Jameela Green Ruins Everything
Jameela Green Ruins Everything

Author: Zarqa Nawaz

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-03-08

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1982177373

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For fans of My Sister, the Serial Killer; Where’​d You Go, Bernadette; and the award-winning TV show Killing Eve, a hilarious satire about a disillusioned American Muslim woman who becomes embroiled in a plot to infiltrate an international terrorist organization and, in the process, reconnects with her loved ones and her faith, from Zarqa Nawaz, the creator of the hit CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie. Jameela Green has only one wish. To see her memoir on The New York Times bestseller list. When her dream doesn’t come true, she seeks spiritual guidance at her local mosque. New imam and recent immigrant Ibrahim Sultan is appalled by Jameela’s shallowness, but agrees to assist her on one condition: that she perform a good deed. Jameela reluctantly accepts his terms, kicking off a chain of absurd and unfortunate events. The homeless man they try to help gets recruited by a terrorist group, causing federal authorities to become suspicious of Ibrahim, and suddenly the imam mysteriously disappears. Certain that the CIA have captured Ibrahim for interrogation via torture, Jameela decides to set off on a one-woman operation to rescue him. Her quixotic quest soon finds her entangled in an international plan targeting the egomaniacal leader of the terrorist organization—a scheme that puts Jameela, and countless others, including her hapless husband and clever but disapproving daughter, at risk. A hilarious black comedy about the price of success, and a biting look at what has gone wrong with American foreign policy in the Middle East, Jameela Green Ruins Everything is a compulsively readable, yet unexpectedly touching story of one woman’s search for meaning and connection.

Laughing All The Way To The Mosque
Laughing All The Way To The Mosque

Author: Zarqa Nawaz

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2014-06-24

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1443416959

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

SHORTLISTED FOR THE LEACOCK MEDAL FOR HUMOUR, THE KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE AND TWO SASKATCHEWAN BOOK AWARDS Zarqa Nawaz has always straddled two cultures. She’s just as likely to be agonizing over which sparkly earrings will “pimp out” her hijab as to be flirting with the Walmart meat manager in a futile attempt to secure halal chicken the day before Eid. “Little Mosque on the Prairie” brought Zarqa’s own laugh-out-loud take on her everyday culture clash to viewers around the world. And now, in Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, she tells the sometimes absurd, sometimes challenging, always funny stories of being Zarqa in a western society. From explaining to the plumber why the toilet must be within sitting arm’s reach of the water tap (hint: it involves a watering can and a Muslim obsession with cleanliness “down there”) to urging the electrician to place an eye-height electrical socket for her father-in-law’s epilepsy-inducing light-up picture of the Kaaba, Zarqa paints a hilarious portrait of growing up in a household where, according to her father, the Quran says it’s okay to eat at McDonald’s—but only if you order the McFish.

The Only Girl in the World
The Only Girl in the World

Author: Maude Julien

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2017-12-12

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0316466603

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For readers of Room and The Glass Castle, an astonishing memoir of one woman's rise above an unimaginable childhood. Maude Julien's parents were fanatics who believed it was their sacred duty to turn her into the ultimate survivor -- raising her in isolation, tyrannizing her childhood and subjecting her to endless drills designed to "eliminate weakness." Maude learned to hold an electric fence for minutes without flinching, and to sit perfectly still in a rat-infested cellar all night long (her mother sewed bells onto her clothes that would give her away if she moved). She endured a life without heat, hot water, adequate food, friendship, or any kind of affectionate treatment. But Maude's parents could not rule her inner life. Befriending the animals on the lonely estate as well as the characters in the novels she read in secret, young Maude nurtured in herself the compassion and love that her parents forbid as weak. And when, after more than a decade, an outsider managed to penetrate her family's paranoid world, Maude seized her opportunity. By turns horrifying and magical, The Only Girl in the World is a story that will grip you from the first page and leave you spellbound, a chilling exploration of psychological control that ends with a glorious escape.

Eleven Pipers Piping
Eleven Pipers Piping

Author: C.C. Benison

Publisher: Doubleday Canada

Published: 2012-10-30

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0385670168

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The annual Burns dinner at Thornford Regis is an occasion for bagpipes, haggis and scotch. It ends up an occasion for tragedy when Will Moir, one of the pipers, is found alone, in a tower, dead of an apparent heart attack. Father Tom Christmas, the vicar of the town, is privy to all of the secrets of its inhabitants, and is one of the first to find out that Will Moir was poisoned. The town's suspicions go in many directions, and Christmas soon learns secrets that have been kept for generations--illicit trysts, even murders--the ramifications of which may have fallen onto poor Will Moir. Brimming with wit, laced with genuine surprise and featuring one of the most memorable (and unlikely) detectives in the cozy genre today, Eleven Pipers Piping mines the rich history of a small town to solve its most stunning crime.

Satellite Love
Satellite Love

Author: Genki Ferguson

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0771049889

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A beautifully unconventional debut novel about a girl, a boy, and a satellite—and a bittersweet meditation on loneliness, alienation, and what it means to be human. Longlisted for Canada Reads, shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction and for Speculative Fiction. Named CBC Radio's Q Book Pick of the Month, a CBC Books Spring Reading List Title, a Shelf Life Books Book of the Month, a Toronto Life and Nikkei Voice summer read recommendation, one of Daily Hive's 10 Essential Reads to Celebrate Asian Canadian Writers, and one of Quill & Quire booksellers' Books of the Year. On the eve of the new millennium, in a city in southern Japan that progress has forgotten, sixteen-year-old Anna Obata looks to the stars for solace. An outcast at school, and left to fend for herself and care for her increasingly senile grandfather at home, Anna copes with her loneliness by searching the night sky for answers. But everything changes the evening the Low Earth Orbit satellite (LEO for short) returns her gaze and sees her as no one else has before. After Leo is called down to Earth, he embarks on an extraordinary journey to understand his own humanity as well as the fragile mind of the young woman who called him into being. As Anna withdraws further into her own mysterious plans, he will be forced to question the limits of his devotion and the lengths he will go to protect her. Full of surprising imaginative leaps and yet grounded by a profound understanding of the human heart, Satellite Love is a brilliant and deeply moving meditation on loneliness, faith, and the yearning for meaning and connection. It is an unforgettable story about the indomitable power of the imagination and the mind's ability to heal itself, no matter the cost, no matter the odds.

The Most Precious Substance on Earth
The Most Precious Substance on Earth

Author: Shashi Bhat

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1538707934

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Journey Prize winner Shashi Bhat’s "powerful, surprising and terrifying" (Rufi Thorpe) story about a high school student's traumatic experience and how it irrevocably alters her life, for fans of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Girlhood, and Pen15. Bright, hilarious, and sensitive fourteen-year-old Nina spends her spare time reading Beowulf and flirting with an internet predator. She has a vicious crush on her English teacher, and her best friend Amy is slowly drifting away. Meanwhile, Nina’s mother tries to match her up with local Indian boys unfamiliar with her Saved by the Bell references, and Nina’s worried father has started reciting Hindu prayers outside her bedroom door. Beginning with a disturbing incident at her high school, The Most Precious Substance on Earth tells stories of Nina’s life from the ‘90s to present day, when she returns to the classroom as a high school teacher with a haunting secret and discovers that the past is never far behind her. Darkly funny, deeply affecting, unsettling, and at times even shocking, Shashi Bhat’s irresistible novel-in-stories examines the relationships between those who take and those who have something taken. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is a sharp-edged and devastating look at how women are conditioned to hide their trauma and suppress their fear, loneliness, and anger, and an unforgettable portrait of how silence can shape a life.

Death of a Kitchen Diva
Death of a Kitchen Diva

Author: Lee Hollis

Publisher: Kensington Books

Published: 2011-10-24

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0758277660

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A bowl of chowder is a Maine food writer’s last meal in this “delicious and satisfying” mystery (Carolyn Hart, New York Times-bestselling author of the Death on Demand series). Single mom Hayley Powell is barely keeping her leaking roof over her head in Bar Harbor, Maine, when her boss at the Island Times gives her a new assignment—taking over the paper’s food column. Hayley’s not sure she has the chops—she’s an office manager, not a writer, even if her friends clamor for her mouth-watering potluck dishes. But the extra income is tempting, and Hayley’s chatty first column is suddenly on everyone's menu—with one exception. When rival food writer Karen Appelbaum is found dead facedown in a bowl of Hayley’s creamy clam chowder, all signs point to Hayley. To clear her name, she’ll have to enlist some help, including her BFFs, a perpetually pregnant lobster woman, and a glamorous real estate agent. As she whips up a list of suspects, Hayley discovers a juicy secret about the victim—and finds herself in a dangerous mix with a cold-blooded killer. Includes seven delectable recipes from Hayley’s kitchen! “What a delicious debut mystery!” —Laura Levine, author of Death of a Gigolo “I ate up in one sitting.” —Isis Crawford, author of A Catered Book Club Murder “Sleuth Hayley Powell slides down as easily as one of her Lemon Drop Martinis (recipe included) and readers will be calling for a second round from author Lee Hollis.” —Leslie Meier, New York Times-bestselling author of Christmas Card Murder

At Last Count
At Last Count

Author: Claire Ross Dunn

Publisher:

Published: 2022-06-14

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781988784953

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For readers who love Mark Haddon, Miriam Toews, and Sally Rooney Paisley Ratchford is trying to keep it together, but her world is about to be turned upside down: In six weeks, the Toronto apartment building she lives in will be demolished. Thirty-nine years old, with nowhere to go and no one to turn to, she tries to regain possession of her childhood home on Amherst Island, a tight-knit community at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Doubly unfortunate for Paisley, the lawyer assigned to assist her is her old classmate and tormentor, Garnet Mulligan. It's more than enough to reignite the obsessive-compulsive disorder that has only ever offered Paisley a semblance of control. Her old compulsion to count in sets of eight had little effect on thwarting her bullies, the crisis engulfing her parents, and the mental illness that caused her mother to open their home to a horde of feral cats--all of which return to haunt her. Having Garnet represent her case feels risky, but the impending eviction forces her to take a chance, and it pays off: by facing Garnet and her past, she learns that, although her OCD will never disappear, it can be managed, especially if she's got a shot at a future, a roof over her head, and the possibility of love. At Last Count is a wise and often laugh-out-loud funny tale that proves we don't always need to believe everything our brain tells us.

Hana Khan Carries On
Hana Khan Carries On

Author: Uzma Jalaluddin

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1443461474

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the author of Ayesha at Last comes a sparkling new rom-com for fans of “You’ve Got Mail,” set in two competing halal restaurants Sales are slow at Three Sisters Biryani Poutine, the only halal restaurant in the close-knit Golden Crescent neighbourhood. Hana waitresses there part time, but what she really wants is to tell stories on the radio. If she can just outshine her fellow intern at the city radio station, she may have a chance at landing a job. In the meantime, Hana pours her thoughts and dreams into a podcast, where she forms a lively relationship with one of her listeners. But soon she’ll need all the support she can get: a new competing restaurant, a more upscale halal place, is about to open in the Golden Crescent, threatening Three Sisters. When her mysterious aunt and her teenage cousin arrive from India for a surprise visit, they draw Hana into a long-buried family secret. A hate-motivated attack on their neighbourhood complicates the situation further, as does Hana’s growing attraction for Aydin, the young owner of the rival restaurant—who might not be a complete stranger after all. As life on the Golden Crescent unravels, Hana must learn to use her voice, draw on the strength of her community and decide what her future should be.