbit hole filled with bizarre taxidermy museums, and an outrageous relationship involving a silverback gorilla. Yet, amid all of its convention-smashing glee, Secrets of the Wild reveals a generous and moving portrait of a family, a family doing their best to keep it together—to play-act at normalcy, even sanity—in an American landscape slipping into madness.

    

    And not just any lover: she is Jewish; she is a militant Zionist; her name is Golda Meir, future president of Israel. Forbidden love and dangerous passions combines in this novel about one of the century's major political figures.

    From her family home, she can see the buildings shimmering on the horizon and the sea stretched out beside them. She can also hear the rumble of the shelling - this is Lebanon in the 1980s and civil war is tearing the country apart.

    The city is a shell of the Beirut Osama remembers, but he and his friends and family take solace in the things that have always sustained them: gossip, laughter, and, above all, stories. Osama’s grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching stories—of his arrival in Lebanon, an orphan of the Turkish wars, and of how he earned the name al-Kharrat, the fibster—are interwoven with classic tales of the Middle East, stunningly reimagined. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the ancient, fabled Fatima; and Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders. Here, too, are contemporary Lebanese whose stories tell a larger, heartbreaking tale of seemingly endless war—and of survival. Like a true hakawati, Rabih Alameddine has given us an Arabian Nights for this century—a funny, captivating novel that enchants and dazzles from its very first lines: “Listen. Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining. Let me tell you a story.”

    Keeping vigil at the old man's bedside is his spiritual son, Khalil, who nurses Yunes, refusing to admit that his hero may never regain consciousness. Like a modern-day Scheherazade, Khalil relates the story of Palestinian exile while also recalling Yunes's own extraordinary life and his love for his wife, whom he meets secretly over the years at Bab al-Shams, the Gate of the Sun.A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the YearOne of Kansas City Star's 100 Noteworthy Books of the YearA Boldtype Notable Book of the YearA Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the YearA San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

    After a brief and confused exchange, several rounds of bullets are fired into the car, killing everyone inside except for a small boy of four or five. The boy is taken to the hospital, adopted by one of the assassins, and raised in a new family. “My father used to kidnap and kill people …” begins this haunting tale of a child who was raised by the murderer of his real family. The narrator of Confessions doesn’t shy away from the horrible truth of his murderous father—instead he confronts his troubled upbringing and seeks to understand the distortions and complexities of his memories, his war-torn country, and the quiet war that rages inside of him.

    In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace in Tripoli and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan. The protagonist soon takes charge of this hoard of architectural fragments, ferrying the dismantled landmark through Sudan, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, attempting to return to his native Beirut with this moveable real estate. Along the way, he encounters skeptic sheikhs, suspicious tribal leaders, bountiful feasts, pilgrims bound for Mecca and T.E. Lawrence in a tent.

    In November of 2010, I read at the ‘Ear Eater’ reading series in Chicago. Ana was another reader. She was reading via Skype. There were a lot of people at the reading. After I read, I walked out of the room and stood in a hallway, staring at the floor. After a few difficult conversations with people in the hallway, I heard the host of the reading talking to someone on the computer. It was Ana. Ana started reading. I laughed a lot and enjoyed her reading. Seemed like other people weren’t enjoying it as much as me but I was enjoying it a lot. I stood in the hallway laughing and shaking my head ‘Yes’ and people looked at me. I kept thinking, ‘I want to go into the room and watch her face reading’ but then I would think, ‘No, don’t do that, just listen.’ Not sure why I kept telling myself not to go into the room where she was reading but I stood in the hallway and listened and enjoyed it a lot. Two years later, Ana emailed me Baby Babe. I opened the PDF just to skim a few poems but then I read the whole book. When I was done reading the book, I thought, ‘I’ll be glad to have this book so I can look at it whenever I want.’” — Sam Pink

    I enjoyed it a lot. —Nick CaveSet in Camden Town, London, during the late 1980s, Junkie Love is a study of addiction and loss, a nihilistic love story for the blank generation. Focusing on the psycho-pathology of addiction, it takes a look at what happens when hope disappears and hedonism turns to despair and self-loathing. The characters in this tale are rootless and adrift, dislocated from their pasts with no belief in the aims and aspirations of a materialistic society. Instead of turning to politics or religion, they embark on a course of self-destructive sex and manically obsessive drug abuse, a journey to the end of the night from which many do not return. Largely autobiographical and leavened with irony and perverse humor, Junkie Love follows the protagonist into the heart of this morass to the point where corruption and dissipation coalesce into something approaching transcendence.

     This book is an eye opener on Mughal history in India. Mughals have been glorified as great rulers in Indian history books despite being maniacs, incest-lovers, rapists and merciless invaders. The book is a compilation of all hidden facts. Straight from their authentic biographies. To make Indians realise, enough is enough. Do not glorify these filthy creatures in the name of preserving the secular fabric of India. Note: This is the latest edition of the book “Great Ruler of India” with different title and few additional chapters.

    She made up her mind to close them again and return to her dream. She saw a small white candle whose wan light trembled and flickered in the fog. . . Milia's response to her new husband Mansour and to the Middle East of 1947 is to close her eyes and drift into parallel worlds where identities shift, where she can converse with the dead and foresee the future. As the novel progresses, Milia's dreams become more navigable than the strange and obstinate "reality" in which she finds herself, and the two worlds grow ever more entangled. Elias Khoury, born in Beirut in 1948, is a novelist, essayist, playwright, and critic. He was awarded the Palestine Prize for Gate of the Sun, which was named a Best Book of the Year by Le Monde Diplomatique, The Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and a Notable Book by The New York Times and The Kansas City Star. Archipelago Books also published Khoury's Yalo in 2008 and his White Masks in 2010.

    Together, they face all the difficulties of poor immigrants—the passage by ship, admittance through Ellis Island and the rough immigrant life. Khalid, always the dreamer, tries to participate in the political and cultural life of the teeming city—to often humiliating and comic result.Tiring of their sojourn, he convinces Shakib they should return to Lebanon. But their heads are now full of New World ideas. And Khalid, trying to improve his brethren, turns his understanding of Western thought into a call for political progress, and religious unity and tolerance in the Arab world. A call that has him, accidentally, almost founding a new religion—and almost becoming its first martyr, when his ideas incite the faithful to riot.Playing with classical Arabic literary forms, as well as Western literary conventions, Ameen Rihani’s The Book of Khalid is a unique contribution to American and World literature.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Fleeing from Beirut in search of solace, Zahra stays with her uncle in West Africa—and then uses marriage as another kind of escape. Back in Beirut, love finally comes to her, but with terrible consequences. Banned in several Middle Eastern countries since its original publication, The Story of Zahra is an intoxicating, provocative story of a young woman’s coming of age in a city torn apart by war.With more than 21,000 copies in print of "Women Of Sand And Myrrh," and more than 15,000 copies of "The Story Of Zahra," Hanan al-Shaykh is the best known and most admired woman writer of the Arab world. The paperback publication of "Zahra" will bring this passionate and courageous novel to a much larger group of readers. Its haunting story of a young Lebanese woman who attempts to stem the violence in Beirut by initiating a sexual liaison with a sniper has "lifted the corner of a dark curtain" ( "Sunday Telegraph" ) from a world that fascinates us all." "The Story Of Zahra" is a classic by any standards."-- "Village Voice Literary Supplement.""This rich tale mesmerizes with its frank sexuality and scenes of war-torn Beirut."-- "Publishers Weekly."

    His love affair with punk comes full circle as he learns to hate it and then learns to love it again. The pieces in this book take us from his Southern roots, his brief stay in St. Louis, and his journey to California on a quest for punk bliss. Sinister finds himself in Oakland, where he gets exactly what he wanted, but it may just kill him. From recounts of specific shows to metaphorical dreams of Abraham Lincoln to the tragic stories of circus elephants, All Blacked Out & Nowhere to Go mixes tragedy and comedy into a book that's louder and faster than any book of its kind.