The Doves Necklace
The Doves Necklace

Author: Raja Alem

Publisher: ABRAMS

Published: 2016-05-03

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 1468312359

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When the body of a young woman is discovered in the Lane of Many Heads, an alley in modern-day Mecca, no one will claim it, as they are ashamed of her nakedness. As Detective Nasser pursues his investigation of the case, seemingly all of Mecca chimes in—including the Lane of Many Heads itself—in this “surreal, meditative take on a murder mystery” (The Guardian, Best Books of Summer). Nasser initially suspects that the dead woman is Aisha, one of the residents of the area, and searches her emails for clues. The world she paints embraces everything from crime and religious extremism to the exploitation of foreign workers by a mafia of building contractors, who are destroying the historic areas of the city. Another view reveals the city through the eyes of Yusuf, Aisha’s neighbor, increasingly frustrated by the accelerating pace of change. As gripping as classic noir, nuanced as a Nabokov novel, and labyrinthine as the alleys of Mecca itself, this brilliant fever dream of a novel masterfully reveals a city and a civilization in all its contradictions, at once beholden to brutal customs and uneasily coming to terms with new traditions.

Two Turtle Doves
Two Turtle Doves

Author: Alex Monroe

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-03-13

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1408841193

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'I imagine its being rediscovered with delight in some dusty book case a century hence and hailed as a classic' Spectator 'A wonderful book, a hymn to the pleasurable process of making things' The Times Two Turtle Doves is the story of a life spent making things. Growing up in 1970s Suffolk in a crumbling giant of a house with wild, tangled gardens, Alex Monroe was left to wreak havoc by invention. Without visible parental influence, but with sisters to love him and brothers to fight for him, he made nature into his world. Creation became a compulsion, whether it was go-carts and guns, cross-bows and booby-traps, boats, bikes or scooters. And then, it was jewellery. From full-out warfare waged against the local schoolboys to the freedom found in daredevil Raleigh bike antics to the delicacies of dress-making and the most intricate designs for jewellery, Two Turtle Doves traces the intimate journey of how an idea is transformed from a fleeting thought into an exquisite piece of jewellery. It is about where we find our creativity, how we remember and why we make the things we do.

Juliet Dove, Queen of Love
Juliet Dove, Queen of Love

Author: Bruce Coville

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2015-03-17

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0547541066

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A magical fantasy adventure about the high cost of loving, from the award-winning author of My Teacher Is an Alien and The Unicorn Chronicles. Juliet Dove is a girl who doesn't like to be noticed. But though she may be shy, she has a wickedly sharp wit. Whenever someone does take notice of her, she tears into the person with a savagery that’s earned her the nickname “Killer.” Juliet ends up leaving Mr. Elives’s magic shop with Helen of Troy's amulet—that is, a virtual man magnet. Juliet doesn’t know what she’s got, but the boys in her class do—they start to notice her . . . Soon every boy in town is swooning for her. Yet, much as she’d like to lose all the unwanted attention, she can’t: The amulet won't come off! “Although humorous, the story has surprising depth, with musings on honor, power, strength, courage, and, above all, love.” —School Library Journal “A rare book . . . . Funny [and] absorbing.” —Miami Herald

Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures
Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures

Author: Karima Laachir

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0415893372

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This study highlights the connections between power, cultural products, resistance, and the artistic strategies through which that resistance is voiced in the Middle East. Exploring cultural displays of dissent in the form of literary works, films, and music, the collection uses the concept of 'cultural resistance' to describe the way culture and cultural creations are used to resist or even change the dominant political, social, economic, and cultural discourses and structures either consciously or unconsciously. The contributors do not claim that these cultural products constitute organized resistance movements, but rather that they reflect instances of defiance that stem from their peculiar contexts. If culture can be used to consolidate and perpetuate power relations in societies, it can also be used as the site of resistance to oppression in its various forms: gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality, subverting existing dominant social and political hegemonies in the Middle East.

Thomas and Beulah
Thomas and Beulah

Author: Rita Dove

Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 79

ISBN-13: 9780887480218

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Collects poems that tell a fictionalized version of the lives of the authors's maternal grandparents.

Using Life
Using Life

Author: Ahmed Naji

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2017-11-14

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1477314806

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Upon its initial release in Arabic in the fall of 2014, Using Life received acclaim in Egypt and the wider Arab world. But in 2016, Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in prison after a reader complained that an excerpt published in a literary journal harmed public morality. His imprisonment marks the first time in modern Egypt that an author has been jailed for a work of literature. Writers and literary organizations around the world rallied to support Naji, and he was released in December 2016. His original conviction was overturned in May 2017 but, at the time of printing, he is awaiting retrial and banned from leaving Egypt. Set in modern-day Cairo, Using Life follows a young filmmaker, Bassam Bahgat, after a secret society hires him to create a series of documentary films about the urban planning and architecture of Cairo. The plot in which Bassam finds himself ensnared unfolds in the novel's unique mix of text and black-and-white illustrations. The Society of Urbanists, Bassam discovers, is responsible for centuries of world-wide conspiracies that have shaped political regimes, geographical boundaries, reigning ideologies, and religions. It is responsible for today's Cairo, and for everywhere else, too. Yet its methods are subtle and indirect: it operates primarily through manipulating urban architecture, rather than brute force. As Bassam immerses himself in the Society and its shadowy figures, he finds Cairo on the brink of a planned apocalypse, designed to wipe out the whole city and rebuild anew.

The Plague of Doves
The Plague of Doves

Author: Louise Erdrich

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2008-04-29

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0060515120

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Louise Erdrich's mesmerizing new novel, her first in almost three years, centers on a compelling mystery. The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation. The descendants of Ojibwe and white intermarry, their lives intertwine; only the youngest generation, of mixed blood, remains unaware of the role the past continues to play in their lives. Evelina Harp is a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, who is prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. Nobody understands the weight of historical injustice better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a thoughtful mixed blood who witnesses the lives of those who appear before him, and whose own love life reflects the entire history of the territory. In distinct and winning voices, Erdrich's narrators unravel the stories of different generations and families in this corner of North Dakota. Bound by love, torn by history, the two communities' collective stories finally come together in a wrenching truth revealed in the novel's final pages. The Plague of Doves is one of the major achievements of Louise Erdrich's considerable oeuvre, a quintessentially American story and the most complex and original of her books.

Warman's Jewelry
Warman's Jewelry

Author: Kathy Flood

Publisher: Krause Publications

Published: 2010-07-09

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9781440208010

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The 4th edition of Warman's Jewelry: Fine & Costume Jewelry price guide is for any jewelry lover interested in jadeite, pearls, diamonds, figurals, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, sterling silver, beads, rhinestones, avant-garde, designer, antique Victorian-Edwardian-Georgian, couture, plastics including Bakelite and Lucite, gold, and even more exceptional jewelry categories. The book features a fresh and fun redesign with more than 1,000 all-new images. Scholarly information and helpful hints guide the collector on an amusing journey through costume and fine jewelry from the 18th to 21st centuries. The easy-to-follow format allows collectors to quickly identify their jewelry, plus concise and informative intro shorts tell the readers specifically what to look for within categories. The book is an indispensable addition to any jewelry library. Learn about jewelry without the usual tedium of non-fiction for a read that goes fast from the first word to the closing paragraph. Plus, read short interviews with category specialists. All in all, you'll learn a lot without realizing you've been ... studying.