"The two rooms of the title are a windowless cubicle in Beirut where an American hostage is being held by Arab terrorists and a room in his home in the United States which his wife has stripped of furniture so that, at least symbolically, she can share his ordeal."Two Rooms received its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in California on June 21, 1988. The cast is two men and two women.

    Traveling to Baghdad and then to Mosul with the 1st Cavalry Division, McDonell offers an unforgettable look at the way things stand now—at the translators stranded in a country that doesn’t look kindly on their cooperation, at the infantrymen struggling to make something out of the soft counterinsurgency missions they call chai-ops, at the commanders inured to American journalists and Iraqi officials both—and what the so-called “end of major combat operations” means for where they’re going.

    Caught between the world of her white friends and that of her parents, she scraps her Muslim gear for blue jeans and runs away with her boyfriend.But when her father tracks her down and finds her, he tricks her into going to Bangladesh so that he can marry her off.In Bangladesh, she is faced with a choice: get married or never go home.It's an unforgettable true story about heartache and irony. About broken dreams. And how the life we choose is not always the life that chooses us. ABOUT THE AUTHORL.A. Sherman grew up in Bradford, England where she learned how to sneak out of the house without making the door creak. At the age of fifteen, she was tricked into going to Bangladesh by her parents and forced to marry a man as old as her father. After four years there with a wicked mother-in-law, she won the visa lottery for America and moved to the Big Apple. Now hard at work on her second book, she lives in Tampa, Florida with her family near a pond full of gators and spends her time doing all the things that Bengali girls don't.

     The fragile peace is holding. Behind the scenes, the Israelis are competing for dwindling water resources as Jordan and Palestine face drought. Daoud Dajani has the solution to Jordan’s water problems and is bidding against the British for the privatisation of Jordan’s water network. When journalist Paul Stokes befriends Dajani’s sister, Aisha, British intelligence agent Gerald Lynch realises Paul offers access to Dajani - the man threatening to drain Israel’s water supply and snatch the bid from the British. Blackmailed by Lynch into spying on Dajani, his movements seemingly linked to a series of bombings, Paul is pitched into a terrifying fight for survival that will force him to betray everyone around him. Even the woman he loves. Olives explores love in conflict, the pull of home set against the excitement of the new and a people trying to live alongside the conflict we see on television, the human stories behind glib media coverage that reduces the ebb and flow of existence to a few throwaway catchphrases. Forced to spy for his country, Paul finds himself embroiled in a struggle for survival between good and evil where the people he wants to see as the good guys are worse than he could ever have imagined.

    After seventeen years in flight from his roots, Adam Watkins returns to Appalachia to investigate the murder of his father, Little Sam, a renowned Holy Roller. The suspect, Blue, is a fiery-haired, purple-eyed beauty with a reputation for being immune to earthly harm.When Blue and Adam meet, the power that moves between them is both dark and exhilarating. Will their sudden love, like the mortal bite of a poisonous snake, destroy them or redeem them? In indelible images and mesmerizing prose, Nahai explores the triumph of passion over reason, the cross-cultural sympathies of fundamentalism, and the price of extremism.

    Bahlool who lived in Baghdad, circa the 8th century AD, feigned madness to escape the oppression of the ruling class. Now free of the burden of normalcy he dispensed wisdom in strange and amusing ways.The Wise Fool of Baghdad is a collection of these true stories, richly illustrated in the Turkish-Iranian miniature style. Every story is followed by sacred verses of the Qur'an and traditional sayings, inscribed in Arabic By Muqtar Ahmed, one of India's finest Islamic calligraphers.Get the book. In the crazy times we live in, you'll probably need a fool to make sense of it all.http://www.suficomics.com

    Ms. Herzog writes with keen sensitivity to the complex weave of feelings embedded in all human relationships, with particular attention to the way we tiptoe around areas of radioactive emotion." - New York Times"Whatever the ideal contemporary American drama is, it has to look a lot like The Great God Pan. It is provocative and subtle, slowly, carefully revelatory, sweetly moving, thought-provoking, funny and insightful." - New York Observer"An intelligent, delicately articulate writer." - Village Voice"A moving and unsettling look at the nature of identity and the vagaries of memory. With subtlety and compassion, Herzog contemplates how well we can really know ourselves." - BackstageJamie's life in Brooklyn seems just fine: a beautiful girlfriend, a burgeoning journalism career, and parents who live just far enough away. But when a possible childhood trauma comes to light, lives are thrown into a tailspin. Unsettling and deeply compassionate, The Great God Pan tells the intimate tale of what is lost and won when a hidden truth is suddenly revealed.Amy Herzog's plays include 4000 Miles (Pulitzer Prize finalist), After the Revolution and Belleville. Ms. Herzog is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whiting Writers' Award, an Obie Award and the Helen Merrill Award for Aspiring Playwrights.

    In peace and war Taylor is as radiant as gold and as tough as diamond' Sam Kiley - author of Desperate Glory and Foreign Affairs Editor of Sky News. Chantelle Taylor joined the British Army in 1998 as a combat medical technician. Ten years later she made history, becoming the first female soldier to kill a Taliban fighter in close-quarter combat while on patrol in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. In Battleworn, she tells the story of B Company, a beleaguered group of individuals who fought relentlessly to hold Nad-e Ali, a dusty, sweltering hellhole surrounded by the Taliban. A routine patrol into an area saturated with enemy fighters escalates into a seven-week siege. Facing the possibility of death daily, Taylor writes of gun battles and perilous patrols, culminating in the extraction of more than sixty-six casualties with four killed in action. A powerful story written with a humility that captures the sometimes impalpable humour of soldiers at war, Battleworn provides a testament to combat medics all over the world. It highlights the crucial role that they play in today's 360-degree battlefield.

    Because it is in first person, the reader directly sees the psychological impact of the abuse and comes to understand how the abuser manipulates the victim into cooperating in it. We see the psychological costs of being abused—denial, depression, mental splitting, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, alcohol abuse, hopelessness, shame, fear of harm to her family—but gradually we also experience Laila's struggle. Set in the context of Muslim society where the young female victim knows her word will not be believed in preference to that of her "good" Muslim father, the story could have happened anywhere. Yes, the details are shocking, but they are not prurient, as the negative reviews have suggested. They are sickening and saddening but they are real. The details serve to underline the horrible things that abusers do to kids. I learned much about how the relationship between abuser and victim works and why it is so hard for the victim to break away and recover. This story is all the more moving because it is true. It took great courage for Laila to expose her life in this way, even if she does use a pseudonym. Her opening explanation for why she wrote the book reveals her hope that at least one abused individual will read it and live a healthy, happy life after the horrific experiences of such a childhood.Synopsis: Not Easily Washed Away is the true story of a young girl who was born to a Muslim family in Pakistan. She suffered through sexual, mental and physical abuse for fifteen years, which was perpetrated by her father Abdulla. Laila decides to take advantage of her father’s incestuous addiction by having him acquire a visa for her to the United States, where she feels as if she can rid herself of a putrid past. The book is written from a psychological perspective in first person, as Laila shares her painful past with the reader, sparing no details of her ordeal as a child, teenager and young adult. After she realizes her father’s diabolical plan is to keep her in Pakistan for himself, Laila decides to take fate into her own hands. Her new attitude helps her to turn the tables on her father, now living in America, and manipulate him into marrying an American woman to get Laila’s visa to the United States.The United States is not the instantaneous answer to Laila's plight. She arrived in Seattle, Washington, in 2004 to start a new life away from her father, but ends up being unable to stop the incestuous relationship with him and later on, with her stepmother. Things get even worse for Laila, as she is now twenty years old, depressed, and worried that her family’s fate back in Pakistan might be jeopardized if she leaves home. In the Spring of 2007 Laila’s life changes when her younger sister arrived from Pakistan and when she meets an interesting, Christian, Jamaican man at school. The young man confronts Laila about the abuse, and when she realizes she has feelings for him, she tells him everything. The young man tries to convince Laila that she can become mentally stronger and free herself of her abusive father and stepmother by running away with him.

    For more than thirty years, Simon's wry and astute observations on life, love, and the human condition have been making audiences laugh uproariously even as his beautifully realized characters touch their hearts. These five plays, including the Pulitzer- and Tony-award-winning Lost in Yonkers, show Simon at the pinnacle of his extraordinary career. Rumors Lost in Yonkers Jake's Women Laughter on the 23rd Floor London Suite Including the author's introduction: "How to Stop Writing and Other Impossibilities"

    While we focus on al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, it's actually the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s oldest, most influential, and most anti-American Islamist group, that has become the preeminent voice and power in the Muslim world.Hiding behind a cloak of respectability and expensive Western suits, the Muslim Brotherhood is installing vehemently anti-American governments and power structures throughout the Middle East and the world, as we sit back and cheer for the "democracy" of the Arab Spring.In his new book, The Brotherhood: America’s Next Great Enemy, Erick Stakelbeck teaches us the frightening truth about this dangerous group, from his first-hand experiences investigating the Brotherhood for eleven years, interviewing its members and visiting its mosques and enclaves.In The Brotherhood, Stakelbeck:Reveals how the Obama administration has put the Brotherhood on the threshold of power at every turnExamines the alarming ramifications for America, Europe and Israel of the Brotherhood’s rapid riseWarns against the West’s—particularly the Left’s—shortsighted, naïve and deadly embrace of the Ikhwan andTraces the group from its violent roots to its current strategy of “stealth jihad”With Middle Eastern unrest only growing hotter, and saber-rattling at the West only growing louder, the Muslim Brotherhood’s growing global clout will remain on the front burner of American national security challenges. Revealing and disconcerting, The Brotherhood is a must-read for every American hoping to remain in a free America.

    invasion of Iraq, Pittsburgh native and graduate student Ben Orbach traveled to the Middle East to experience the region first-hand. Despite having a degree in Middle Eastern studies, he was completely unprepared for what he discovered. Beyond the anti-American sentiment he expected, he found a complex, curious people whose lives were made even more difficult by an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness. Live from Jordan is the story, told via his letters home, of Orbach's one year trip through Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Palestine, and Turkey.As he begins his unforgettable journey which takes him from bustling bazaars to underground brothels, he meets all kinds of characters: a falafel cook who hates Americans because they "have no mercy," a kindly baker who wishes him "peace and blessings" every time he buys pita bread, and the curious, impassioned 21-year-old medical student with a penchant for debating U.S. foreign policy. From the angry streets of Cairo to the living rooms of ordinary people in Jordan and Palestine, Orbach offers an honest, balanced portrait of a region in turmoil and the vivid, misunderstood, and often welcoming people who inhabit it. With humor and wit, he sheds new light on a culture that few Americans understand. Engaging and evocative, Live from Jordan is a myth-breaking book that combines the lyricism of a travelogue with the insight of reportage.

    Realising this as a game-changing moment in the history of the Middle East, The Arab Uprisings captures the thoughts and feelings of the people involved as the events unfolded, putting these revolutions in their political context, and using them as a prism through which to understand the broader history and landscape of the Middle East. The book will look at the world the demonstrators rejected and its Arab dictators. The author will examine brutal police states, tribal loyalty and foreign help. The West's response and Israel's too, will form part of the narrative. This is an urgent and authoritative account of the seismic political changes rocking the Middle East, from one of the foremost reporters of our time.

    Until last year. Last year, I was supposed to get married in Vegas at the stroke of midnight on Christmas day. I had the perfect wedding planned. If only I’d picked the perfect fiancé. I caught him in our bed with some blonde two days before the wedding and now I’ve turned into Scrooge.Everyone is used to my epic Christmas cards, but I can’t come up with an appropriate theme this year. We have one of the biggest malls in the country and they decided to allow dogs in for Santa photos. I was a little bummed the fire department was supplying the Santas instead of getting a photo of my pit bull with someone who really did look like Santa.That is, until my Santa is drop dead gorgeous and treats my dog well. A balloon pops and spooks my dog. Queenie bolts and gets lost in sea of Christmas shoppers in a hug mall. Cue four hot firemen dressed as Santa to my rescue. They all really want to help find my dog. They are treating this like a covert, black ops mission. They are all so sweet too.If we can find my dog, I intend to invite them back home for a home cooked meal. They all have to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Maybe I can have a better Christmas than last year and make the holidays better for four great guys who do so much for the community. Proceeds from Mall Santas will be going towards the rescue I adopted my own goofy pit bull from 2 days before Christmas 6 years ago. They took in a lot of sick kittens during kitten season and have a large tab at the local vet. My contact at the rescue advised the donation would be best used by going directly towards their vet bill and the vet also had a fundraiser set up in their name

    The broken way beckons you into more time, more meaning, more authentic relationships. There’s a way, especially when things aren’t shaping up quite like you imagined, that makes life take the shape of more—more abundance, more intimacy, more God.Ann Voskamp asks the following questions not one of us can afford to ignore:How do you live your one broken life?What does it mean to live cruciform and learn to receive?What do you do if you really want to know abundant wholeness—before it’s too late?There’s a way of honest, transformative power. Dare to take the broken way—to abundance.Sessions include:How Do We Live This One Broken Life?Living CruciformLearning to ReceiveReal KoinoniaEmbracing InconvenienceWho We ServeDesigned for use with The Broken Way Video Study 9780310820741 (sold separately).