Understanding Palestine & Israel

By Phyllis Bennis

All the questions you’ve been wondering about—up to and including Israel’s war on Gaza and the election of Donald Trump.

People across the US watched in horror as Israel responded to the terrible acts of October 7, 2023 with a brutal war against the people of Gaza. They poured into the streets demanding Ceasefire Now—and protested the US government financing, arming, and protecting Israel’s war. A key question was when to start the clock—because none of those events actually began on October 7; all had their origins in events 17, or 58, or 77 years earlier.

In straightforward, accessible language Phyllis Bennis takes on that question—and many more—providing answers to the queries so many never before had the chance to ask. What is the Balfour Declaration? What are the Occupied Territories? What is Zionism—and do all Jews support it? Does Israel have the right of self-defense? What were conditions like in Gaza before October 7?

The Four Roads to Heaven

France and the Santiago Pilgrimage

By Edwin Mullins

“There are four roads leading to Santiago, which combine to form a single road.”

So begins The Pilgrim’s Guide, the world’s first guidebook. Written early in the twelfth century by Benedictine monks, it served travelers taking part in the great pilgrimage of the Middle Ages, to the tomb of the apostle St. James, the cousin of Christ, at Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. The four roads are all in France: from Paris in the north; from Vezelay in Burgundy; from Le Puy-en-Velay in the Massif Central; and from Arles in Provence- all threading their way across the country before joining as a single road in northern Spain. A step-by-step account of these four journeys through medieval France, the Guide’s aim was to explain to pilgrims the religious sites they would see on their way to Santiago, but it also offered advice on where to stay, what to eat and drink, and how to avoid dishonest innkeepers and murderous boatmen.

Edwin Mullins follows the same four roads as they exist today in the footsteps of those medieval travelers. He explores the magnificent churches, abbeys, and works of art which are the proud legacy of the pilgrimage, as well as reconstructing a turbulent period of history that encompassed wars, crusades, and the re-conquest of Spain. Many of the buildings and landmarks that sprang up along the pilgrim routes still stand there today, and The Four Roads to Heaven brings to life their historical, architectural, and spiritual significance.

From imposing Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals to humble pilgrims’ hospices, this book looks at the living legacy of one of the great social phenomena of the Middle Ages- the pilgrimage to Santiago. Richly illustrated with Adam Woolfitt’s color photographs, The Four Roads to Heaven offers an invaluable guide- nine hundred years after its predecessor- to the paths still trodden by increasing numbers of pilgrims.

A Symphony of Stories

Musical Myths and Tuneful Tales

By James Mayhew

Six world famous orchestral pieces from six renowned composers feature in this beautiful gift book, introducing children to the world of classical music through story and illustration.

James Mayhew tells the stories of the following six much loved pieces of music, accompanied by breathtaking illustrations:

The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens

The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi

The Sunken Cathedral by Claude Debussy

The Planets by Gustav Holst

The Butterfly Lovers by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang

The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky

Now this beautiful companion volume introduces children to six more dramatic and spellbinding classic orchestral works. Musical Notes on works and composers are included in the book as well as James Mayhew’s recommended recordings to download and listen to.

Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands

By Sonia Nimr

An adventure-packed historical folkloric novel about a Palestinian girl who develops great healing skills and travels around the region on a daring journey across empires.

Winner of the prestigious Etisalat Award

Sonia Nimr’s award-winning Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands is a richly imagined feminist-fable-plus-historical-novel that tells an episodic travel narrative, like that of the great 14th century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, through the eyes of a clever and irrepressible young Palestinian woman.

The story begins hundreds of years ago, when our hero—Qamar—is born as an outcast, at the foot of a mountain in Palestine, near her father’s strange, isolated village. Qamar’s mother must solve the mystery of why only boys are born in this odd, conservative village. Then, in 1001 Nights style, this tale moves into another. Qamar’s parents die and a prince with many wives wants to marry her. Qamar takes her favorite book, Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands, and flees through Gaza, to Egypt, where she is captured, enslaved, and sold to the sister of the mad king in Egypt. After escaping, she flees to study with a polymath in Morocco. But when it’s discovered she’s a girl, she must leave again, disguising herself as a boy pirate to sail the Mediterranean.

Through all her fast-paced battles, mysteries, and adventures, Qamar never finds a home, but she does manage to create a family.

Tanoreen

Palestinian Home Cooking in Diaspora; A new and extended edition of Olives, Lemons, and Za'atar

By Rawia Bishara

Recipes from the iconic Brooklyn restaurant.

It has been 10 years since the publication of the beloved cookbook, Olives, Lemons and Za’atar by Rawia Bishara, chef and owner of the iconic Brooklyn restaurant Tanoreen. In this new extended edition Rawia shares the flavors of her Palestinian childhood in Nazareth—with recipes passed down from her mother and recreated with Rawia’s creative flair, as well as dishes influenced from summers spent in Spain, and from living and cooking in the historically Italian neighborhood of Bay Ridge.

The result is a sensational cross-cultural mix and gives you everything you need—pickles, yogurt, bread, mezze, salads, stews, desserts, and more—to enjoy the best of Middle Eastern home cooking and share in the most convivial Arab hospitality.

The Lives of Rain

20th Anniversary Edition

By Nathalie Handal

Shortlisted for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize/The Pitt Poetry Series.

In The Lives of Rain, Nathalie Handal has brought forth a work of radical displacement and uncertainty, moving continent to continent, giving voice to Palestinians of the diaspora in the utterance of one fiercely awake and compassionate, who, against warfare, occupation and brutality offers her native language, olives, wind, a herd of sheep or a burning mountain, radio music, a butterfly’s gaze. It is a poetry of never arriving, of villages erased from the maps, of tattooed waistlines and kalishnikovs, a goat and a corpse cut open side by side, where every house is a prison. In a spare, chiseled language without ornament, she writes an exilic lyric, fusing Arabic, English, Spanish and French into a polyglot testament of horror and survival. Habibti, que tal? she asks of those who wander country to country, while those left behind in Jenin, Gaza City, and Bethlehem inhabit a continued past of blood/of jailed cities. Her subject is memory and forgetting, the precariousness of identity and the fragility of human community; it is the experience of suffering without knowledge of its end. Handal is a poet of deftly considered paradoxes and reversals, sensory evocations and mysteries left beautifully unresolved. Hers is a language seared by history and marked by the impress of extremity; so it is suffused with a rare species of wisdom.

—From the Foreword by Carolyn Forche

Willow

By Elisabeth Sophia

Illustrated by: Anita Bagdi

A beautiful story of courage and resilience—Willow shows us that it is not the fall, but how we rise again, that matters.

A willow tree stood proud and tall, roots deep within the soil…

Willow is a heartfelt picture book inspired by a poem written during a time of profound grief. It tenderly captures the slow and gentle rebuilding of a broken spirit, showcasing the courage and resilience needed to push through life’s darkest moments. The stunning, evocative illustrations bring the story to life, creating a visual journey that mirrors the emotional healing process. Each page reflects the grace found in grief and the beauty in rediscovering hope. With its universal message, Willow reminds readers, both young and old, that from our struggles, we emerge stronger and more vibrant.

Queens of Islam

The Muslim World's Historic Women Rulers

By Tom Verde

A survey of prominent Muslim women rulers from the first centuries of Islamic history to early modern times.

From Pakistan to Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan to Nigeria, from Senegal to Turkey, it is not unusual in modern times for women in Muslim-majority countries to be appointed and/or elected to high offices, including heads of state.

Nor has it ever been.

Stretching back nearly to the founding of Islam itself, women have held positions of political power in numerous Islamic nations and empires. Some ascended to office in their own right; others served as regents for incapacitated husbands or male successors then too young to rule. Some proved insightful and able administrators, courageous military commanders, or both; others differed little from their equally flawed, power-hungry male counterparts, and sowed the seeds of their own downfalls.

Queens of Islam examines the lives of fifteen of the most remarkable female leaders of Muslim dynasties, empires, and caliphates—from Islam’s earliest centuries through the end of the seventeenth century. Their stories demonstrate that throughout the faith’s long history there were many women who achieved positions of power and served as effective rulers, revered by those they governed while being respected—even feared—by their contemporary world leaders.

Entertaining and informative, Queens of Islam is rife with palace intrigue, sex scandals, power-grabs, and military conquests, set against a backdrop of Islamic world history.

Little Rhino Lost

By Candy Gourlay

Illustrated by: Jamie Bauza

A gentle story from the Philippines about kindness—with a lovable baby rhino character, and a strong argument for protecting the environment and making change.

Right in the middle of the crowded, bustling city, Maya meets a baby rhinoceros. “Excuse me,” he says politely, “I am lost.”

Maya is sure she can help the baby rhino find his home, where there are tall trees, plants with giant, yummy leaves and where the ground is covered in delicious grass. They walk and walk, but can find only streets and buildings—nowhere a little rhino can feel at home.

Maya doesn’t give up. She takes the baby rhino to her own home and gathers plants and flowers to help him feel at home. Kind neighbors help by bringing more. The polite little rhino is glad. “You made me my own jungle,” he says. In the morning he is gone, and there is a “thank you” message from his mummy. Maya is happy for him and hopes he will come back one day to visit. But she knows she must make changes to her crowded, polluted city.

Together Maya and her neighbors get to work and create a green city environment where people are happy and where a baby rhino might also feel at home… and perhaps return to visit Maya.

Moonlight, Goodnight

By Elisabeth Sophia

Illustrated by: Karina Jambrak

Wish the animals a sweet goodnight in this gentle bedtime story with vivid illustrations and a rhythmic tone.

“Everywhere across the land, across the waters, to… Some very sleepy creatures are waiting just for you.”

Drift off into a dreamy bedtime journey in Moonlight, Goodnight. This magical, rhyming tale takes young readers on a serene flight over oceans and landscapes, where sleepy creatures await to wish them a gentle goodnight. From the depths of the sea to the highest mountaintops, they’ll encounter a world of drowsy animals, each inviting them to join in the peaceful slumber.

The vibrant and enchanting illustrations by Australian artist Karina Jambrak bring this soothing adventure to life, capturing animals and landscapes from every corner of the globe. A perfect story to lull children to sleep, again and again.

Let’s Talk About Abortion

By Carly Kol

Illustrated by: Emulsify

Let’s Talk About Abortion is a groundbreaking, nonjudgmental, and gender-inclusive resource designed to help parents, caretakers, and providers compassionately discuss abortion with children ages 6 to 12.

Let’s Talk About Abortion is a groundbreaking and essential resource designed to help parents, caretakers, and providers discuss the topic of abortion with children ages 6 to 12. Authored by experienced abortion doulas, this book is crafted with the intention of fostering intentional, compassionate, and nonjudgmental conversations about abortion care.

In a landscape where no other children’s books in the US use the word “abortion,” Let’s Talk About Abortion fills a crucial gap. It provides a medically accurate, gender-inclusive, and nonjudgmental resource that acknowledges the diverse and complex nature of abortion care. The book’s text is carefully constructed without gender-specific language or a traditional narrative arc, recognizing that each abortion experience is unique and personal.

This book serves as a starting point, offering parents, caretakers, and those involved in young people’s lives a thoughtful and sensitive tool to approach discussions about abortion. By avoiding the portrayal of “good” or “bad” reasons for seeking an abortion, the authors ensure that all experiences are respected and validated.

Let’s Talk About Abortion is more than just a book; it’s a compassionate guide designed to support honest and open dialogue, empowering young readers with knowledge and understanding in a safe and supportive manner.

The Month of Ramadan

By Inda Ahmad Zahri

Explore Ramadan through the eyes of a child in this graceful and authentic story that illuminates the sense of belonging that this month of fasting, prayer, and reflection brings.

This month is different from the others. It starts with the sighting of a new crescent moon.

“Slow down, be kind to yourself and think good thoughts.”

This month, we learn to do big things by changing one little thing at a time…

It’s the first time for Deenie, the youngest member of a Muslim family, to fast during Ramadan. She comes across some challenges, but by the end of the month, she learns that there is a lot more to Ramadan than giving up food and water. A warm and joyful story offering children the chance to see themselves or their friends in the celebration of the spiritual practice of Ramadan.

Indian Kitchens

Treasured Family Recipes from Across the Land

By Roopa Gulati

A vivid, contemporary portrait of a country through its food and the ordinary, extraordinary, people who make it.

In this joyful new book, Roopa Gulati travels through India and celebrates the wonderfully varied food that makes up a nation, making pitstops at the homes of the people who cook it every day. You’ll be taken to a remote kitchen in Gujarat, with shelves stacked high with pickle jars, where the air is heady with the scent of homegrown curry leaves and the nutty aroma of rotlas imbued with woody smoke from the open fire; to the old French Quarter of Pondicherry, where lunch is served on a banana leaf picked fresh from the garden; and to Delhi for a family reunion, a feast culminating in mouth-watering desserts, and a cooking lesson. Roopa’s writing, full of warmth and joy, brings these people and places to life, and her recipes bring them to our kitchens.

From dals to masalas, and quick and easy suppers to feasts for a crowd, the easy- to-follow recipes are bursting with authentic flavors using ingredients found in your local supermarket. Recipes include eggplant pakoras with onion and tamarind relish, potato and paneer tikki, corn bhajis, Tandoori sea bass, home- style Punjabi chicken curry, Kashmiri lamb with saffron, cardamom and red chiles, cumin potatoes, Bengali-style butternut squash with tamarind and jaggery, channa dal with spinach, black-eyed peas in garlic tomato masala, phirni with honey, orange, and saffron syrup, and pistachio and cardamom cookies.

From the monsoon-washed backwaters of Kerala to the crowded markets of Mumbai, this celebration of regional cooking will bring the sights, sounds and flavors of India to your table.

Food for Sharing

Love and Spices from an Immigrant Kitchen

By Ashia Ismail-Singer

Sumptuous feasts, spice-infused flavors, and simple entertaining destined to impress and appeal to everyone.

Inspired by the melded cultures that make up Ashia’s extended family, Food for Sharing will take you on a journey full of flavors from India to Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, and New Zealand, where she now lives.

These are recipes for sharing, each infused with the spices and flavors of Ashia’s Memon Indian heritage, and the influences picked up through her family’s journey from India, to Africa, the Middle East, Europe and New Zealand.

With recipes for breakfast and brunch, summer picnics, festive feasts, sunset snacks and sweet and spiced desserts, interspersed with personal stories of Ashia’s immigrant family, this book shares all the ingredients to elevate your entertaining, all throughout the year.

The recipes in this book have been created to be as simple as possible, all inspired by the spices that Ashia grew up with at home, in the different countries she has lived.

Every element of this book is a fusion of cultures, the joys of sharing food, gathered together with loved ones. From Africa, to India, the Middle East, France, UK and New Zealand, this book will take you on a journey full of flavours and the melding of cultures dear to Ashia’s heart.

Includes themed menus, like “Inspired Indian Soiree” for the home cook who needs a little guidance when pairing dishes suitable for a crowd.

The recipes in this book are delicious, impressive, and simple to make, paired with exquisite photography and personal stories. It will make the perfect gift for anyone who loves to entertain.

Big Veg Energy

Plant-based just got better

By Christina Soteriou

Photography by: Joe Woodhouse

Bold recipes, made with plants.

Experience vegetables like never before with 100 simple, tasty and nutritious recipes to be enjoyed by all. Packed with flavor in every bite, these are hearty meals that showcase just how delicious plant-based food can be.

With influences from Christina’s Greek Cypriot roots, expect nourishing, vibrant food, including Spicy Mushroom Skewers with Peanut Lime Sauce, Sweet Potatoes with Tahini Butter Chickpeas, Pulled Leeks with Pistachio Cream and Peanut Butter Cherry Jam Semifreddo.

Christina shares tips for making sure your meals are packed with protein and nutrients as well as being totally delicious.

Watermelon Journal

By

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large and pocket formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages and includes a matching elastic band and pen loop. Each also has a ribbon-marker and an expandable inner note holder as well as informative text on the specific design used.

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

Paper: Cream lined paper

Elastic Band: 0.3″Red

Ribbon-marker: 3/16” Dark Green

Pen loop: 0.4″ Black
Note holder: Rear pocket note holder

Packaging: Individually shrink-wrapped

Cover: Printed cover on satin art paper around a hard cardboard inner cover

Descriptive text: Includes informative text on the history of the watermelon symbol

Read the World Book Club – One Year Subscription

By

READ THE WORLD BOOK CLUB
Join Interlink’s Read the World Book Club. Your annual subscription will bring you great literature from—Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen to Nigeria, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Chile, Brazil, and more—each and every month of the year.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
Your annual membership gets you one new paperback novel each month for a total of 12 novels (a saving of over $160). You can start your subscription at any time and it will expire after the 12^th novel has been shipped to you. Due to prohibitive international mailing costs, membership is open only to US residents.

A GIFT FOR NEW SUBSCRIBERS
Each new subscriber will receive a special gift valued at $30. This gift will be a deluxe first edition in hardback of one of our favorite novels.

DO I HAVE TO PAY ADDITIONAL SHIPPING CHARGES?
No, there will be no additional charges over and above the annual subscription fee.

CAN I PURCHASE A GIFT SUBSCRIPTION?
Yes, fiction subscriptions make perfect gifts. When checking out, click “Ship to a different address” and enter the recipient’s name and address.

CAN I EXCHANGE A NOVEL?
No, we are sorry we are unable to accept returns or exchanges. We are a small indie publisher and are not equipped to handle returns and exchanges. Of course, we hope that you will enjoy every new novel we’ve selected for you, but we understand that tastes vary. In this case, we suggest that you donate any unwanted copies to your local library.

QUESTIONS?

If you have any questions about the program email sales@interlinkbooks.com directly.

Genocide Bad

Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation

By Sim Kern

Part activist memoir, part crash course in Jewish and Palestinian history, Genocide Bad dismantles Zionist propaganda in ten unapologetic essays. Drawing connections between Biblical promises and exploding pagers, medieval dress codes and modern-day apartheid, Kern sketches a sweeping history of imperialism with their characteristic blend of far-ranging research, pop-culture insights, and scathing humor.

Kern, a former teacher, journalist, novelist, and book influencer, gained international recognition as an anti-Zionist Jewish activist in the days after October 7th, 2023. At a time when social media was flooded with “I Stand with Israel” posts, Kern started sharing content encouraging their followers to read Palestinian books, learn Palestinian history, and question Western reporting on Palestine—videos which went viral into tens of millions of views.

Despite facing hate messages, death threats, and exile from Zionist Jewish community, Kern has remained steadfast in their advocacy over the past year. They’ve posted daily videos on Palestinian, Jewish, and colonial history, and they’ve raised over $500,000 in mutual aid for families in Gaza—all while navigating the challenges of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting a newborn. In Genocide Bad, Kern reflects on the life experiences that led them to anti-Zionist activism, while capturing and expanding upon their online educational content.

Kern doesn’t flinch when confronting the horrors of genocides past and present, but there is also tremendous hope contained in these pages—hope that springs from examples of courage and resilience in the face of extreme violence, and from the kinds of resistance that might just lead to our collective liberation.

Norteña

Authentic Family Recipes from the North of Mexico

By Karla Zazueta

Delicious and authentic recipes from a northern Mexican home kitchen.

In this vibrant and personal cookbook, Karla Zazueta explores the recipes, cooking techniques, ingredients and traditions passed down through the generations of her family. This is a true taste of northern Mexico, bursting with flavor, color and history.

In Nortena, Karla Zazueta invites you to share the dishes and ways of cooking that she grew up with. Nortena—meaning “northerner“—tells the tale of the northern states of Mexico: of the coastlines and fresh seafood, the cattle ranches, sun-ripened fruits and vegetables, and family gatherings around the table.

She shares easy-to-follow recipes for the world-famous Baja fish tacos, “piggy“ pinto beans, vegan chorizo, crab tostadas, sopes (corn patties) piled with fresh vegetables and served in a tomato broth, and empanadas Californianas (shredded beef empanadas), all accompanied by mouth-watering spicy salsas, fresh queso and zingy salads. There are recipes para la sed (for the thirst), which include the best margaritas, and favorite sweets like Mexican flan and camotes (sweet potato poached until tender in a sweet, spiced syrup). With ingredient substitutes and vegetarian variations, you can recreate authentic dishes for everyone to enjoy.

Engaging introductions describe the cultural events and influences that play such a huge part in the cuisine, such as for carne asada, which originated in the state of Sonora, or the tamales estilo Sinaloa, wrapped with special care at Christmas time.

Influenced by Karla’s family’s traditions, her travels and tastes, each recipe is packed with flavor and cooked with love. Let yourself be transported to the Baja peninsula, rolling corn tortillas in the sun, sipping on a refreshing michelada and cooled by the breeze coming in from the sea.

Contents

Buenos Dias/Good Morning

Esenciales Nortenas/Northern Essentials

Algo Picosito/Something Spicy

Del Huerto/From the Garden

Del Mar/From the Sea

Del Rancho/From the Ranch

Final Dulce/Sweet Ending

Para la Sed/For the Thirst

Carne Asada/Mexican Feast

One Bake, Two Ways – SIGNED

Fifty bakes with an all-plant option every time

By Ruby Bhogal

Great British Bake Off finalist Ruby Bhogal is here to delight us with a flexible approach to baking tasty, sweet treats that give you double helpings of temptation. She brings us 50 like-for-like recipes, with a plant-based and non- plant-based version for each bake.

We all remember watching in horror as Ruby’s showstopper cake collapsed on the first-ever Vegan Week on the Great British Bake Off. Instead of slinking off with her tail between her legs, she was determined to master the art of baking and bake, bake, bake again until she could say with confidence that her recipes were failproof. Sharing new bakes and videos online, Ruby discovered a growing demand for adaptable recipes without eggs, dairy, or a full plant-based twist. She wanted her bakes to cater to everyone’s needs, no matter the dietary preference.

Raised in a British-Indian household, Ruby’s mostly vegetarian diet sparked a sugar rush to create recipes adaptable to a flexitarian approach. In this book, you get double the options, since each of the 50 recipes is presented twice: first in its traditional form and then with a plant-based alternative. This clever concept revolutionizes your baking experience, giving you the freedom to bake with choice.

Mouthwatering recipes include: Chai Custard Creams, Peanut Butter & Jelly Millefeuille Cake, Pina Colada Meringue Roulade, Medjool Date & Orange Sweet Samosas, and the Bruce Bogtrotter Chocolate Cake.

One Bake, Two Ways has an inclusive approach that makes Ruby’s recipes achievable for all—there’s no sacrifices here—every last bite is delicious! With adaptability galore and flavors that offer twice the delight, dive into Ruby’s world of baking and savor the best of both worlds.

Contents:

Oh, Crumbs (Cakes)

Breaking Bread

Easy as Pie

Taking the Cookie

Sweeter Things (Desserts)

Keeping it Saucy

The Essentials

Girls Who Slay Monsters

Daring Tales of Ireland's Forgotten Goddesses

By Ellen Ryan

Unsung stories from ancient Irish myths re-imagined for nine-to-twelve year olds

There was a time when tales of Ireland’s mythical goddesses—their astonishing powers, bravery, and unbreakable bonds with nature—were famous, in Ireland and beyond. But over time, these stories were lost, often replaced or rewritten to make room for male warriors and kings.

Until Now.

Girls Who Slay Monsters brings these heroes of Irish mythology back to vibrant, magical life. From Éire, Ireland’s fierce namesake, and Bé Binn, a giant who overcame her bullies, to Badb, a gleefully gruesome death prophet, and Bé Mannair, a gender-fluid spy who challenged an entire army. These are goddesses of many shapes, skin shades and sizes, from every corner of ancient Ireland, whose daring still inspires today.

Stand by their sides as they wield magic, fight monsters, and protect the powerless—and you might just discover that you, too, are a force of nature.

The Prophet

By Kahlil Gibran

A graphic novel of Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece The Prophet.

“It was while reading The Prophet with a pencil in hand and a drawing pad on my knees that I finally met him…”

Kahlil Gibran is the third bestselling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi. His masterpiece, The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics ever to be published. It sold over 9 million copies in the US alone and was translated into over 100 languages. Now his 1923 inspirational book is brought to life as a richly illustrated graphic novel.

Live Like A Goddess

Life Lessons from Legends and Lore

By Jean Menzies

The perfect gift for the young goddess in your life—inspire them to live a life of courage and confidence, inspired by twenty-one goddess myths from around the world and the modern life lessons of these legendary ladies.

Cultures around the world celebrate tales and myths of daring and brave goddesses. These twenty-one legendary ladies were tenacious, smart, and strong.

Meet…

Osun, the Yoruba goddess of love who refuses to be dismissed because of her gender and stands up to those who believe women are less important than men

Rhiannon, the Welsh queen of fairies who won’t let anyone make decisions for her and instead follows her heart

Freyja, the Norse goddess of love and death who doesn’t give into pressure, sets boundaries, and is comfortable with being a single independent woman

From demanding respect and recognizing unhealthy relationships, to standing your ground, helping others, and using words instead of violence, these rich and sometimes forgotten female stories of the ancient past teach girls and young women everything they need to know, so they can be just as fierce and fearless in the future.

Hawaii

Interlink Traveller's Wildlife Guide

By Les Beletsky

All the information you need to find, identify, and learn about Hawaii’s unique land animals and magnificent sea life can be found in this convenient easy-to-carry guide.

Travellers to Hawaii go for sun, sand, and surf, but increasingly leave the beach for part of their stay to explore the islands’ incredible natural attractions: stunning mountain scenery, wonderful hiking trails, glimpses of birds—many of them highly endangered—that occur nowhere else on Earth. In this book is all the information you need to find, identify, and learn about Hawaii’s unique land animals and magnificent sea life.

– Identification and location information on the most frequently seen animals, including essentially every bird species that occurs in the main Hawaiian Islands (and on Midway Atoll).

– Color illustrations of nearly 400 of Hawaii’s most common insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

– Up-to-date information on the ecology, behavior, and conservation of profiled animals. o Information on Hawaiian habitats and on the most common plants visitors encounter.

– A section on Hawaii’s famous coral reefs and on the underwater animals most snorkelers and divers actually see.

– Brief descriptions of Hawaii’s most frequently visited parks and reserves. Easy-to-carry, entertainingly written, beautifully illustrated—you will want to have this book as constant companion on your journey.

“Free Palestine” Lawn Signs

By

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians with this 18 x 24 inch all-weather corrugated plastic lawn sign.

Each sign comes with a metal stake.

The lawn sign says “Free Palestine” on both sides.

By making this purchase, you are contributing to our mission of amplifying marginalized voices through literature. Your support helps us publish works by Palestinian authors and books that educate readers about the injustices faced by Palestinians under occupation.

Young Palestinians Speak

Living Under Occupation

By Anthony Robinson & Annemarie Young

Palestinian children share their dreams and fears for themselves and their country.

In Palestine today, a second generation of children and young people is growing up experiencing life under occupation. These are children who know only fear when they see an Israeli soldier or come across a roadblock.

This book provides a platform for children and young people, from all over this occupied land, to speak in their own voices about the day-to-day experience of living under occupation. It begins with an explanation of what the occupation means for those living under it, and is followed by the heart of the book: nine sections, each one focusing on one of the places visited by the authors. At the end, there is a timeline showing the main events that led up to the occupation.

As you read their words, you will see that what these young people want is a stable family life, security where they live, the freedom to move around their country, safety and space in which to grow up and dream of a future. They are just like young people everywhere; it is only the circumstances of their lives that are so different.

The young people in this book share with you their hopes and fears for

A Spring That Did Not Blossom

Palestinian Short Stories

By Dr. Nejmeh Khalil Habib

Stories of Palestinian refugee lives during the Lebanese Civil War.

Drawing on cultural and oral history, Nejmeh Khalil Habib’s collection of five powerful short stories delves into the lives of ordinary Palestinians trying to find their way through relentless circumstances. Introducing us to characters loosely interconnected by time and place, the stories begin in 1975 with a family living in the Dbayeh refugee camp and end with the Israeli siege of West Beirut in 1982.

From Mariam, a mother devoted to her only child, to Nu’man, the soon-to-be-martyred young man who is ashamed of unwanted thoughts that mar his heroism, to Randa, the revolutionary, who is torn between glorifying her father’s sacrifices and denouncing them, to Amer who is spread thin between his familial obligations and aspirations, Habib accompanies each of her characters nimbly in language at times simple and embedded in popular vernacular, at others lyrical and poetic.

Marked by a storytelling style that is concise yet unconfined, Habib’s mastery of craft allows her to dive boldly into her characters’ depths and say what has not been said, revealing their hidden worlds with illuminating transparency that honors their unrequited longings for spring.

Murjana

A novel of medieval Baghdad

By Ghada Karmi

A tale of love and passion in medieval Baghdad.

It is spring of the year 830. Baghdad, the capital of a vast Islamic empire, is one of the world’s glorious cities. There, a powerful, forward-thinking Sunni caliph champions reason, knowledge, and creativity against forces of ignorance and superstition. A hub of scientific, philosophical, and artistic discovery, the city is home to an Islam of free debate and philosophical inquiry. The Caliph’s court has become a dazzling academy of poets, musicians, philosophers, and theologians, a picture of a vibrant, self confident, fun-loving society.

Yet, it bears the fateful seeds of future strife. For its leader’s rule is austere and ruthless, as he quells discontent, division, and rebellion in the surrounding lands. Then the Caliph is afflicted by a mysterious illness.

Akin to madness, his condition worsens as physicians desperately search for a cure. Only Abu Mansour, Baghdad’s most famous doctor, is able to diagnose the cause. The malady turns out to be the Caliph’s passion for a humble, beautiful, young woman named Murjana (“Small Pearl“). It is an affliction that only one remedy can cure—marriage. But Murjana is from a Shia family, and it is discovered that her brother was executed for insurrection against the caliphate. Such a union could reopen wounds, posing many dangers.

The controversial marriage of Murjana and the Caliph captures Baghdad under its spell. A tribute to a treasured ancient city, the story of their night journey becomes an ode on the power of love to erase boundaries. At the same time, it reveals the power of passion and vengeance to erect dividing lines, and the futility of conflict that can destroy all sides.

Slow

Easy, comforting Italian meals worth waiting for

By Gennaro Contaldo

Savor the art of slow cooking the Italian way, where flavors deepen and texture is softened to create comforting, inexpensive meals with little fuss.

In Slow, beloved Italian chef Gennaro Contaldo shows you how to prepare authentic Italian meals in minutes and cook them to perfection with minimum effort by letting your oven or appliance do the work.

Accompanied by mouthwatering photography by David Loftus, you’ll find a selection of new recipes to complement cherished classics that celebrate both the slow food movement and slow cooking. Think hearty casseroles, and one-pot dishes that simmer to perfection, succulent roasts that tenderize from oven cooking, and comforting soups and stews that quietly bubble away on the stovetop. Delight in sweet treats like meringues and fruit compotes, as well as freshly baked bread.

Gennaro showcases the use of economical meat cuts, beans, and legumes—all enhanced by the slow cooking process. With plenty of options to suit the thrifty home cook, this collection features timeless Italian classics like Roast Leg of Lamb with Baby Onions, Rich Tyrolean Beef Goulash, Lasagna, and Meringue with Zabaglione Cream and Custard.

Slow takes the hard work out of meal times to streamline your supper preparation; this is food worth waiting for while you enjoy the convenience of your slow cooker or oven doing all the heavy lifting.

In Defiance

20 Abolitionists You Were Never Taught in School

By Dr. Amilcar Shabazz, Tom Weiner

Inspiring stories of those who risked their lives so others would be free.

In Defiance is a corrective. American history has historically suffered from the systematic effort of many in power to suppress the stories of those whose lives serve as models for those who came after—models of conscience, activism, and dedication to the cause of the abolition of enslavement.

Following an introduction to the history of enslavement in the Americas, twenty people’s lives, Black and white, men and women, are profiled in order to convey the monumental commitment—its source and its expression—they carried with them throughout their lives. Those people—and the circumstances that influenced, inspired, and motivated them to risk their well-being and their lives for the freedom and equality of enslaved people—are conveyed in vivid vignettes, often including their own words.

Their stories are an antidote to the numerous attempts being made to deny, suppress, erase, and whitewash the actual people and events that occurred and that, in the telling, can cause discomfort. These stories need to be shared and recounted in classrooms. They are intended “to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted“ as Black and white people will experience them differently, a significant reason for the authors’ choice to write the book together. The book’s other primary purpose is to inspire and embolden readers to make John Lewis’s “good trouble“ and Drew Gilpin-Faust’s “necessary trouble“ in the face of on-going racism, now 160 years after the proclamation that accomplished at least some of the defiant quest of the men and women whose stories the book contains.

The authors bring their life experiences and activism into the telling of the stories and into the decisions about what to focus upon in the telling. It is their hope that readers will benefit from the two voices and see the importance of having such stories resonate with all people, regardless of race.

As you read, consider the obstacles faced by the people profiled and then imagine what it will take for you to become an advocate for racial justice. Then take whatever action you deem necessary and remember those who came before.

The Spoon

By Sandra Siemens

Illustrated by: Bea Lozano

A sweet immigration story, with unique illustrations, that reflects on the importance of family and tradition.

A compelling picture book that tells the story of a young girl who discovers an old spoon in a drawer in her kitchen. This spoon is a very special spoon, passed down through generations, originally belonging to her great-grandmother. But what use is a spoon if you can’t use it to dig holes, play music, or even just to eat soup?

A heart-warming and humorous story that reflects on themes of immigration, family, and tradition.

Umm Kulthum

The Star of the East

By Rhonda Roumani

Illustrated by: Ahmed Abdelmohsen

A picture book about the life and career of an unforgettable Arab icon, Umm Kulthum, the most powerful voice in the Arab world.

Umm Kulthum was an Arab icon, whose powerful voice defined an entire region for more than five decades. The famous Soprano Maria Callas praised her voice as “incomparable.” Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and Bono are said to be among her many fans.

The daughter of a poor Egyptian village sheikh, Umm Kulthum rose to fame at a time when young girls didn’t go to school and when “respectable” girls did not perform on stages. But Umm Kulthum was no ordinary girl. As a little girl, she convinced her parents to send her to school so that she could learn to read and recite the Qur’an. When her father discovered her powerful voice, he dressed her as a boy and toured the Egyptian countryside, performing at religious ceremonies to make extra money for the family. When she could no longer hide the fact that she was a girl, Umm Kulthum shed her costume and became known throughout the Nile Delta as the little girl with the powerful voice.

As she grew older, Umm Kulthum knew her future awaited her in Cairo. But her father still worried about her reputation. City theaters were definitely no place for a sheikh’s daughter. Stubborn and persistent, Umm Kulthum convinced her father to move Cairo. But life in the big city wasn’t easy. The city elite mocked the village girl and her religious folk songs. Umm Kulthum, nonetheless, persisted and worked harder than she had ever worked before. With help from famous singers, she learned to control her powerful voice and taught herself how to play musical instruments. The most important poets and musicians in Egypt and the Arab world wrote lyrics and composed music for her. Soon, record companies competed for her contracts. She held sold-out concerts that ran late into the night, and she sang songs that often lasted more than an hour.

Umm Kulthum was more than a singer. She helped reclaim the story and voice of an entire region. People took pride in her perfect pronunciation of the Arabic language, which they attributed to her knowledge of the Qur’an. More than a century after her birth, Umm Kulthum’s music can still be heard in taxis, cafes, and homes from Rabat to Baghdad and Damascus to Sana’a, giving her the nicknames The Lady (Al-Sit), Egypt’s Fourth Pyramid (Al Haram al-Rabe’), the Mother of the Arabs (Umm al-Arab)–and, unequivocally, The Star of the East (Kawkab al Sharq).

With stunning illustrations by renowned Egyptian artist Ahmed Abdelmohsen, Umm Kulthum is brought to life with each spread that sings in honor of the voice of this unforgettable icon.

My Name is a Gift

By Zeshan Akhter

Illustrated by: Asa Gilland

A heartfelt and touching celebration of the names we’re given, told through Zeshan Akhter’s lyrical text and paired with Asa Gilland’s stunning illustrations.

When I met Daddy and fitted in his hands, I didn’t have a name. So Daddy and Mommy whispered one in my ear. My name is the first present I ever got. It came wrapped in Daddy and Mommy’s love.

On the day Sitara is born, she receives a very special gift from her parents—her name. As Sitara grows, some people tumble up her name in their mouths until it’s not her name anymore. So Sitara learns about the history, tradition, and culture that went into choosing her name, giving her the confidence to help others say it right.

This heartwarming story not only teaches us the significance of our names, but it also highlights that trying to say names correctly, or asking if you’re unsure, goes a long way. The book also includes a spread for a child to fill in about their own name.

Good Night, Farm Animals

A Mindful Movement Storybook

By Whitney Sanderson

Illustrated by: Ruth Sanderson

A calming story, illustrated by award-winning artist Ruth Sanderson, that encourages children to act out their favorite farm animals’ bedtime activities.

Good night, farm animals–the sun is setting and it’s time to rest. This sweet and inclusive story encourages children to yawn, stretch, and breathe along with characters in the book as they act out the movements of farm animal friends winding down before bedtime.

Good Morning, Farm Animals

An Active Play Storybook

By Whitney Sanderson

Illustrated by: Ruth Sanderson

A playful story that encourages children to act out their favorite farm animals’ morning activities.

With charming illustrations by award-winning artist Ruth Sanderson, this playful story, inclusive of children with differing abilities, encourages children to move, moo, and stretch along with the characters in the book.

Rosé Revolution

By Rasmus Emborg & Jens Honoré

Rosé is the wine that has experienced the most progress in recent years. It is inclusive, unsnobbish, and is a marker of the good life. Like rosé wine, Rosé Revolution is easy to embrace.

Rosé wine is authenticating itself as the third wine category, which acts as a versatile bridge-builder between red and white and is suitable for most occasions and meals. The wine has a broad reach–from the novice to the general wine consumer to the wine nerd–and is riding a wave of popularity, market availability, and expanding recognition that looks set to continue for years to come.

With most celebrated and well-known wine critics/writers not paying much attention to rosé and motivated by a gap in the market for a book about rosé told through the winemakers themselves–their motivations, ambitions, and foremost urge for quality–the authors traveled around the world to visit some of the most significant rosé producers. Both those who established the foundation for the rosé revolution and those who caused its eruption. Each producer has an exciting tale to tell. Each, in its way, contributes to the fascinating story of the Rosé Revolution.

As one of the participants, Sacha Lichine, creator of the world’s best-selling rosé, Whispering Angel, so precisely phrases it: “From the beginning, the idea was to make rosé into real wine. Everyone looked at us like we were completely crazy. I guess, we were.”

With 13 chapters filled with stunning photos and illustrations Rosé Revolution is a must-have for every wine lover. As lifelong wine enthusiasts Rasmus and Jens have both embraced rosé wine–its history, taste, appeal, color, and allure that come together in delightful harmony.

Good-for-Nothing-Girl

By Sefi Atta

A young woman’s quest for a better education results in a case of modern-day slavery, written by the award-winning author of Swallow and Everything Good Will Come.

What’s in a name?… When Gift escapes the limited options of her small city in Nigeria for the chance to attend college in the U.S., she never imagines she could get entangled in an international controversy about domestic servitude. Refusing to blame or be labeled, Gift draws on her deep well of self-respect, determined to write her own story.

Queers for Palestine Flag Round Pin

By

One button pin of the Palestinian flag  with the text “Queers for Palestine.”

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians.

We are donating 100% of profits of our stickers for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

It’s Debatable

Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics

By Robert Jensen

It’s Debatable: Authentic Discussions about Tricky Topics offers a path toward a deeper, richer public conversation than might seem possible in today’s polarized political climate. Robert Jensen writes for those who yearn for debates based on evidence, reason, critical self-reflection, and mutual respect. The book offers a model for how to engage others rationally without discounting the powerful emotional component of our lives; how to think for oneself and at the same time recognize that thinking is a collective enterprise; and how to defend strongly held political positions while inviting critique. It’s Debatable demystifies intellectual life and encourages rigorous thinking by ordinary people, to better equip citizens to participate in political life.

Jensen has logged 10 years in journalism and 30 years in academia, along with decades of community organizing in feminism and on the left side of the political fence. As a journalist, he learned to write clearly and concisely. In his teaching career, he got pretty good at explaining complex things to students. In his public speaking and writing, he presented radical ideas in ways that didn’t scare off people. This book draws on all those skills.

In polarized times, many people want to step back from the intensity of political disagreements that seem to escalate in a flash, leaving no time for reflection and little room for constructive engagement. Offering a robust defense of freedom of expression, Jensen moves beyond platitudes to articulate intellectual standards that can help us clarify our political disagreements. Then he wades into some of the most contentious debates of our time: the insights of Critical Race Theory in a white-supremacist society, the confused and confusing ideology of transgenderism, and the nearly universal cultural denial of the need for limits to population and consumption.

Black Kaffiyeh Journal

By

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large and pocket formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages and includes a matching elastic band and pen loop. Each also has a ribbon-marker and an expandable inner note holder as well as informative text on the specific design used.

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.   

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

Stand with Gaza Watermelon Pin

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

The pins are die-struck from a high quality steel iron and feature a butterfly clasp in the back. 

We are donating 100% of profits of these buttons for Gaza to to Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

Queers for Palestine Rainbow Triangle Sticker

By

One Glitter die cut vinyl sticker with the text “Queers for Palestine.”

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians.

We are donating 100% of profits of our stickers for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

Queers for Palestine Rainbow Border Sticker

By

One holographic, glitter vinyl sticker with the text “Queers for Palestine.”

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians.

We are donating 100% of profits of our stickers for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

Design by Honey Dandy (@honey.dandy)

Almond Blossoms and Beyond

By Mahmoud Darwish

NEW COVER 

The first English translation of recent poetry by the late Mahmoud Darwish, the most important Palestinian contemporary poet.

Almond Blossoms and Beyond is one of the last collections of poetry that Mahmoud Darwish left to the world. Composed of brief lyric poems and the magnificent sustained Exile cycle, Almond Blossoms holds an important place in Darwish’s unparalleled oeuvre. It distills his late style, in which, though the specter of death looms and weddings turn to funerals, he threads the pulses and fragilities and beauties of life into the lines of his poems. Their liveliness is his own response to the collection’s final call to bid Farewell / Farewell, to the poetry of pain.

Only in Trieste

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

Discover Trieste’s Habsburg-era glories, multi-ethnic influences, and burgeoning cultural life with this explorer’s guide to Italy’s alternative city destination.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

• The first real English-language guide to the city!
• Roman ruins and cavernous caves, wartime tales and seaside traditions, classic cafés and museums galore.
• Italy’s oldest dinosaur, the Theresian Aqueduct, Fascist skyscrapers, and a Brutalist housing complex.
• The first Museum of Wind, the footsteps of James Joyce, the Pharaoh’s Villa, and Tito’s quarry of death.
• Miramare Castle, the Victory Lighthouse, segregated sea bathing, and the world’s biggest regatta.

Queers for Palestine Sticker

By

One vinyl sticker with the text “Queers for Palestine.”

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians.

We are donating 100% of profits of our stickers for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

**Please note, due to the urgency of the situation we are going on sale to raise funds during manufacture, expected ship time is 1 week from order.

Queers for Palestine Button Pin

By

One button pin with the text “Queers for Palestine.”

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians.

We are donating 100% of profits of our stickers for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

**Please note, due to the urgency of the situation we are going on sale to raise funds during manufacture, expected ship time is 1 week from order.

Kassandra and the Wolf

By Margarita Karapanou

Margarita Karapanou’s Kassandra and the Wolf was first published in 1974, and went on to become a contemporary classic in Greece, receive international acclaim, and establish its 28-year-old author as an intensely original new talent, who garnered comparisons to Proust and Schulz.

Six-year-old Kassandra is given a doll: “I put her to sleep in her box, but first I cut off her legs and arms so she’d fit,” she tells us, “Later, I cut her head off too, so she wouldn’t be so heavy. Now I love her very much.” Kassandra is an unforgettable narrator, a perfect, brutal guide to childhood as we’ve never seen it—a journey that passes through the looking glass but finds the darkest corners of the real world.

This edition brings Kassandra and the Wolf back into print—a tour de force and, as Karapanou liked to call it, a scary monster of a book.

Alaska

Interlink Traveller's Wildlife Guide

By Dennis Paulson, Les Beletsky

In this book you will find all the information you will need to find, identify, and learn about Alaska’s magnificent animal life.

Alaska has both vast wilderness tracts and a modern transportation system, making eco-travelling in the state easy as well as exciting. From the broad expanses of tundra in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the rich seabird colonies of the Bering Sea to the glacier-bedecked snowy mountains and magnificent forests of the Southeast, wildlife viewing opportunities abound.

In this book is all the information you will need to find, identify, and learn about Alaska’s magnificent animal life.

• Identifying and location information on the most frequently seen animals.
• Full-color illustrations of more than 320 of Alaska’s most common marine invertebrates, insects, amphibians, fishes, birds, and mammals.
• Up-to-date information on the ecology, behavior, and conservation of the animals.
• Information on Alaska’s habitats and on the most common plants you will encounter.
• Brief descriptions of Alaska’s most frequently visited parks and reserves. Easy to carry, entertainingly written, beautifully illustrated—you will want to have this book as constant companion on your journey.

Jerusalem Interrupted

Modernity and Colonial Transformation 1917 - Present

By Lena Jayyusi

This groundbreaking collection of essays brings together distinguished scholars and writers and follows the history of Jerusalem from the culturally diverse Mandate period through its transformation into a predominantly Jewish city.

Most histories of twentieth-century Jerusalem published in English focus on the city’s Jewish life and neighborhoods; this book offers a crucial balance to that history. On the eve of the British Mandate in 1917, Jerusalem Arab society was rooted, diverse, and connected to other cities, towns, and the rural areas of Palestine. A cosmopolitan city, Jerusalem saw a continuous and dynamic infusion of immigrants and travelers, many of whom stayed and made the city theirs. Over the course of the three decades of the Mandate, Arab society in Jerusalem continued to develop a vibrant, networked, and increasingly sophisticated milieu. No one then could have imagined the radical rupture that would come in 1948, with the end of the Mandate and the establishment of the State of Israel. This groundbreaking collection of essays brings together distinguished scholars and writers and follows the history of Jerusalem from the culturally diverse Mandate period through its transformation into a predominantly Jewish city.

Essays detail often unexplored dimensions of the social and political fabric of a city that was rendered increasingly taut and fragile, even as areas of mutual interaction and shared institutions and neighborhoods between Arabs and Jews continued to develop.

Contributors include: Lena Jayyusi, Issam Nassar, Samia A. Halaby, Elias Sahhab, Andrea Stanton, Makram Khoury-Machool, Sandy Sufian, Awad Halabi, Ellen L. Fleischmann, Widad Kawar, Rochelle Davis, Subhi Ghosheh, Mohammad Ghosheh, Tom Abowd, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Michael Dumper, Nahed Awwad, Ahmad J. Azem, Nasser Abourahme.

Gods Don’t Cry

Unsung Stories of Ireland's Forgotten Immortals

By Ellen Ryan

A bold and brilliant collection of ancient stories that challenge the modern notion of what it means to be a hero.

The ancient gods of Ireland were once worshipped throughout the land. Powerful and brave, they were unafraid to show their vulnerability, reject violence, or lean on others for support. Sadly, their stories—passed down by our ancestors—are all but forgotten.

Gods Don’t Cry reawakens these gods, whose ancient tales redefine modern ideas of what it means to be a hero. From Mannanán, who uses his neurodiversity to discover the Otherworld, to Méiche, who finds the courage to accept his illness, Fer Maisse, a monster slayer who gives up glory to become a healer, and Cnú Deróil, who overcomes bullies with his musical talent. Hurlers and warriors, academics, and activists—these are gods of many abilities, sizes, and skin shades, from every corner of Ireland.

Follow their adventures as they perform magic, battle demons, overcome struggles and find the courage to be true to themselves. You might even see yourself in their stories and discover, that you too, are a hero.

The Nomad

Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

By Isabelle Eberhardt

This book tells the fascinating tale of a character like no other—Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) came to be known as the ultimate enigma and representative of everything that seemed dangerous in nineteenth-century society.

In her short life Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) came to be known as the ultimate enigma and representative of everything that seemed dangerous in nineteenth-century society. Born the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian emigree she was a cross-dresser and sensualist, an experienced drug-taker and a transgressor of boundaries: a European reborn in the desert as an Arab and Muslim, a woman who reinvented herself as a man, wandering the Sahara on horseback. A profoundly lonely individual for all her numerous sexual adventures, she roused controversy and was loved and hated in equal measure. A mysterious attempt was made on her life and even her eventual death was ambiguous: she drowned in the desert at the age of twenty-seven. La bonne nomade, Isabelle’s diaries, is a fascinating account of her strange and passionate nomadic lifestyle; an evocative and deeply personal record of her torments, her search for inspiration as a writer, her spirituality and the intense color and fire of her living.

Namesake

Reflections on a Warrior Woman

By N. S Nuseibeh

A Palestinian Woman’s dazzling exploration of heritage, gender and the idea of home.

I may not be brave enough, but somewhere deep inside of me there is, perhaps, the kernel of someone who is.

That brave someone was the legendary Nusayba bint Ka’ab al Khazrajia, who fought alongside the Prophet Muhammad at the dawn of Islam, the author N.S Nuseibeh’s ancestor. In drawing on Nusayba’s stories, Nuseibeh delves into the experience of being an Arab woman today and in the distant past—taking her from superheroes and the glorification of violence to the rise of Arab feminism, to what courage looks like in the context of interminable conflict. By seeking to understand her namesake in the context of her own twenty-first century concerns, Nuseibeh links our current ideas of Muslims and Arabs with their origins, exploring myth-making and identity, religion and nationhood, feminism and race.

As intimate as they are thoughtful, these linked essays offer a dazzling exploration of heritage, gender and the idea of home, while also showing how connecting with our history can help us understand ourselves and others today.

The Jewel and the Ember

Love Stories from the Ancient Middle East

By Jennifer Heath

The Jewel and the Ember is a unique collection of enchanting, enlightening, joyful, painful, and funny pre-Islamic love stories drawn from ancient sources throughout the Middle East, illustrating our eternal search for enduring love and encouraging the heart to sing.

The human soul is eternally engaged in the search for enduring love.

The Jewel and the Ember is a unique collection of compelling, enlightening, sometimes joyful, sometimes painful, often funny love stories culled from pre- Islamic folktales and poems, drawn from ancient sources throughout the Middle East, including Zoroastrian Persia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Moorish Spain, and Arabia. These eleven timeless tales resonate across cultures and ethnicities, adapted and retold (though not reinvented) from lengthy, dense translations and provide alternatives to the all-too-common Arabian Nights and other Orientalist sagas.

Here, readers will encounter strong, smart, self-sufficient women—far different from the clichéd, frequently shrouded creatures characterized in popular fables—and vulnerable men—full participants in the sufferings, longings, ecstasies, foibles, and complexities shared by all lovers.

In haunting, entertaining, richly embroidered language, The Jewel and the Ember speaks of desire, sensuality, and passion. It welcomes us into lands and societies of which few in the West are acquainted. These enchanting stories illustrate love’s universal values and encourage the heart to sing.

One Bake, Two Ways

Fifty bakes with an all-plant option every time

By Ruby Bhogal

Great British Bake Off finalist Ruby Bhogal is here to delight us with a flexible approach to baking tasty, sweet treats that give you double helpings of temptation. She brings us 50 like-for-like recipes, with a plant-based and non- plant-based version for each bake.

We all remember watching in horror as Ruby’s showstopper cake collapsed on the first-ever Vegan Week on the Great British Bake Off. Instead of slinking off with her tail between her legs, she was determined to master the art of baking and bake, bake, bake again until she could say with confidence that her recipes were failproof. Sharing new bakes and videos online, Ruby discovered a growing demand for adaptable recipes without eggs, dairy, or a full plant-based twist. She wanted her bakes to cater to everyone’s needs, no matter the dietary preference.

Raised in a British-Indian household, Ruby’s mostly vegetarian diet sparked a sugar rush to create recipes adaptable to a flexitarian approach. In this book, you get double the options, since each of the 50 recipes is presented twice: first in its traditional form and then with a plant-based alternative. This clever concept revolutionizes your baking experience, giving you the freedom to bake with choice.

Mouthwatering recipes include: Chai Custard Creams, Peanut Butter & Jelly Millefeuille Cake, Pina Colada Meringue Roulade, Medjool Date & Orange Sweet Samosas, and the Bruce Bogtrotter Chocolate Cake.

One Bake, Two Ways has an inclusive approach that makes Ruby’s recipes achievable for all—there’s no sacrifices here—every last bite is delicious! With adaptability galore and flavors that offer twice the delight, dive into Ruby’s world of baking and savor the best of both worlds.

Contents:

Oh, Crumbs (Cakes)

Breaking Bread

Easy as Pie

Taking the Cookie

Sweeter Things (Desserts)

Keeping it Saucy

The Essentials

Persiana

Recipes from the Middle East & Beyond

By Sabrina Ghayour

A special edition of the award-winning cookbook from the beloved Sabrina Ghayour. Persiana features over 100 flavorful and mouthwatering recipes that highlight the best of Persian culture.

A celebration of the food and flavors from the regions near the Southern and Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, with over 100 recipes for modern and accessible Middle Eastern dishes, including Lamb & Sour Cherry Meatballs; Chicken, Preserved Lemon & Olive Tagine; Blood Orange & Radicchio Salad; Persian Flatbread; and Spiced Carrot, Pistachio & Coconut Cake with Rosewater Cream.

Zao Fan

Breakfast of China

By Michael Zee

The Breakfast of China is a cookbook exploring the huge variety of dishes 1.4 billion people eat every morning. Recipes for buns, soups, noodles, and dumplings, delicious any time of day, have been expertly adapted for the home kitchen by SymmetryBreakfast creator, Michael Zee.

Breakfast in China is an important affair. At dawn, the streets come alive with vendors setting up for the morning breakfast rush. Each will have their specialty that they make day in, day out, honing their recipe over years, and even generations. Locals are spoiled for choice, with a huge variety of spicy noodles, plump dumplings, and fluffy buns all made fresh to order right on their doorsteps.

Michael Zee, creator of the popular SymmetryBreakfast account, has eaten his way around China, hunting down the very best versions of these morning favorites and recreating them at home so that you can too. In China, these are recipes devised for speed and convenience and so are also perfect for filling lunches, nourishing dinners, and quick and tasty snacks.

Why not try: Dan dan mian, Sichuanese street-style noodles with a sesame paste sauce,Jian bing,savory filled crepes, Xiaolongbao, steamed Shanghainese soup dumplings,Youtiao,or sweetened fried dough sticks,delicious dipped in fresh soy milk or covered in soft serve ice cream. With Michael as your knowledgeable tour guide, you’ll be transported to the bustling streets of China, see the mesmeric pulling of noodles and pleating of dumplings, and be fully immersed in one of the most exciting and diverse food cultures in the world.

Sobremesa

Easy Mexican Recipes for Every Day

By Chef Susana Villasuso

75 quick, easy and delicious recipes for Mexican weeknight meals, sharing plates, drinks, and desserts to make and enjoy together.

Sobremesa means “relaxing at the table after a heavy meal,” usually after getting together with family and friends. Mexican-born chef and recipe developer Susana Villasuso is on a mission to bring the flavors of Mexico to your table, and share her culture with the world. Inspired by the dishes she learned to cook from her mother and grandmother, this debut cookbook brings together authentic, modern, simple, and tasty recipes for feeding the whole family and for all occasions, made with everyday supermarket ingredients. It’s a real taste of Mexico, with a modern twist.

Try some of Susana’s family classics, such as: Crispy bean and ricotta taquitos with crema verde, Brown miso and porter carnitas, Salmon Ceviche with yellow beets and lime marinade, Mexican blood orange vanilla cake, and more.

Discover the Mexican art of easy everyday celebrations with Sobremesa.

Until You Find the Sun

A Story About Discovering Home Wherever You Go

By Maryam Hassan

An uplifting story about coping with change and finding your way in a new and unfamiliar place, by debut author Maryam Hassan, beautifully brought to life with illustrations by Anna Wilson.

Aminah’s life is full of warmth and joy, from days spent in the golden sunshine eating juicy mangoes, to evenings curled up reading adventure stories with her grandfather, Da.

But one day, Aminah is told she’ll be leaving with her parents for their very own adventure, one that will take her away from Da and the sunny comforts of the life she’s known . . .

Written by debut author Maryam Hassan, illustrated by Anna Wilson.

Love is All We Need

By Krina Patel-Sage

A beautiful picture book from a talented emerging illustrator about all the different ways we can all show love and care about each other.

Through six diverse and inclusive families, Krina Patel-Sage shows how love infuses all kinds of activities in our daily lives. Big events, like the coming of a new baby, or special festivals or anniversaries throughout the year; but also small moments, like a warm towel after a bath, or a hug after a fall.

There are acts of friendship, kindness, consideration—all kinds of activities that foster the sense of happiness and comfort that love gives, all portrayed with brightly colored images and a simple rhyming text.

There is also the fun of identifying the children on every spread: Ella, Dylan, Roman, Ali, Sophia, and Adam are named on the front endpapers and appear with their families all through the book, at home, in the street, at school, or in the playground.

A Long Walk from Gaza

By Asmaa Alatawna

The violence of life in Gaza which has taken on immense proportions for the whole world to see is intimately rendered here in a human story of resistance and resilience.

In the tradition of Palestinian women writers, Asma Al-Atawna has gifted us a novel that is both personal and political, that exposes both the occupation and the patriarchy. A Long Walk from Gaza is a coming-of-age story that follows its teenage protagonist through her battles with a strict and abusive father, the exhilaration of her first crush, confrontations with occupation soldiers, and the heartbreak of leaving her home Gaza for a new life in Europe. Beginning in Europe and working backward to her own birth and early childhood, Al-Atawna’s creative narration mirrors the traumas of her life and her people.

A Long Walk from Gaza not only exposes the harshness of both male authority and the stifling of the dreams of girls in parallel with the devastating conditions Palestinians endure under a brutal Israeli occupation, but also the challenges of fleeing these for a cold, alienating life in Europe. Al-Atawna lays these bare within a story that also showcases moments of humor, joy, and the human capacity to survive and thrive at all costs. She skillfully weaves together the challenges of growing up in occupied Palestine while exposing the many intersections of violence, patriarchy, and growing up in a society that offers girls little to no compassion. Her teenage protagonist’s feminist point of view is fresh and honest, powerfully conveying the heartbreaking truths of her life.

At heart, A Long Walk from Gaza is a tale of freedom. Each of the characters is psychically wounded by their circumstances and each resists in their own way. Gaza comes to life in Al-Atawna’s novel, showing a rich and diverse society—its flaws along with its beauty, showing us worlds, which are being destroyed and some of which no longer exist today.

Dinner Tonight

Simple Meals Full of Mediterranean Flavor

By Meliz Berg

Serious flavor, simple recipes, answering the eternal question of “What’s for dinner?” Meliz Berg shares her go-to home cooking, inspired by her Turkish Cypriot kitchen.

Serious flavor, simple recipes, answering the eternal question of “What’s for dinner?”

This is the second book from the instant No. 1 Sunday Times Bestselling cook. Meliz Berg shares her go-to home cooking—quick and nourishing meals, instant dinners that come together with pantry essentials, clever shortcuts, one-pot and sheet-pan winners, easy Friday “fake-out” ideas, and lazy weekend inspiration for beautiful food that takes care of itself in the oven—perfect for stress-free gatherings with family and friends.

Meliz includes her meat-free and gluten-free simple swaps to cater for all cravings! As well as her tips for cooking with an air fryer and slow cooker. “Build-your-own,” “Fully Loaded” and “Restaurant-Style” Salad Bowls, One-Pot Orzo, Leftover Hummus Soup, Cheater’s Lahmacun Pide Pockets, Tavuk Kebab Curry, One-Pot Roasted Eggplant Pilav, Sheet-Pan Spiced Kofte and Crunchy Potatoes, Hellim-Crusted Fish Tacos, Mom’s Sunday Roast Chicken, Berry “Baklava” Pots, Oozy Helva Stuffed Filo Parcels, and more…

The Violin

By Mary Auld

Illustrated by: Elisa Paganelli

A beautifully illustrated story bringing to life all that is wonderful about the violin. Created in partnership with, and featuring music downloads by, the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO).

Follow violinist, Lilu, as she prepares for her concert performances and uncovers more about the violin. Discover how the instrument is made, how it is played and its role within the orchestra. Get swept up in the magic of the music as Lilu rehearses for a dream summer evening performance.

With panels that offer suggestions for music to listen to and exclusive music to download from the LSO, this is a multi-sensory experience in which to enjoy and learn about the violin. From the creative team behind the award-winning book How to Build an Orchestra.

Rainbowsaurus

By Steve Antony

A joyful and fun read-along tale of one family’s quest to find the Rainbowsaurus, featuring lots of colorful creatures.

We’re following a rainbow to find the Rainbowsaurus.

We’re following a rainbow. Would you like to join us?

Join two dads and their three children as they set off on an adventure to find the Rainbowsaurus. On their way, they meet animals that are all the colors of the rainbow who all want to find the Rainbowsaurus too.

From the author and illustrator of the Mr Panda series and The Queen’s Hat collection, comes this instantly classic-feeling adventure. A perfect story to read at bedtime again and again.

The Flute

By Mary Auld

Illustrated by: Elisa Paganelli

A beautifully illustrated story bringing to life all that is wonderful about the flute. Created in partnership with, and featuring music downloads by, the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO).

Follow flute player, Sonja, as she plucks up the courage to play a flute solo in tonight’s concert. Discover how the flute is played, the different sounds it can make, and its role within the orchestra. Listen along to the vibrant concert performance at the end.

With panels that offer suggestions for music to listen to and exclusive music to download from the LSO, this is a multi-sensory experience in which to enjoy and learn about the flute. From the creative team behind the award-winning book How to Build an Orchestra.

A World For Me and You

Where Everyone is Welcome

By Uju Asika

Illustrated by: Jennie Poh

A delightful picture book about the incredible diversity in our world, perfect for starting conversations with little ones about inclusion, acceptance, and kindness.

In this uplifting picture book, you imagine a world where everyone looks identical, where all food tastes the same, where we all speak the same language. A world that is…well, pretty boring. But with an explosion of color, the pages soon come to life. This joyful picture book encourages children to imagine the world as a vast library, with room on the shelves for everybody’s story. It is a celebration of our incredibly diverse world as it really is: home to 195 countries with thousands of different cultures, 10 million colors, and 4,300 religions.

Written by Uju Asika, author of Bringing up Race, this beautiful picture book celebrates the beauty and joy of living in a wonderfully diverse world.

Imad’s Syrian Kitchen

A Love Letter from Damascus

By Imad Alarnab

Complete with heartfelt stories, stunning photography, and beautiful illustrations, Imad’s Syrian Kitchen features 90 sensational recipes celebrating the flavors of Syria.

This is the first cookbook by Imad Alarnab, a renowned chef from Damascus. Imad now runs an acclaimed restaurant in London, which was named GQ’s “Best Breakthrough Restaurant 2022.” Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is a bustling tour through 90 traditional and adapted Syrian dishes that can be made in the comfort of your own home. Imad introduces us to the delicious flavors and techniques of the Syrian kitchen. And alongside delicious recipes, mouthwatering photography, and beautiful illustrations, Imad shares the unforgettable details of how he came to settle in London, as well as the story of his home country, Syria. This book is a celebration of how food has the power to bring people together.

From Imad: “From the traditional dishes that my mother first taught me to cook, to the imaginative food that has become my own, my recipes tell my story. Enjoy them simply on their own or pile your table high and gather with family and friends. Come, join the feast, and let me share with you the unforgettable flavors of my Syrian kitchen.”

Spreading My Wings

By Nadiya Hussain

Illustrated by: Ella Bailey 

A touching story about being proud of who we are and embracing our differences, written by TV star Nadiya Hussain.

I am a boy, and this is Rayf, my bird.

Rayf is my friend.

On his first day of summer camp, a little boy arrives with his bird best friend perched proudly on his shoulder, but he soon discovers that he is different from everyone else—no one else has a bird. He hides Rayf away to try and fit in but it’s hard to pretend to be someone else for long.

The Bedtime Boat

By Sital Gorasia Chapman

Illustrated by: Anastasia Savorova

A visually stunning, thoughtful and calming bedtime tale, featuring tried-and-tested mindfulness techniques.

Watch the boat, Chandan, it floats on the ocean. It rises and falls with your breath’s gentle motion.

Chandan has had an exciting day out with his mom—but now it’s time for bed, and however hard he tries, he just can’t sleep.

Luckily, his mom has some calming mindfulness techniques at her fingertips. The bedtime boat sits on Chandan’s tummy, rising and falling with his breath. As he travels on a voyage of imagination over the seas, the bedtime boat is always there to keep him grounded, and soon gently lulls him into arelaxed and peaceful sleep.

With stunning illustrations by award-winning illustrator Anastasia Suvorova, this lyrical rhyming picture book is the perfect way to help restless little ones drift off to sleep.

Somewhere for Little Bear

By Britta Teckentrup

A heartwarming migration story of connection and belonging, beautifully brought to life by prolific picture book author-illustrator Britta Teckentrup.

Little Bear lives happily in his cozy cave deep in the woods. He loves picking berries during the day, listening to the birds sing under his favorite tree in the evening, and curling up comfily on his soft leaves to sleep each night.

But when Bear wakes up one morning to find his beloved forest ablaze, he must make a quick escape, away from his cozy cave, friendly faces and the comforts he knows.

He walks and walks in search of somewhere new to call home, but finds he’s not welcome in the places that look most familiar to him.

Feeling hopeless and alone, Little Bear must journey even further into the unknown. And only in the most unfamiliar of places, does the kindness of new animal friends lead Little Bear to discover the true meaning of home . . .

Anna Haugh?s Irish Kitchen

Modern home cooking with Irish heart

By Anna Haugh

85 simple, homey, accessible, and delicious recipes from a modern Irish kitchen, by standout young chef Anna Haugh.

For Anna Haugh cooking is in her bones and sharing in her nature. A born and bred Dubliner, Anna was raised on her mom’s Irish home cooking. In this, her debut cookbook, she shares 85 recipes that are as straightforward as they are delicious, such as Braised beef cheeks with sweet potato and basil crush, Dad’s fish pie from Howth, Vegan pulled pork, and Guinness chocolate cake.

Knowing full well the reality of juggling busy family life with work, Anna includes mouthwatering recipes that are easy to prepare for weeknight dinner without using every pot and pan in the house, such as Mammy’s shepherd’s pie with forked spuds, baby gem lettuce and chicken taco night, lentil bolognaise, coconut cod curry, and Anna’s Tuesday night stir-fry. And for when you have some time and want to push the boat out, there’s a celebration roast, or the duck breast and potato waffle with a mushroom and black garlic puree, or even Aunty Ann’s show-stopping carrot cake.

For all their heartiness, the recipes in this book taste incredible and look stunning all because Anna shares her tricks of the trade to level up flavor and bring casual elegance to simple home cooking.

Only in Vienna

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

The Holy Lance, the Fools’ Tower, Klimt’s Last Studio and the Knights of Blood Street. Uncover the secrets of the Danube metropolis with this ground-breaking guide. Now in its fourth edition this bestselling book is popular with visitors and locals alike!

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Edinburgh

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

The Innocent Railway, the Arthur’s Seat Coffins, Trainspotting in Leith, and the Skating Minister. The author’s offbeat explorations reveal more than a hundred unusual locations in the Scottish capital. A practical guide and a handsome tribute to one of Europe’s most fascinating cities.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Zurich

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

A complicated clock, an elephant in the woods, the emperor’s paddle steamer, and the first “Dark Restaurant.” There is obviously more to Zurich than banking, clean streets, and punctuality. This guide shows a very different side to Switzerland’s largest city.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Boston

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

The Boston Molasses Flood, America’s first subway, Harvard’s monster computer, and the skull of Phineas Gage. The author’s offbeat explorations reveal more than a hundred unusual locations in the Massachusetts’ capital. A practical guide and a handsome tribute to one of America’s most storied cities.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Stand with Gaza Map of Palestine Pin Silver

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

The pins are die-struck from a high quality steel iron and feature a butterfly clasp in the back. 

We are donating 100% of profits of these buttons for Gaza to to Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

Stand with Gaza Map of Palestine Pin Gold

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

The pins are die-struck from a high quality steel iron and feature a butterfly clasp in the back. 

We are donating 100% of profits of these buttons for Gaza to to Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

Stand with Gaza Right to Return Key Pin

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

The pins are die-struck from a high quality steel iron and feature a butterfly clasp in the back. 

We are donating 100% of profits of these buttons for Gaza to to Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

Stand with Gaza Palestinian Flag Pin

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians.

The pins are die-struck from a high quality steel alloy and feature a butterfly clasp in the back. The recessed colors allow for finer reproduction of details and a top epoxy coating creates a surface smooth to the touch.

We are donating 100% of profits of these buttons for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

Stand with Gaza Round Stickers (5 Pack)

By

Sold as a pack of 5 stickers.

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

We are donating 100% of profits of our stickers for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

**Please note, due to the urgency of the situation we are going on sale to raise funds during manufacture, expected ship time is 1 week from order. 

Stand with Gaza Button Pin

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

We are donating 100% of profits of these buttons for Gaza to to Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

**Please note, due to the urgency of the situation we are going on sale to raise funds during manufacture, expected ship time is 1 week from order. 

Stand with Gaza Tank Top

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

We are donating 100% of profits of all our garments for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

**Please note, due to the urgency of the situation we are going on sale to raise funds during manufacture, expected ship time is 3 weeks from order. 

This project is undertaken with the support of Paper City Clothing Company based in Holyoke MA, for more information visit: papercityclothingcompany.com

Stand with Gaza T-Shirt

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

We are donating 100% of profits of all our garments for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

This project is undertaken with the support of Paper City Clothing Company based in Holyoke MA, for more information visit: papercityclothingcompany.com

Stand with Gaza Crewneck

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

We are donating 100% of profits of all our garments for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

**Please note, due to the urgency of the situation we are going on sale to raise funds during manufacture, expected ship time is 3 weeks from order. 

This project is undertaken with the support of Paper City Clothing Company based in Holyoke MA, for more information visit: papercityclothingcompany.com

Stand with Gaza Hoodie

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians. 

We are donating 100% of profits of all our garments for Gaza to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

**Please note, due to the urgency of the situation we are going on sale to raise funds during manufacture, expected ship time is 3 weeks from order. 

This project is undertaken with the support of Paper City Clothing Company based in Holyoke MA, for more information visit: papercityclothingcompany.com

Fragments of Memory

A Story of a Syrian Family

By Hanna Mina

An autobiographical novel, set in the early 20th century, about the life of a boy born to a poor family in northern Syria.

Fragments of Memory offers a picture of reality that is simple, direct, and quite emotional… an image of Syrian society in the thirties and forties through the struggle of an impoverished family- of an origin that is neither rural nor urban- which moves from the city to the countryside, only to be forced back unwillingly, groping for survival.

Khaldoun Shamaa’s Fragments of Memory is an autobiographical novel about the life of a boy born to a poor family in northern Syria. Mina sets these personal events against a richly detailed description of events in the history of early 20th century Syria, as the silkworm industry gave way to modern foreign technology. The mode of life described is one of a bygone era.

The Secret Life of Saeed

The Pessoptimist

By Emile Habiby

NEW COVER!

This award-winning novel-in-translation is clever tragicomedy that demonstrates the complex life of a Palestinian living in Israel.

Saeed is the comic hero, the luckless fool, whose tale tells of aggression and resistance, terror and heroism, reason and loyalty that typify the hardships and struggles of Arabs in Israel. An informer for the Zionist state, his stupidity, candor, and cowardice make him more of a victim than a villain; but in a series of tragicomic episodes, he is gradually transformed from a disaster-haunted, gullible collaborator into a Palestinian—no hero still, but a simple man intent on survival and, perhaps, happiness.

The author’s own anger and sorrow at Palestine’s tragedy and his acquaintance with the absurdities of Israeli politics (he was once a member of Israel’s parliament himself) are here transmuted into satire both biting and funny. Translated by Anton Shammas into Hebrew, The Secret Life of Saeed won Israel’s foremost Prize for Literature; a stage version played to great acclaim for a decade.

The Complete Middle Eastern Vegetarian

Classic Recipes from the Middle East and North Africa

By Habeeb Salloum

Explore 330 delicious vegetarian recipes in this incredible cookbook.

The vegetarian cuisine of the Middle East and North Africa is a treasure chest of pungent herbs and spices, aromatic stews and soups, chewy falafels and breads, couscous, stuffed grape leaves, greens and vegetables, hummus, pizzas, pies, omelets, pastries and sweets, smooth yogurt drinks, and strong coffees. Originally the food of peasants too poor for meat, vegetarian cooking in the Middle East developed over thousands of years into a culinary art form influenced both by trade and invasion. It is as rich and varied in its history as it is in flavor—culinary historians estimate the Arab kitchen has over 40,000 dishes!

Now noted food writer Habeeb Salloum has culled 330 savory jewels from this never-ending storehouse to create The Complete Middle Eastern Vegetarian—a rich, healthful, and economical introduction to flavors and aromas that have stood the test of time.

Huddud’s House

A Novel

By Fadi Azzam

A haunting contemporary novel, longlisted for the International Prize of Arabic Fiction, Huddud’s House is a rich tale of love in the time of war, based in the storied city of Damascus.

How far is love willing to travel in search of its own lost voice? 

When tyranny unleashes destructive forces that threaten to overwhelm a country, what are the effects on the lives and choices of ordinary humans? When citizens become inhabitants of a land of extremes, what do they do, to whom do they flee?

Shadowing the days of Syria’s Arab spring, Fadi Azzam’s epic novel, Huddud’s House—a haunting, contemporary novel rooted in the soil of Damascus, the oldest inhabited city in humanity—is a sprawling tale of love in time of war. Focusing on a quartet of characters torn between leaving and returning to Damascus, it follows intertwining stories of love and violence to their boundaries.

Azzam writes the spirit of resilience and resistance of the Syrian peoples. A saga on the dangers of ignoring threats or forgetting atrocities, he braves a long-distance search for his people’s voice, one that violence cannot silence.

I Really, Really Don’t Like Parties

By Angie Morgan

Illustrated by: Angie Morgan

A funny picture book about a little girl called Dora who really REALLY doesn’t like parties. A great tool to talk to children about being different, social anxiety, and how to overcome it. 

Everyone likes parties… don’t they? Not if you’re Dora!

Dora is a fun-loving girl but she doesn’t like parties, even at her friend Rashid’s. They are too loud and too busy. When Rashid sends her an invitation, she thinks up all kinds of reasons not to go:

A gorilla broke into her bedroom and stole her party dress… She has a sore knee, or throat, or toe, or all three… One of her shoes fell in the pond and was eaten by a giant frog…

Dora does go the party—and it is very loud and busy. So loud and busy that Dora decides to retreat under the table. But someone else is there already. He’s called Tom and he thinks parties are too loud and busy too. Under the table, Dora makes a new friend and they have a lovely time.

Afterwards, Dora still thinks parties are too loud and busy. But she also knows that she’s not the only one who likes to be quiet—AND THAT’S ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETELY, TOTALLY, AND PERFECTLY OK.

Gennaro’s Verdure

Over 80 Vibrant Italian Vegetable Dishes

By Gennaro Contaldo

Photography by: David Loftus

Tasty, colorful, and loaded with flavor, Gennaro’s Verdure highlights the versatility of vegetables in various, delicious recipes.

This brand-new cookbook from Gennaro Contaldo is 6^th with long-time US publishing home, Interlink Books. In Gennaro’s Verdure, beloved Italian chef, Gennaro Contaldo transforms humble vegetables from side dish material into the hero of the plate, using punchy flavors from staple ingredients.

Structured by color, in chapters that group recipes into vegetable families, Gennaro champions their versatility and breaks the common misconception that veggies lack in texture and flavor. From Beet Carpaccio to Pea Souffle, Asparagus Carbonara, Tomato Sorbet, and Spinach “plumcake”; Gennaro maximizes the star-quality potential of the unassuming veggies that sit at the back of our fridge.

Not all recipes are entirely plant-based, but all include plants. These are innovative meals with an Italian touch; uncompromising in flavor and more than sufficient for hungry flexitarians, vegetarians, vegans, and meat-eaters alike.

Why Aren’t We Talking About This?!

An Inclusive Illustrated Guide to Life in 100 Questions

By Hazel Mead

An inclusive guide to the biggest questions we ask search engines about our bodies, our brains, and how we live together in society.

What is the most personal thing you’ve asked the Internet? Illustrator Hazel Mead turns to Google to uncover what we secretly ask search bars about our relationships, bodies, and identities. With hundreds of demystifying and empowering illustrations, she offers a fun, shame-free, and inclusive guide to life’s big questions. This is the emotional curriculum you’ll wish was taught in every classroom.

What if there was a book that explored the big lessons of life? Sure, formal education will equip you with requisite knowledge on photosynthesis. But when it comes to spotting the green flags in a prospective partner, navigating yours or a loved one’s grief, knowing how to prepare for a cervical screening, or to practicing self-defense, it can feel like total guesswork.

Using the latest research, interviews with experts, and her signature visuals, Hazel interrogates the taboos that shame us into silence. Since the answers to life’s big questions are rarely black and white, she answers them in color, with accessible design, and compassionate reflections. Why Aren’t We Talking About This?! is an exploration of the things we’re too afraid to ask but desperately need to know and talk about for greater acceptance of others and ourselves. It’s a bold invitation to forget normal and embrace what makes you unique.

The book features interviews and expert advice from:

Psychotherapist and grief expert, Dr. Julia Samuel @juliasamuelmbe

Clinical Psychologist, Dr Karen Gurney @thesexdoctor

Asexual Activist, writer and model Yasmin Benoit @theyasminbenoit

Anxiety Therapist, Joshua Fletcher @anxietyjosh

Journalist and founder of the Femedic, Monica Karpinski @thefemedic

Founder of Defend Yourself self-defense trainer, Lauren R. Taylor @thedefendyourself

Graveyard Empire

Four Decades of Wars and Intervention in Afghanistan

By Emran Feroz

With deep insights into Afghanistan’s culture and history, this important book traces the chronology of catastrophe and the failed US “War on Terror.”

Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7, 2001 marked the beginning of the so-called “War on Terror” in Afghanistan, which to date has become the longest war fought by the USA and its allies, with thousands of deaths and injuries. For the first time, Emran Feroz describes this 20-year war from an inner Afghan perspective.

From speaking to Hamid Karzai and Taliban officials to interviews with affected citizens who suffered the most from this war, this important book gives a true picture from a non-western point of view—one that is rarely heard in mainstream media reporting. It makes one thing more than clear: The US’s “Saigon moment” in Kabul in August 2021 was more than foreseeable. 

Eeny and Her Sisters

By Jane Yolen

Illustrated by: Kathryn Brown

Written by the prolific Jane Yolen, the charming characters from Eeny, Meeny, Miney Mole and Eeny Up Above return in the third installment of this picture book series that explores themes of agoraphobia, anxiety, and bravery.  

Eeny Mole lives at the bottom of a deep dark hole with her two sisters. If it were up to her sisters, she would never leave the hole, but Eeny loves to go exploring—especially in the spring.

In this final Eeny Mole picture book, Eeny tries to encourage her sisters to face their fears as she has done and venture into the world Up Above. 

Desified

Delicious Recipes for Ramadan, Eid & Every Day

By Zaynah Din

90 easy, delicious South-Asian inspired recipes for Ramadan, Eid, and beyond.

Desified is a celebration of South Asian flavors and spices. Inspired by the core principles of Ramadan, this book has more than 90 recipes, including show-stopping breakfasts, simple and satisfying dinners, and feasting dishes to share. Whether you’re looking for the best ways to break your fast or you simply want to eat well throughout the year, a desi twist is always delicious.

Sacred Soldier

The Dangers of Worshiping Warriors

By Robert F. Keeler

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and military veteran examines both the realities of our military and the worshipful attitude of Americans toward it.

How can our nation stop fighting needless wars, if we keep worshiping the warriors? Why do presidents so easily fool us by using “support the troops” to justify war? Is “Thank you for your service” merely meaningless, or a meaningful sign of a dangerous modern idolatry? Are today’s soldiers truly defending our freedom, or too often suppressing the freedom of other peoples? If our military is so powerful, why has it not definitively won a major war since 1945?

These are questions we seldom hear. Instead, what we see is ballplayers wearing military-style camouflage caps, baseball teams handing out a flag to the “veteran of the game,” and the Pentagon paying the National Football League to stage elaborate military displays like fighter-jet flyovers.

Sacred Soldier: The Dangers of Worshiping Warriors offers a more clear-eyed, warts-and-all view of our military. It argues that we owe our warriors more than those five empty words of gratitude. We owe them honesty as they enlist; we owe them protection from rampant sexual abuse by other members of the military; hesitance to shed their blood in multiple deployments to unwinnable wars; and the highest possible quality of care when they return from battle, wounded in mind, body, and spirit.

Guns and Almond Milk

A Novel

By Mustafa Marwan

An adrenaline-fuelled journey into war-torn Yemen, this novel is the perfect read for fans of fast-paced fiction.

Luke Archer, a British Egyptian doctor, runs from his problematic past in the UK and becomes a war surgeon. When he is taken hostage by Western security contractors in a besieged hospital in Yemen, he realizes that after spending years saving the lives of others, he needs to face the demons of his past in order to save his own.

Guns and Almond Milk is a study of identity, war and redemption. It is The Sympathizer mixed with M.A.S.H by the way of Ramy.

Born to Egyptian parents and raised as a first-generation British Muslim, Luke Archer struggles to be from two worlds at the same time. He is working in a humanitarian mission in Aden, at the height of the Yemeni conflict. Max Gorsky, Luke’s new patient, is a security contractor working for the government forces. Rebel forces have taken over the city, and Max’s team is now taking refuge in the city’s hospital, in preparation for their final stand. Luke and his team find themselves caught in a deadly clash between the ruthless rebel group and the desperate security contractors. At the same time, Max and Luke need to settle debts from their shared past in the UK where they joined forces in fencing a multi-million-dollar stolen artifact operation that went wrong.

Guns and Almond Milkis a fast-paced story of love, murder, and thrill that provides readers with a fresh perspective on humanitarian work, religion, assimilation, and Middle Eastern politics.

Frontières

The Food of France's Borderlands

By Alex Jackson

With over 80 mouth-watering recipes and fascinating introductions to each region, Fronti?res?will take you on a delicious gastronomic journey through France’s varied borderlands, adding many interesting dishes to your repertoire along the way.

Alex Jackson explores the cooking of France’s borderlands: from the geographical to the historical, linguistic, and metaphorical. His journey takes us through the Riviera, where the border has shifted many times but the cooking remains of a delicious whole, to the Occitan valleys of the Italian Alps, the Franco-German cooking of Alsace, and to Marseille, one of the most important ports of the Mediterranean, and its historic (and current) links with North Africa.

Alex explores how French cuisine has been influenced through history and that many of these dishes are part of a shared tradition of western European and Mediterranean cooking.

Everything Good Will Come

By Sefi Atta

Winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature

Everything Good Will Come introduces an important new voice in contemporary fiction.

With insight and a lyrical wisdom, Nigerian-born Sefi Atta has written a powerful and eloquent story set in her African homeland. It is 1971, a year after the Biafran War, and Nigeria is under military rule- though the politics of the state matter less than those of her home to Enitan Taiwo, an eleven-year-old girl tired of waiting for school to start. Will her mother, who has become deeply religious since the death of Enitan’s brother, allow her friendship with the new girl next door, the brash and beautiful Sheri Bakare?

This novel charts the fate of these two African girls; one who is prepared to manipulate the traditional system and one who attempts to defy it. Written in the voice of Enitan, the novel traces this unusual friendship into their adult lives, against the backdrop of tragedy, family strife, and a war-torn Nigeria. In the end, Everything Good Will Come is Enitan’s story; one of a fiercely intelligent, strong young woman coming of age in a culture that still insists on feminine submission. Enitan bucks the familial and political systems until she is confronted with the one desire too precious to forfeit in the name of personal freedom: her desire for a child.

Everything Good Will Come evokes the sights and smells of Africa while imparting a wise and universal story of love, friendship, prejudice, survival, politics, and the cost of divided loyalties.

A Hand Full of Stars

By Rafik Schami

Amid the turmoil of modern Damascus, one teenage boy finds his political voice in a message of rebellion that echoes throughout Syria and as far away as Western Europe.

Inspired by his dearest friend, old Uncle Salim, he begins a journal to record his thoughts and impressions of family, friends, life at school, and his growing feelings for his girlfriend, Nadia. Soon the hidden diary becomes more than just a way to remember his daily adventures; on its pages he explores his frustration with the government injustices he witnesses. His courage and ingenuity finally find an outlet when he and his friends begin a subversive underground newspaper. Warmed by a fine sense of humor, this novel is at once a moving love story and a passionate testimony to the difficult and committed actions being taken by young people around the world.

The Shell

Memoirs of a Hidden Observer

By Moustafa Khalifa

The work of a modern-day Sozhenitsyn that exposes acts of violence and brutality committed by the Syrian regime.

This compelling first novel is the astonishing story of a Syrian political prisoner of conscience- an atheist mistaken for a radical Islamist- who was locked up for 13 years without trial in one of the most notorious prisons in the Middle East. The novel takes the form of a diary which Musa keeps in his head and then writes down upon his release. In Tadmur prison, the mood is naturally bleak and yet often very beautifully captured. The narrator, a young graduate, is defiant and stoical, and somehow able to pick out humor and irony in the shocking events and characters he describes.

Considered by many in the Arab world to be a symbol of the Syrian opposition in the current civil war, this novel provides an essential perspective on the tragedy the Syrian people are living through.

Master of the Eclipse

By Etel Adnan

A new collection of stories about displacement, love, loss, poetry and war, from the Lebanese poet and painter who has been called “arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab-American author writing today” (Melus)

The stories in Master of the Eclipse are populated by filmmakers, poets, girls, professors, and prostitutes who live in Beirut, Paris, Sicily, California, Saddam’s Iraq, and New York. The world of these stories is ours, with the same occupations and wars- a “world that would be a cemetery” were it not also a place where taxis are “yellow flowers floating down the avenues.”

From the collection’s title story, a long meditation on history and war, power and poetry, to its concluding tale, a strangely quiet vision of a tree floating in a Damascus stream, Etel Adnan’s painterly vision, her cosmopolitan flexibility, and her philosophical bent are on full display. This is a woman, after all, trained in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and the University of California at Berkeley, who became a painter, and then a poet. Her voice comes to us as something the opposite of her title: She is a master of light and revelation, of language, variety, and color.

The Book of Queens

By Joumana Haddad

A book of history, heritage, loyalty, religion, feminism, families, and the Armenian genocide

The Book of Queens is a family saga that spans four generations of women caught up in the tragic whirlwind of turf wars and suffering in the Middle East—from the Armenian genocide and the Israeli occupation of Palestine to modern-day civil wars and the struggles between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon and Syria.

Four queens of a deck of cards dealt a bad hand by fate—Qayah, Qana, Qadar and Qamar—form the branches of the same family tree rooted in the land of their origins despite the forceful winds that repeatedly try to carry them away. A line of red-haired women united by the ties of blood that runs through their veins—which violence has spread through the ages—each with a deep story and all with one thing in common: unwavering power and resilience in the face of adversities of being a woman in a war-torn region.

With the perfect mastery of finely chiseled writing, Joumana Haddad manages to construct a novel of extraordinary intensity, without ever sinking into pathos or grandiloquence. She also challenges the systematic abuse of political and religious power and authority that continues to cloud the lives of a culturally diverse and progressive youth until the present day.

Only in Seville

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

Discover Seville’s colorful history, astonishing architecture and dynamic street life with this explorer’s guide to Spain’s most alluring city.

It features more than 55 fascinating and unusual historical sites, including grand palaces and closed convents, artistic havens and secluded patios, fervent traditions and epicurean delights. From Moorish minarets and medieval shipyards to Andalusia’s tallest tower and the most modern suspension bridge, this guide is a must-have for visitors. The author visits the world’s largest wooden structure, Spain’s oldest tapas bar, a museum of tile making, and a former royal cigar factory. Escape the crowds and set off on your own urban expedition with the Only In Guides!

The Invincible Kingdom

By Rob Ryan

Illustrated by: Rob Ryan

The third title in the stunningly illustrated fairytale trilogy for all ages from internationally-acclaimed papercut artist Rob Ryan.

Born into the royal family, John has always known he doesn’t want to be King. To escape his destiny he’s run away and built a different kind of future for himself. But just when everything seems to be going right for John, his past catches up with him: Lord Von Dronus, the palace’s senior courtier, is determined to hunt him down. Forced into hiding with his best friend, June, it seems as though John will never be able to live an ordinary life. Until one night he decides to put an audacious plan into place. Inspiring, funny, and moving, The Invincible Kingdom is about following your dreams and creating your own happily ever after.

The Invisible Kingdom

By Rob Ryan

Illustrated by: Rob Ryan

Gorgeous words and stunning illustrations combine in a book for anyone aged 8-80, by internationally renowned paper-cut artist.

This is a story about a prince. He lived in a palace that seemed to have been specially designed to make someone who already felt small feel even smaller. He rarely saw his parents, who were always busy being the King and Queen; and, unlike other children, the Prince never spent time dreaming about what he would be when he grew up because he knew that when his father died, he would become King. It was his destiny. The only person who treated the Prince like a normal child was the Bootman. Understanding that everyone needs something to call their own, the Bootman gave the Prince a pen with invisible ink and a special flashlight that allowed him to create a world that only he could see. One night, as the Prince was drawing on the curtains that surrounded his bed, he noticed a small hole and beyond that a trapdoor, which led to the attic. And in the attic he found a window and a way to sneak out of the palace and experience the real world.

The Invisible Kingdom is an exquisite book about a small boy, a big imagination, and learning to be your own person.

The Kingdom Revealed

By Rob Ryan

Illustrated by: Rob Ryan

This is a story about a young boy who doesn’t want to be King.

What he wants, more than anything, is to be normal. So one night, he runs away from the palace. He climbs out of his four-poster bed, disappears through a hidden door in the ceiling, creeps down a long-forgotten passageway, opens a small window and leaves behind everything he’s ever known. At first, the world outside the palace seems a magical place that the King delights in exploring. But with no friends to call on, no money in his pocket, in fact nothing apart from the clothes he is wearing, it isn’t long before the young King realizes that life on his own is going to be full of challenges Meanwhile, Lord Von Dronus, the most senior of all the King’s courtiers, is determined to find the young King before anyone realizes he’s disappeared. Beautiful, touching and surprising, The Kingdom Revealed is about appreciating the everyday and learning what matters most.

Mao and the Chinese Revolution

Interlink Illustrated Histories

By Yves Chevrier

It has been more than a century since the birth of Mao Zedong. From the collapse of the old Chinese Empire in 1912 to the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949, his history is linked with that of contemporary China, and beyond national borders, with the history of communism as well. His version of guerilla warfare and revolution resulted in the construction of a socialist society that became a model of socialism throughout the world.

Both a tyrant and rebel, Mao wanted to rule through revolution. Yet the Big Leap Forward (1958) and the Cultural Revolution (1966) each plunged China into chaos without saving it from totalitarianism. After 1978, de-Maoization and economic reforms by Deng Xiaoping helped heal the country’s wounds, but the future yet remains uncertain. Whether to be an empire united or broken, serenely “open” or in conflict, democratic or authoritarian, egalitarian or prosperous- so many lingering questions remain of those that Mao and his generation began asking nearly a century ago. Was the Maoist Revolution futile? Would China have been better off without Mao- and is such a thing imaginable?

Chaplin

The Tramp's Odyssey

By Simon Louvish

An essential volume for understanding Chaplin’s body of work.

An Everyman who expressed the defiant spirit of freedom, Charlie Chaplin was first lauded and later reviled in the America that made him Hollywood’s richest man. He was a figure of multiple paradoxes.

Simon Louvish’s book looks afresh at the “mask behind the man.” Louvish charts the tale of the Tramp himself through his films, from the early Mack Sennett shorts through the major features (The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator, et al.). He retrieves Chaplin as the iconic London street kid who carried the “surreal” antics of early British music hall triumphantly onto the Hollywood screen.

Louvish also looks anew at Chaplin’s and the Tramp’s social and political ideas- the challenge to fascism, defiance of the McCarthyite witch hunts, eventual “exile,” and last mature disguises as the serial killer Monsieur Verdoux and the dying English clown Calvero in Limelight.

This book is an epic journey, summing up the roots of comedy and its appeal to audiences everywhere, who reveled in the clown’s raw energy, his ceaseless struggle against adversity, and his capacity to represent our own fears, foibles, dreams, inner demons and hopes.

A Traveller’s History of Australia

By John H. Chambers

Essential reading for travelers who wish to enjoy the amazing diversity of Australia, this book outlines the history of that great southern democracy from the arrival of the earliest Aborigines some fifty or sixty thousand years ago to the present.

The ancient Aboriginal way of life is described; early European sightings; and the establishment of the British convict colony in 1788, which dragged the continent into the modern world. The dynamic story of Australia in the twentieth century, its role in two world wars, the post-war discoveries of huge mineral deposits, its courting of Asia in recent decades, the return of vast areas of land to the Aborigines, and its confident cultural vibrancy in wine, food, film, and art are also examined.

Rosa’s Thai Cafe

The Cookbook

By Saiphin Moore

Photography by: Dan Jones

Succulent street food, family favorites, mouthwatering regional dishes.

This comprehensive new book from acclaimed chef, Saiphin Moore, looks at dishes from across Thailand in over 100 recipes. The recipes feature traditional and regional Thai dishes- and a whole lot of modern variations as well.

Saiphin Moore’s first book tells you how to cook Thai food in style, with delicious street-food recipes that are quick to make and go well with a modern lifestyle. Her enthusiasm is beautifully displayed in her collection of family-style dishes that appeals to all appetites and adventure levels. Each recipe is clearly explained and vividly photographed and is sure to motivate home cooks to get into the kitchen to whip up tasty Thai fare.

Divided into nine chapters (small bites, salads, soups, curries, stir-fries, grills and marinades, noodles and rice, sweet things, and basics) and in keeping with its contemporary twist on authentic Thai cuisine, Rosa’s Thai Cafe Cookbook celebrates traditional Thai cooking techniques and features dishes from her restaurant as well as family favorites from her frequent trips back home. Recipes range from the aromatic Beef Massaman Curry to the Soft Shell Crab Salad, Larb Spring Rolls, homemade Sriracha Sauce and Mangoes with Sticky Rice.

From food truck owner to celebrated restaurateur, Saiphin clearly knows her way around Pad Thais and spiced curries. This beautiful cookbook is a must-have for the Thai food lover and an essential addition to the foodie bookshelf.

The Middle Eastern Cookbook

By Maria Khalifé

Photography by: Stuart West

A fabulous selection of recipes from Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

Middle Eastern food draws on the exotic tastes of various styles of cooking and combines them in a blend of unusual yet simple tastes for mouthwatering dishes. It is easy to prepare, wonderful to look at, and offers an amazing variety of healthy dishes, making it the ideal cooking style for the health-conscious.

From tabbouleh and dolmas to chicken salona and baklava, Middle Eastern cooking is a delicious collection of wonderful tastes, colors, and rich textures. The recipes in The Middle Eastern Cookbook are easy to follow, use ingredients that are readily available, and are accompanied by colorful and succulent photographs.

A Traveller’s History of Egypt

By Harry Adès

Ancient Egypt has gripped the popular imagination like no other country and the lure of its pyramids and the Nile are a magnet for visitors from all over the world. This book provides a concise and fascinating journey from the country’s earliest beginnings right up to the present day.

A Traveller’s History of Egypt communicates the magic of the pharaohs alongside a level-headed discussion of Islam for the benefit of modern travellers.

The book will span the entire history of Egypt, from the murkiest origins of prehistory right up to the latest developments – all in a style that is as entertaining as it is well-informed. There are few books on the country that attempt this feat, but to do so is perhaps more important today than it has ever been, at a time when an understanding of contemporary Egypt is not merely an advantage for travel there, but a necessity. It will make sense of the major controversies and guide the reader carefully where Egyptologists cannot agree – whether it is the dates of certain kings or the positioning of whole dynasties. A full chronology of major events, a cross-reference historical gazetteer, a list of pharaohs, rulers and presidents, a bibliography, index and historical maps, will add to its accessibility, and afford it the most useful elements of a reference book.

A Traveller’s Companion to London

By Peter Ackroyd & Thomas Wright

London has witnessed everything from pilgrimages, celebrations, acts of heroism and moments of religious contemplation to riots, executions, grisly murders and disastrous fires.

It is a history of work and capital, of power and exuberance, and of great creativity from a rich host of artists and writers, Shakespeare and Dickens among them, but also of violent crime, exploitation, loneliness and extreme hardship; life in the poverty ridden East of the city could not be more different than life in its opulent West End.

Drawing upon extracts from contemporary letters, diaries and memoirs of fascinating inhabitants and visitors, this anthology by acclaimed London historian Peter Ackroyd and Thomas Wright tells the story of the city from its earliest years up to the present day. Here you will find Evelyn’s famous account of the Great Fire in 1666, Dickens’ brilliant evocation of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Boswell’s description of the compilation of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, and Churchill’s recollections of the Blitz.

There are also less familiar, though no less vivid, excerpts, many of which provide an entertaining, sometimes risque, glimpse into the life, customs and morals of this great city. Modern visitors and armchair readers alike are given a ringside view to the past and an unforgettable experience of the essential spirit of London.

The Sweet Polish Kitchen

A Celebration of Home Baking and Nostalgic Treats

By Ren Behan

A collection of traditional and modern Polish baking and dessert recipes including babkas, cheesecakes, tarts, pastries, and all things sweet and celebratory.

A collection of traditional and modern Polish baking and dessert recipes including babkas, cheesecakes, tarts, pastries, and all things sweet and celebratory. Ren Behan takes you from everyday baking to celebrations in this comprehensive, modern take on Polish sweet treats, and draws on influences from across central and Eastern Europe.

Honey, cinnamon, ginger, vanilla, citrus peel, cherries, sweet whipped cheese… With these warming scents and flavors, Ren Behan takes you from everyday baking to carnival doughnuts in a comprehensive tour of Polish sweet treats. Traditional and modern Polish recipes include babkas, cheesecakes, tarts, pastries, and all things sweet and celebratory. With modern twists and bold, folkloric styling, The Sweet Polish Kitchen will link traditional recipes with current trends, designed to bring the spirit of Polish patisserie and bakes to a new audience.

Poland’s rich, multi-national café culture underpins these recipes, which draw on many influences; the first patisseries in Warsaw were opened by Italian and Swiss immigrants, and there are also borrowings from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, Lithuania and Belarus. A new and delicious baking world is in your hands!

Sri Owen’s Indonesian Food

By Sri Owen

In this landmark book, renowned author Sri Owen provides a unique insight into the ancient, exotic and varied cuisine of the Indonesian archipelago.

Sri Owen’s Indonesian Food is the most comprehensive account of this ancient and varied cuisine ever published. Sri Owen, the world’s leading authority in Indonesian cooking, provides over 100 mouth-watering recipes, from staples and basics to food for festivals and special occasions. The recipes are easy to follow and have fascinating introductions which place them in their regional and cultural settings.

The book is split into two parts–in part one a series of introductory chapters examine the role of food in Sri’s life and in Indonesian culture and society, with recipes to accompany. Part two explains theessential ingredients and techniques of Indonesian cooking, with notes on availability and substitutions and discussions of modern developments, again with the relevant recipes and variations to accompany each technique. Painstakingly researched and the product of decades of expertise and recipes passed through generations, this is a must-have book for any curious cook.

They Got to You Too

A Novel

By Futhi Ntshingila

Winner of the Sharjah Int’l Book Fair Best International Fiction Award 2022

Hans van Rooyen is a former police general raised by two women who survived the 1899 South African War. He finds himself being cared for in an old age home by the daughter of liberation struggle activists. At age 80, he carries with him the memories of crimes he committed as an officer under the apartheid government. Having eluded the public confessions at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for his time in the Border Wars, he retained his position in the democratic South Africa, serving as an institutional memory for a new generation of police recruits.

Zoe Zondi is tasked to care for the old man. Her gentle and compassionate nature prompts Hans to review his decision to go to the grave with all his secrets. Zoe has her own life story to tell and, as their unlikely bond deepens, strengthened by the isolation that COVID-19 lockdown brings, they provide a safe space for each other to say the things that are often left unsaid.

They Got To You Too is just the right fiction for our troubled time. It is an ode to the power of storytelling to gently peel away the scars of old wounds and provide some sort of relief, catharsis, and healing.

The Oud

An Illustrated History

By Rachel Beckles Willson

A beautifully-written illustrated history of one of the most important instruments in music cultures of the Middle East and North Africa.

According to a literary tradition of Iraq, the origin of the oud lies in the grief of Lamak, a descendent of Cain, son of Adam. When his 5-year-old son died, Lamak hung the boy’s limp body on a tree, and as time passed, he resolved to build a musical instrument from the remaining bones. He then played it, wept, and sang the first lament; his daughter Sila became an instrument maker. So the oud is a beautiful pear-shaped box, with neck and strings, that makes music, but it can also be a link to the world of storytelling that brings new voices into life.

Today the oud is one of the most important instruments in music cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, and while associated mainly with the Arab world, it is also played in Iran, Turkey and Greece. More recently it has spread into East Africa, numerous countries of Europe, Australia, the Americas, China and Japan.

This book explores the oud’s history and increasingly global lives today. It explores its varied construction over time and place, delves into its place in literature, and reveals its widespread repertoire and immensely diverse players. 

Small Stanley’s Big List of Scary Stuff

By Angie Morgan

A funny, reassuring picture book about how to deal with worries—perfect for sharing.

Small Stanley would like to be brave and fearless like a superhero. There’s just one problem, though—some things make Stanley feel scared… “Write a list of all the things that scare you,” says Grandpa. And Stanley does! Earwigs and centipedes are on the list, and the dark, and getting lost, and dogs and cats and lots and lots of other things. The list gets so long and Stanley gets so worried about forgetting fears to add to his list that he has no time to play with his friends…

Things are getting out of hand, but Grandpa has a plan. One windy day they go for a walk. Stanley brings his list of course, but just as he’s about to add ‘wind’ to the list… whoosh, the wind takes his list away. What will happen now to Stanley’s worries?

A Fool’s Journey

To the Beach Boys and Beyond

By Carli Muñoz

A tell-all memoir of a rock and jazz sensation and former pianist of the legendary Beach Boys.

Cutting his musical teeth in a Puerto Rican jazz club in the 1960s, Carli Muñoz came of age during the countercultural flowering of that era; he lived for music, knowledge, and the mind-expanding magic of LSD. Wanting to expand creative horizons for his successful psychedelic rock band, Muñoz flew to New York on a whim with $11 in his pocket and embarked on a deep dive into the gritty scene of gigs, girls, and trips, struggling to fill his pockets with dollars and his belly with food. Free-falling into the dark underbelly of the city, Muñoz ended up homeless and penniless until an epiphany on the subway brought him back to the surface.

On the cusp of a new decade, Muñoz moved to LA to fight for a new life and a second chance. Hanging out in Houdini’s old mansion in Laurel Canyon, he watched the free-loving idealism of the ’60s melt into the disco- and cocaine-saturated hedonism of the ’70s, until one day he found himself on tour with the Beach Boys. He became close friends with Dennis Wilson—a friendship that ranged from pranking each other to working on an album together to watching him spiral irretrievably into self-destruction. He witnessed the feud between Mike Love and the Wilsons firsthand, as well as the unchecked instability of Brian Wilson. Despite the chaos and power struggles within the band, Muñoz was able to create enthralling music with them, as well as with some of the other popular musicians of the ’70s, including Wilson Pickett, the Association, George Benson, and Peter Cetera.

Populated with an eclectic cast of artists, musicians, clairvoyants, record producers, hippies, hobos, and superstars, A Fool’s Journey is a vivid snapshot of an era-defining moment that will never be repeated.

Although Muñoz toured with the Beach Boys for ten years and partied with rock stars, he was also just an island kid from Puerto Rico, forever in exile, forever “the other.” The story of his journey is as compelling as it is timely.

The Ferris Wheel

By Tülin Kozikoğlu

Illustrated by: Hüseyin Sönmezay

A powerful and heartwarming story about empathy, hope, and longing.

This is the story of two parallel journeys in cities far apart. A mother and a son leave their home for a better day, while a father and a daughter leave their home for a safer day. The concerns of the parents are almost the same as they watch over their kids, but their experiences are sadly very different. The father and daughter are fleeing a city devastated by war, leaving their home—and beloved goldfish—behind. All through their journey the goldfish follows them as a symbol of longing and hope. The two families’ paths finally cross on a Ferris wheel and, as they go round and round, trading places with each other, we understand that we are all connected.

With beautiful illustrations full of symbolism, this simple and powerful story of displacement encourages us all to welcome newcomers with compassion and curiosity. 

Buddhism

A Journey Through Art

By Rose M. Woodward

A groundbreaking and lavishly-illustrated chronicle of Buddhist art and artefacts from the first century to the present, accompanied by stunning photographs that establish the significance of every piece in antiquity. 

Buddhism: A Journey through Art chronicles art and artefacts from the first to the twentieth century in a celebration of the artistic exchange of culture as Buddhism spread through Asia.

Featuring a selection of over 300 of the most important works that exemplify a rich and diverse array of Buddhist art, each accompanied by stunning photographs, the book establishes the significance of every piece in antiquity, highlighting the stylistic and iconographic traits of the art objects as well as the distinctive features of their historical-cultural milieu.

Buddhism: A Journey through Art showcases astonishingly diverse and exquisitely rendered artistic production in the Asian Buddhist world over two millennia.

This important book showcases the magnificent array of visual mythology, sculpture, and iconography deriving from the various Buddhist communities found around the world.

Poison in the Air

A Novel

By Jabbour Douaihy

The final novel from one of Lebanon’s greatest writers and narrator of Lebanese life.

Poison in the Air, Jabbour Douaihy’s final novel, chronicles the decades of social, political, and economic turmoil leading up to and including the recent collapse of his beloved Lebanon after the horrific explosion that occurred at the Port of Beirut in 2020. Douaihy brings a multitude of bottled-up toxicity to the surface, as though he is writing his last letter to the world, or a suicide note for Lebanon, as he paints a picture of a society marching down a path to self-destruction.

A first-person narration by an unnamed male protagonist, his generation’s journey—like his country’s history—seems to echo that of the phoenix. While that mythical creature is continually reborn from its own ashes, ever resilient, we now see it once again plummeting back into the fire, but as if nearly defeated, “filled with the poison of disappointments.” (Elias Khoury, L’Orient Litteraire, 2021) As imagined by Douaihy, being cut off from others and absorbed in self-interest brings out humanity’s most lethal, destructive nature. 

Poison in the Air might serve as a warning to us all about the dangers of isolation and polarization, about what happens when we “sentence ourselves” to listening only to our own voices. The novel’s bleak portrayal reflects how essential it is to break out of self-contained bubbles and, like the butterfly he depicts striving toward the light, reunite with the outside world and re-embrace others, in body and in spirit.

Ukraine at War

Street Art, Posters, and Poetry

By Daoud Sarhandi-Williams

A unique book that showcases how Ukrainian society is expressing itself through art.

War came to Ukraine in February 2022; it was uninvited— although not entirely unexpected given Russia’s steady, massive troop build-up on Ukraine’s eastern border over the winter. When war exploded, millions of people around the world watched it compulsively on TV.

Daoud Sarhandi-Williams—author of the internationally–acclaimed Bosnian War Posters—travelled to Ukraine in the summer of 2022 to photograph street art. He gathered a lot more images besides—as well as a trove of extraordinary war poetry by Ukrainian citizens, shared internationally here for the first time. The author brings all these elements together in an original, multi-layered visual book that is moving, profound, and painfully beautiful.

With over 400 photos and artworks by the author and other contributors, the 320 pages of this book are a tribute to Ukraine’s courage, heroism and struggle—and to her creativity, too.

Ukraine at War is a unique artistic testament to Ukrainian resilience and to world-changing events that are far from over. If you want to know what’s in the heart of the Ukrainian people, look no further than this stunning book.

Much Too Busy

By John Bond

A witty and exquisitely illustrated new picture book about appreciating the little things in life from the award-winning illustrator and creator of Mini Rabbit, John Bond. 

Pigeon is extremely busy doing important things. He has no time to stop, and he definitely doesn’t have time to get lost. Luckily Mouse is on hand to help. Mouse is not busy at all. Mouse has all the time in the world to admire and appreciate the world around him. As this unlikely duo pair up to help Pigeon find his way home, Mouse wonders if Pigeon might be persuaded to stop and look at the world around him too . . . 

A warm, witty and mindful tale of how the little things are sometimes the big things in life.

Gennaro’s Cucina

By Gennaro Contaldo

Delicious, hearty Italian meals using accessible and affordable ingredients, by one of the world’s most beloved Italian chefs. 

In an era of excessive convenience and disposable food waste, Gennaro’s Cucina could not come at a better time—you will learn how to use simple ingredients in inventive ways, eat seasonally, spend less, and ultimately eat better.

“Cucina povera” is the food that traditionally fed the poor of Italy, yet remains the basis of most Italian dishes we love to eat today. It’s a simple philosophy—delicious, hearty meals using accessible and affordable ingredients. Encouraging an ethos of zero waste, Gennaro’s Cucina ensures that every part of the ingredient, and your budget, is put to good culinary use.

Along with the majority of post-war Italian families, a young Gennaro was raised on a diet harvested on a limited budget. Restricted choice of scarce ingredients meant they learned the value what they had, how to cook dishes lovingly, and use imaginative methods of preservation to make simple dishes go far: including salting, drying and curing.

In this inspirational cookbook, Gennaro takes you on a culinary journey of simple regional Italian staples and turns them into beautiful meals. With tips and ideas of what to do with leftovers, Gennaro helps home cooks squeeze maximum use from the “cucina povera” ethos, turning humble ingredients into nourishing feasts without sacrificing flavor.

From Sicilian chickpea fritters to lentil soups and bread salads, to more elaborate filled vegetables, delicious “poor-man’s” ricotta dumplings, and simple sweet biscotti, this book will transform the way you shop, cook, and eat.

The Wall Between

What Jews and Palestinians Don�t Want to Know about Each Other

By Raja G. Khouri & Jeffrey J. Wilkinson

A groundbreaking book that offers concrete ways for Jews and Palestinians to speak (and listen) differently to each other.

The Wall Between is a book about the wall that exists between Jewish and Palestinian communities in the Diaspora. Distrust, enmity, and hate are common currencies. They manifest at university campuses, schools and school boards, at political events, on social media, and in academic circles. For Jews, Israel must exist; for Palestinians, the historic injustice being committed since 1948 must be reversed. Neither wants to know why the Other cannot budge on these issues. The wall is up.

These responses emanate, primarily, from the two “metanarratives” of Jews and Palestinians: the Holocaust and the Nakba. Virtually every response to the struggle, from a member of either community, can be traced back to issues of identity, trauma, and victimhood as they relate to their respective metanarrative. This book examines the role that propaganda and disinformation play in cementing trauma-induced fears for the purpose of making the task of humanizing and acknowledging the Other not just difficult, but almost inconceivable. The authors utilize recent cognitive research on the psychological and social barriers that keep Jews and Palestinians in their camps, walled off from each other. They present a clear way through, one that is justice-centered, rather than trauma-and propaganda-driven.

The authors have lived these principles and traveled this journey, away from their tribal traumas, through embracing the principles of justice. They insist that commitment to the Other means grappling with seemingly incompatible narratives until shared values are decided and acted upon. This book is a call to justice that challenges the status quo of Zionism while at the same time dealing directly with the complex histories that have created the situation today. The book is both realistic and hopeful—a guide for anyone who is open to new possibilities within the Israel-Palestine discourse in the West.  

A Child Like You

By Na’ima B. Robert

Illustrated by: Nadine Kaadan

An empowering picture book that encourages children to feel that they can have a positive impact on the future in a troubled world, inspired by real-life activists and campaigners.

“Somewhere, out there, in the wide, wide world, a child like you is watching …”

Four brave children watch, listen, search, and feel, as they experience the inequalities, dangers, and injustices of life in our world.

Inspired by real-life activists and campaigners Greta Thunberg, Yusra Mardini, Marley Dias, and Iqbal Masih, each of these children are filled with courage, determination and hope.

They will campaign to help save the planet, show that refugees can contribute, and show leadership in sport in their new land, they will build a library of 1,000 books depicting black girls, they will speak out against the outrage of child slavery.

The House on Butterfly Street

A Novel

By Mhani Alaoui

In a country where the precarious rights of women and children can be reversed in an instant, legacies of resilience still reverberate across time.

Present-day Morocco: With the breakdown of her marriage, physician Nadine Alam has become unable to work. Her teenage daughter Al has retreated into silence, and now her young housekeeper Ghalia has disappeared.

One morning, Nadine receives an envelope from an unidentified sender. Inside it is a newspaper clipping, an article about a single mother and her newborn child, a boy named Noor—typically a name given to girls, meaning light. Nadine’s country is one where single mothers and children born out of wedlock are considered pariahs, outside the protection of the law. Why would a journalist disclose the child’s name? And why was she sent this clipping?

Drawn to these mysteries, Nadine embarks on a search that takes her into a Casablanca she barely knew existed. There she encounters strong, inspiring people but also deeply flawed, terrible ones. Unraveling clues to her connection with the story, she is moved to try to help this mother and child. As she plunges deeper and deeper into an unknown world, Nadine finds she must come to terms with her own family’s history, and with lingering scars of her country’s past in which her family is entwined.

A vivid, kaleidoscopic portrait of a Casablanca household.

Bao Family Cookbook

Recipes from the Eight Culinary Regions of China

By C?line Chung and team

Through over 80 classic, accessible, and playful recipes, Bao Family Cookbook symbolizes the bridge between two cultures: the traditions of China and the modernity of Parisian life. 

Bao Family Cookbook symbolizes the bridge between two cultures: the traditions of China and the modernity of Parisian life. The Bao family run four Chinese restaurants in Paris that bridge the gap between two cultures, and between traditional and modern cuisine—here they share their love of bao and other Chinese dishes, with recipes that span the eight culinary regions of China.

Through over 80 classic yet accessible and playful recipes, Céline Chung and her family push back against the stereotypes surrounding Chinese cooking and pay tribute to its diversity and regionality. Expect an explosion of flavor, with recipes for scallion pancakes, chile chicken salad, Chinese spring rolls, hot-and-sour soup, sweet-and-sour fish, cumin beef, Cantonese fried rice, and of course bao buns—that perfectly fluffy finger food that feeds a crowd and can be tailored with delicious sweet and savory fillings.

Bao Family is a bold celebration of Chinese food today, spanning meals all through the day. The key recipes all feature handy step-by-step instructions, and every dish is imbued with the love that Céline and her family have for their homeland of Wenzhou, from their home in Paris.

Recipes include:

• Stir-fried vegetarian noodles

• Pumpkin fries with salted egg

• Fried egg on rice

• Charsiu bao

• Har gow

• Chinese spring rolls

• Wonton soup

• Steamed pork ribs with garlic and black beans

• Salt-and-pepper chicken

The Yogurt Cookbook: 10th Anniversary Edition

Recipes from Around the World

By Arto der Haroutunian

Photography by: Hiltrud Schulz

The Yogurt Cookbook is the ultimate guide to cooking with yogurt and its significance around the world.

Yogurt is consumed in a variety of ways in many cultures throughout the world. The author—truly an authority on the subject—tells us the history of yogurt, how to make it, and how it is easily used in all kinds of delicious recipes.

This splendid cookbook offers over 200 yogurt recipes ranging from the delicate flavors Middle Eastern cuisine to traditional Armenian specialties; from spicy Indian curries to distinctive regional European dishes. There are delicious appetizers, fragrant soups, fresh salads, and interesting egg dishes. There are recipes for fish, poultry, meat, pasta, and vegetables. There is even a section on bread, pancakes, and fritters. The Yogurt Cookbook is the ultimate guide to cooking with yogurt, and its significance around the world. If you’re a yogurt lover, this is a book for you, and if you don’t care for it, this book will convert you.

All That’s Left to You

A Novella and Other Stories

By Ghassan Kanafani

Ghassan Kanafani’s writings are among the most influential in modern Palestinian literature. In his novels, short stories, and plays, he explores complex political questions encased in beautiful narratives and lyrical prose.

All That’s Left to You presents the vivid story of twenty-four hours in the real and remembered lives of a brother and sister living in Gaza and separated from their family. The desert and time emerge as characters as Kanafani speaks through the desert, the brother, and the sister to build the powerful rhythm of the narrative. The Palestinian attachment to land and family, and the sorrow over their loss, are symbolized by the young man’s unremitting anger and shame over his sister’s sexual disgrace.

This remarkable collection of stories provides evidence to the English-reading public of Kanafani’s position within modern Arabic literature. Not only was he committed to portraying the miseries and aspirations of his people, the Palestinians, in whose cause he died, but he was also an innovator within the extensive world of Arabic fiction.

We Are Palestinian

A Celebration of Culture and Tradition

By Reem Kassis

Photography by: Noha Eilouti

A stunning children’s book celebrating everything Palestinian!

From culture and food, to music and literature, We Are Palestinian?is a celebration of Palestinian heritage. Brought to life by award-winning writer Reem Kassis, every spread is filled with wonderful anecdotes, fascinating facts, and memorable quotes. It is beautifully illustrated by Noha Eilouti, an emerging Palestinian-Canadian illustrator.

Discover ALL about the history of iconic Palestinian symbols like tatreez embroidery, or the inspiration behind Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry. As you turn every page, you’ll find yourself lost in the world of Dabke (the folk dance of Palestine) and amazed by its famous old cities; you’ll try traditional food like knafeh, explore the different religions, and find out much more. Each spread of?We Are Palestinian?is accessible, richly inspiring, and visually stunning.

Young readers are going to love discovering more about Palestine. This is the perfect book for parents, educators, and caregivers wishing to explore new worlds of culture and custom with children!

Unexpected New York

By Sandy Miller

Photography by: Juliana Spear

This well-written and sumptuously illustrated book is filled with surprises that add texture and richness to life in the Big Apple.

Wild peacocks, parrots, and raccoons rather than the Bronx Zoo; cricket, lawn bowling, surfboarding, and pistol shooting rather than the Yankees and the Mets; a Japanese pagoda-inspired house and a Frank Lloyd Wright house rather than a Brooklyn brownstone or the Empire State building; wineries, rolling ladder manufacturers, and fishing tackle businesses rather than the New York Stock Exchange; key lime pies not seltzer; fragments of the Berlin Wall and Gaudi-like mosaic benches rather than the Guggenheim or the Met; a statue of Lenin rather than the Statue of Liberty.

Unexpected New York is about places, activities, events, and entities in New York City that surprise. These are not secret or hidden, nor necessarily off the beaten track, just not what the words New York City immediately call to mind. But perhaps the unexpected aspects of New York are what truly make its world-class diversity. If not quintessential New York, nonetheless, essential.

Beyond Shattered Glass

Voices from the Aftermath of the Beirut Explosion

By Zeina Saab

True stories of survival, strength, and solidarity.

On August 4, 2020, a massive explosion in the Beirut port decimated much of the capital city. The notoriously corrupt and criminally negligent Lebanese government was nowhere to be found. Instead, ordinary people were forced to fend for themselves in extraordinary situations.

They took on the monumental cleanup effort on ground zero. They set up makeshift online resources to find loved ones in hospitals that were overwhelmed. They pulled strangers out of the rubble, regardless of their religion or ethnicity. They set up mental health lines, launched missing persons platforms. They took care of neighbors and comforted one another through tragic losses.

This book is an anthology of creative nonfiction that chronicles their real stories as told by the writers who interviewed them. More than individual accounts, these stories are the product of a collective writing process to archive history and continue to resist injustice.

Only in Dubrovnik

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

Discover Dubrovnik’s enthralling architecture, tumultuous history, and artistic treasures with this explorer’s guide to Croatia’s famous fortified city. More than 55 fascinating and unusual historical sites, including fearsome forts and forgotten palaces, saintly relics and vestiges of war, converted convents and cursed islands. From a macabre cathedral treasury and an ancient arboretum to the Red History Museum and a Game of Thrones’ tour. The author visits the world’s oldest quarantine hospital, Orlando’s Column, the Dubrovnik Beer Company, and a holiday resort in ruins. Escape the crowds and set off on your own urban expedition with the Only In Guides!

Namaste Trump and Other Stories

By Tabish Khair

A collection of other stories from shining India—those not often told.

The short story “Namaste Trump” starts in a deceptive domestic setting, where a servant from the hinterlands is patronized and exploited by an upwardly mobile urban family. But as the nation celebrates Trump’s visit and copes with the pandemic, it ends up becoming a prophecy of endless haunting. This sets the agenda for a series of stories that delve into fracturing or broken lives in small-town India over the past fifty years.

In the novella-length “Night of Happiness,” pragmatic entrepreneur Anil Mehrotra has set up his thriving business empire with the help of his lieutenant, Ahmed, an older man who is different in more ways than one. Quiet and undemanding, Ahmed talks in aphorisms; bothers no one; and always gets the job done. But when one stormy night, Mehrotra discovers an aspect to Ahmed that defies all reason, he is forced to find out more about his trusted aide. What will he discover: madness or something worse?
      
In a series of three linked stories, “The Corridor,” “The Ubiquity of Riots” and “Elopement,” Khair traces, through the eyes of an adolescent, the tensions of living as a liberal Muslim in India in the 1970s and 1980s, tensions that isolate families, break friendships, and point to the violence to come. The narrator of these stories, now a busy professional, returns in the third person in another story, “Olden Friends are Golden,” about belonging and exclusion on WhatsApp. Then there is “Scam,” a flippantly narrated story about a crime that
can only be comprehended as a scam perpetuated by the victim, and in “Shadow of a Story” violence returns to a village family in an unimaginable shape.

“The Thing with Feathers” is perhaps about hope, but it is hope beyond despair, hope perhaps gone mad: or, is all hope mad now? Finally, “The Last Installment” narrates two farmers, a father and a son, in a village of North India, caught in a corporate vice: the breathless sentences of the story making the reader sense the desperation of the central character as he finally fights to breathe, to live.

By turns poetic, chilling, and heartbreaking, ranging from understated realism to gothic terror, this is a book of stories about precarious lives in a world without tolerance.

Tracing Homelands

Israel, Palestine, and the Claims of Belonging

By Linda Dittmar

A raw and courageous memoir of the 1948 war and its aftermath and searing personal journey to uncover the suppressed traumas, facts, and myths that undergird the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict

When author Linda Dittmar stumbles upon the ruins of an abandoned Palestinian village, she is faced with a past that sits uneasily with her Israeli childhood memories—and the history she was raised never to question.

Tracing Homelands is an intimate, beautifully written account that uncovers inconvenient truths about an embattled Israeli-Palestinian history that is often buried in silence. Its eloquently personal voice charts a reluctant eyewitness’ journey to uncover the ruins of Palestinian villages destroyed in the 1948 war, while weaving flashbacks to the author’s Israeli youth and Zionist upbringing. A braided narrative told with empathy and unflinching honesty, it reflects on the Palestinian and Jewish lives entwined in this searing history.

As Dittmar revisits the sites and sights of her childhood, her intimate understanding of the 1948 war and its aftermath opens up an inquiry into the language and silence, the seeing and willed not-seeing, that have been obscuring the Nakba and holding peace hostage. Spanning six decades of this history (1942-2008), this story of war and dispossession rests on deep attachment to a land that is claimed by both people. Here the land itself speaks its own truths: a tale told in rocks and mud, pine forests and parched summer grass, and vibrant modernity amid derelict sentinels of its past.

If Mama Sings

By Laura Wittner

Illustrated by: Maricel P. Clark

A heart-warming board book from Argentina for babies and toddlers.

The mother’s voice is that constant music that accompanies growth: everything changes very quickly for the baby, but his mother’s voice is always there to feed him, to hug him, to give him confidence.

This book is a lullaby that can be sung day and night.

Zebra in the Mirror

By Tina Arnuš Pupis

Illustrated by: Marta Bartolj

A beautifully-illustrated picture book that tackles themes of self-confidence and body neutrality.

A zebra is looking at her reflection in the lake. At first, she is unhappy with what she sees. Her ears are big and hairy; her legs are too long; and her stripes look silly. But then, she realizes that her body has an important function. Her ears allow her to hear distant sounds; her legs enable her to outrun danger; and her stripes make her unlike any other animal on the savannah. Soon, she is proud of what she sees.

This picture book offers an excellent starting point for conversations with children about body image. Offering multiple perspectives, Zebra in the Mirror can be read from front to back or from back to front, showing how self-confidence can come from within. Marta Bartolj’s stunning illustrations masterly depict a whole range of emotions that the zebra encounters while looking at herself in the water mirror.

Kantiga Finds the Perfect Name

By Mabel Mnensa

Illustrated by: Chantelle and Burgen Thorne

This endearing picture book from South Africa follows the story of a little girl who, with help from her grandmother, explores her identity and learns to appreciate her name.

“There was once a beautiful little girl with a heart as big as her name, Kantiga. But Kantiga did not like her name.” Hearing this, her gogo tells her a family tale of the magical clay pot that seems to be useless because it is cracked and broken. We learn how this flaw makes it more than perfect.

Follow this beautiful tale, full of color and folklore, as Kantiga tries to find the perfect name and on the journey learns a bit more about who she is and where she is from.

Pomegranates and Artichokes

A Food Journey from Iran to Italy

By Saghar Setareh

Library Journal Best Book of 2023

From photographer and food writer Saghar Setareh comes a cookbook full of rich new recipes that show how ingredients and recipes–unconstrained by borders–are shared and transformed through the immigrant experience.

When Iranian writer and food photographer Saghar Setareh moved to Italy at the age of 22, she was enchanted by the rich food culture of her adopted country, and this inspired a curiosity in the cuisine of her homeland and the surrounding countries of the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean. Pomegranates and Artichokes is the story of Saghar’s own culinary journey from Iran to Italy, in which she describes the many parallels that link Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food cultures, and shows how ingredients and recipes–unconstrained by borders–are shared and transformed through the immigrant experience. 

Divided into three sections representing stops on Saghar’s culinary “road trip”­–Iran, In Between, and Italy–this book features more than 80 recipes celebrating the foods of these regions. Among the highlights are a simple Iranian breakfast platter, a celebratory Persian feast, Sicilian-style stuffed artichokes, guinea hen braised with pomegranate, sweet–sour meatballs from Aleppo, a Roman ricotta and wild cherry pie, and a velvety Middle Eastern milk pudding. 

Illustrated with Saghar’s own beautiful photography and peppered with personal insights and experiences, Pomegranates and Artichokes tells the story of two food cultures, and the delicious space in between. 

The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian: 10th Anniversary Edition

Modern Recipes from Veggiestan: 10th Anniversary Edition

By Sally Butcher

In this upbeat guide to Middle Eastern vegetarian cooking, Sally Butcher proves that the region is simply simmering, bubbling, and bursting with sumptuous vegetarian traditions and recipes.

Written in her trademark engaging and knowledgeable style, Sally takes a fresh look at many of the more exciting ingredients available today in local grocery stores and supermarkets as well as providing a host of delicious recipes made with more familiar fare. From fragrant Persian noodle rice to gingery tamarind eggplants, pink pickled turnips and rose petal jam, The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian is filled with aromatic herbs and spices, inspiring ideas and all the knowledge needed to cook wonderful vegetarian food from the Middle East and beyond.

California

On-the-Road Histories

By Victor Silverman & Laurie Glover

A witty, expansive narrative that reveals the real story of the people and places that makes up the Golden State.

From the European conquest to today’s economic crisis, Californians have experienced tumultuous growth and painful conflicts. Like the grinding of tectonic plates that has produced the state’s very landscape, these encounters, disputes, and transformations have continuously made and remade California.

California: On-the-Road History doesn’t relate the cleaned-up tale of the California dream that school textbooks and the tourism commission tell. Rather it presents the sometimes bitter, sometimes triumphant history behind the California myth. Included are recommended museums, state parks, and other attractions, alongside literary excerpts from local authors who give readers a sense of California in different eras.

Buenos Aires

A Cultural History

By Jason Wilson

The most European of South American cities, Buenos Aires evokes exile and nostalgia.

A nineteenth-century replica of Paris or Madrid set adrift in an alien continent, its identity is neither of the Old World nor the New. The Argentine capital’s rootlessness has famously found expression in the melancholy of tango and, more recently, in a vogue for psychoanalysis even more widespread than New York’s. Jason Wilson explores this contradictory and culturally rich city by tracing its development from remote ranching settlement to modern metropolis. Taking landmarks, both well-known and hidden, as starting points for a journey of discovery, he looks at the events, people and writing that have shaped modern Buenos Aires and its cultural life.

– The city of Borges and Cortazar: the European literary tradition, magical realism and fantasy, the construction of an Argentine voice, writers local and foreign

– The city of tango: the music of longing and despair, a meeting-point of machismo and sensuality, lowlife culture of the port

– The city of passions: the cult of Evita Peron, the life-and-death matter of soccer, the totalitarian political legacy.

History of International Fashion

By Didier Grumbach

First English translation of critically-acclaimed book opens the door to the fascinating universe of fashion.

This book is not just a history of fashion from the early days of the creation of dressmaking fashion to the development of ready-to-wear manufacturing and the global enterprise it is today. Its ambition is to be the story of the creation, the evolution, and the implosion of the fashion related professions.

With readable, highly-informative, and entertaining text- coupled with stunning photography- this book offers valuable insights into a profession which, unlike any other social body, is determined as much by its origins as by its economic context. Didier Grumbach walks you down the runways of fashion history and unfolds the secrets of the industry with stories and accounts from those who have played an active part in its development from the 1920s to the present. And he knows what he is talking about: he was born, grew up and made his mark in the circle that he opens for us here. For decades, he has collected archives, met with witnesses, interacted with the most influential players, and opened doors which are normally kept firmly shut. In his international bestseller, he finally offers us a 20th century illustrated history of fashion like no other- a saga, a family business, with noble fathers, prodigal sons, enthusiasms, passions, hatreds, strokes of genius and, of course, failures. The heroes are Dior, Saint Laurent, Kenzo, Sonia Rykiel, Prada, Hermes, and others.

Their adventures are presented in an innovative chronological- and logical- order. From haute couture to the boom in ready-to-wear, the clothing industry, creators and designers, we witness the evolution in techniques, the shifting trends in the market, how an art matures and a culture changes. We also discover how the French ventured out of Paris to meet New York, London, Tokyo and Beijing.

This book is a must for fashion lovers, professionals, and students who will find a thousand references never before presented. It will also enlighten the curious reader who wishes to go behind the scenes of this most seductive of theatres.

Anti-Semitism

Interlink Illustrated Histories

By Roberto Finzi

For more than a thousand years the Jews have been objects of prejudice, hatred, bloody persecutions and massacres.

Even today, despite the horrors of Hitler’s holocaust, groups of neo-Nazis continue to form. In this well illustrated volume historian Roberto Finzi looks at the religious origins of this prejudice and investigates how anti-Semitism has spread even in secular, educated societies. The book provides a succinct history of the most significant, expressions of modern anti-Semitism from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, including the infamous Dreyfus case, a microcosm of the prejudice in the heart of Europe that led to the vicious pogroms that swept across its Eastern half and eventually gave rise to the racist ideology of the Nazis.

This brief volume can describe only the tip of the iceberg of the anti-Jewish feeling which has tragically shaped our modern world, yet Finzi’s cogent analysis goes a long way toward helping us identify the elements that compose its great submerged body.

The North African Kitchen

Regional Recipes and Stories

By Fiona Dunlop

Photography by: Simon Wheeler

Behind closed doors, North African home cooks are taking the region’s food to new heights. Traditional dishes such as tagines, stews, soups, and salads are being adapted and refined, and new dishes are being created using classic ingredients such as fiery spices, jewel-like dried fruits, lemons, and armfuls of fresh herbs.

The North African Kitchen is the result of Fiona Dunlop’s long fascination with the region. She visits eight of the best home cooks in Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya, shopping and cooking with them, and learning their favorite recipes and cooking tricks.

Simplicity is at the heart of the private medina kitchen. The exotic fuses with the domestic to produce dishes that are highly flavored yet quick and easy to prepare. Tunisian cuisine is perhaps the hottest of the region- due in large part to the popularity of the fiery chili paste harissa. As well as a strong French influence, pasta is a passion in Tunisia. Morocco’s great forte is its tagines and sauces- with meat and fish being cooked in one of four popular sauces. And Libya, although less gastronomically subtle than Tunisia and Morocco, excels in soups and patisserie.

This culinary journey creates a vivid and sensual picture of how food is really shopped for and cooked in the private kitchens of some of the world’s most extraordinary gastronomic cultures.

Andaluz

A Food Journey through Southern Spain

By Fiona Dunlop

With beautiful location photography and delicious recipes, this stunning cookbook from Fiona Dunlop is an enthralling Andalusian culinary journey from sierra to sea.

An enthralling Andalusian culinary journey from sierra to sea.

For nearly eight centuries from 711 to 1492, Moorish rule in Andalusía brought about a revolution in Spanish culture, resulting in architectural splendors like the Alhambra as well as a rich culinary history. Andaluz is a quest to illustrate the legacy of the Arabs and Berbers in the kitchens of southern Spain today.

Couscous, rice, eggplant, oranges, apricots, marzipan, and a wealth of spices are just a few ever-present ingredients that owe their influence to the Moorish people—along with a meticulous attention to the cultivation of olive varieties that Andalusía is renowned for. By digging deep into traditional dishes, scouring markets, and learning from home cooks, local tavern owners, and Michelin-starred restaurant chefs, Fiona Dunlop offers a vivid gastronomic window on this region. Entries from the author’s travel diary accompany sumptuous recipes—from Granada in the east to Córdoba at its heart and Seville in the south—bringing a taste of Moorish Spain to kitchens everywhere.

With beautiful food and location photography Andaluz is bound to become the cookbook you will visit time and time again.

Sun Bread and Sticky Toffee

Date Desserts from Everywhere: 10th Anniversary Edition

By Sarah al-Hamad

Photography by: Kate Whitaker

Featuring sensual and delicious date desserts from around the globe, Sun Bread and Sticky Toffee is packed with delicious, natural, and healthy recipes that showcase the versatility of baking with dates.

Sensual and delicious date desserts from around the globe.

Sticky. Sweet. Gooey. Eating a date is like biting into a caramel cloud, its sweet and soft flesh tinged with molasses and flavor. Dates are one of the oldest cultivated foods with over 600 varieties grown around the world today. From California’s thirst-quenching date shakes to the quintessentially British sticky toffee pudding and its luscious butterscotch sauce, to wholesome date and sesame flatbreads, spicy ginger and date jam, and the creamiest, honeyed date cheesecake, Sun Bread and Sticky Toffee: Date Desserts from Everywhere is like a dense, shady date grove, packed with delicious, natural and healthy recipes that demonstrate the versatility of baking with dates and date syrup.

Seeking Palestine

New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home

By Penny Johnson & Raja Shehadeh (ed.)

How do Palestinians live, imagine and reflect on home and exile in this period of a stateless and transitory Palestine and a sharp escalation in Israeli state violence and accompanying Palestinian oppression? How can exile and home be written?

In this volume of new writing, fifteen innovative and outstanding Palestinian writers- essayists, poets, novelists, critics, artists and memoirists- respond with their reflections, experiences, memories and polemics. Their contributions- poignant, humorous, intimate, reflective, intensely political- make for an offering that is remarkable for the candor and grace with which it explores the many individual and collective experiences of waiting, living for, and seeking Palestine.

Contributors include: Lila Abu-Lughod, Susan Abulhawa, Suad Amiry, Rana Barakat, Mourid Barghouti, Beshara Doumani, Sharif S. Elmusa, Rema Hammami, Mischa Hiller, Emily Jacir, Penny Johnson, Fady Joudah, Jean Said Makdisi, Karma Nabulsi, Raeda Sa’adeh, Raja Shehadeh, Adania Shibli.

Veganistan

A Vegan Tour of the Middle East

By Sally Butcher

Photography by: Yuki Sugiura

The newest release from prolific food writer Sally Butcher, Veganistan is full of healthy, accessible, and delicious vegan recipes for everyone, inspired by a Middle Eastern kitchen.

The Middle East is a region lush in its vegetation, a gift to the non-meat-eater. Much of the cuisine is naturally plant-based, with a lot of the flavor of recipes coming from the herbs, spices, cooking methods, and sheer joie de cuisine traditional to Middle Eastern dining.

Vegan diets can often be dismissed as lacking in certain nutrients, but there is no doubt that one thing a Middle Eastern kitchen teaches us is balance: every dish from a traditional kitchen is carefully crafted to offer a balance of “hot” and “cold” elements to satiate the four humors of medieval yore with legumes, grains, nuts, and vegetables galore.

The original mission of The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian was to celebrate vegetables in all their glory, rather than recreating meat dishes, and in Veganistan Sally Butcher starts to play more with seitan, tofu, and tempeh using them as vehicles to showcase the wonderful range of flavor this cuisine offers.

This is not a book written from a moral point of view, but primarily from a food angle, a way of bigging up and celebrating the wonders of Central Asian, Iranian, Turkish, Arab, and East African vegetable cooking and creating a volume of accessible dishes.

Tekebash and Saba

Recipes and Stories from an East African Kitchen

By Saba Alemayoh

From Tigray to the World, A Love Story Through Food

Mother–daughter duo Tekebash and Saba tell their story, and the story of their homeland, Ethiopia, through the lens of food, demonstrating how sharing food from another culture can offer us all a path forward, towards empathy and understanding, and a world that is more cohesive and connected.

Born in Tigray, Tekebash escaped the civil war at the age of 17 to join other refugees in Sudan. She has been on a migration journey ever since. Despite having spent more time abroad than she has at home, she is unequivocally Tigre and has worked with food all her life. Her restaurant, Saba’s Ethiopia, brings Ethiopian food and culture to Melbourne.

Tekebash not only worked with food but loved her daughter Saba through food. The recipes in this book are its backbone and the structure around which personal and cultural stories are woven.

The Grandfathers Speak

Native American Folk Tales of the Lenape People

By (Tree Beard) Hitakonanu'laxk

Beautifully and authentically narrated, these stories tell among other things, of how Nanapush, the Grandfather of Beings and Men, created the earth upon the back of a great turtle; of how Manaka has the Rainbow Crow, flew to the twelfth heaven to receive the gift of fire from the Creator; and of how the Lenapé people came to live along the eastern seaboard of what is now known as the United States.

The Grandfathers Speak is part of the Interlink International Folk Tales Series. Rich in cultural significance, the tales in this series—suitable for both adults and young adults—represent the best, the strangest, and the most curious of the oral literature of peoples whose legends have been largely unavailable in English. Each title in this bestselling series includes a collection of 20 to 30 tales together with an introduction and a historical overview which give the reader compelling insights into the culture, the folk literature, and the lives of the people in the region.

The Amazing Students of Venezuela

By Claudia Bellante

Illustrated by: Elizabeth Builes

Marcelo and Julio show determination and strength every day as they cross the border from Venezuela to Colombia to attend a better school in this empowering picture book.

Marcelo and her cousin Julio live in Venezuela, but every day they get up at dawn to make the arduous journey to cross the border to their school in Colombia. Some days are harder than others and some days they can’t even make it home. But for the amazing students of Venezuela, it is worth it since they know that the more they are able to learn, the more opportunities they will have.

The stories told in the Against All Odds picture book series are true stories of brave boys and girls from different parts of the world, who, with their small everyday actions, beat the odds and achieve something great. The series is intended to promote diversity and acceptance by exposing children to kids’ stories from faraway places facing unique situations or overcoming prejudice

The Mermaids of Jamaica

By Claudia Bellante

Illustrated by: Herikita

A two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner for synchronized swimming inspires Jamaican girls to dedicate themselves to swimming and invest in their futures in this heartening nonfiction picture book.

In the small coastal town of Port Antonio, Jamaica, something unusual is taking place. Many people in Jamaica cannot swim and are afraid of the sea, but the arrival of Olga—a two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner for synchronized swimming—is changing the hearts and minds of young female swimmers who might have otherwise become mothers too soon, before having had a chance to explore their ambitions.

The stories told in the Against All Odds picture book series are true stories of brave boys and girls from different parts of the world, who, with their small everyday actions, beat the odds and achieve something great. The series is intended to promote diversity and acceptance by exposing children to kids’ stories from faraway places facing unique situations or overcoming prejudice

Dreaming in Color

By Uvile Ximba

Written with fierce beauty, this coming-of-age/coming-of-queer story looks at navigating the confusion that is intimacy, sex, and identity.

In her debut novel, Dreaming in Color, Uvile Ximba explores with subtlety, humor, and probing insight the connections between the joyful reclaiming of pleasure and the healing of buried traumas.

As students at university in Makhanda, South Africa during the #RUReferenceList campaign, Langa and her lover Khwezi have a passionate and complex relationship. Puzzling gaps in her memory haunt Langa, yet her dreams are vivid with colors and symbols that hint at a nightmare of forgotten violations and losses. So many secrets—and Langa has had enough of secrets and silences. Who can she turn to? Her mother? Her grandmother? Khwezi? Or herself?

Dreaming in Color is Langa’s story of coming out to herself, of discerning the history behind the closed door of conscious memory.

Meliz’s Kitchen

Simple Turkish-Cypriot Comfort Food and Fresh Family Feasts

By Meliz Berg

Home cook @MelizCooks shares simple, vibrant meals that bring big Turkish-Cypriot flavors to the kitchen every day. Meliz shares her no-fuss family cooking and traditional Cypriot dishes to showcase the melting-pot of spices and flavors found in a Turkish-Cypriot kitchen.

Sunshine flavors everyone will love.

Meliz’s Kitchen is a celebration of the melting-pot of delicious spices and fresh flavors that make a Turkish-Cypriot kitchen.

In this book Meliz shares the best comforting recipes and her easy go-to meals for busy family life. Find inspiration in nine chapters of vibrant, nourishing cooking: Kahvalti (breakfast), Mezze & Salata (dishes and salads to share), Ocak & Kizartma (traditional stovetop dishes), Firin (hearty dishes from the oven), Yahni (easy one-pots and slow-cooking), Kebab & Kofte (barbecue dishes and accompaniments), Ekmek & Hamur Isi (breads, doughs, and pastries) and Kekve Tatlilar (crowd-pleasing sweets).

Recipes include:

Cypriot Breakfast Platter

One-Pot Halloumi & Tomato Pasta

Stuffed Artichokes & Vine Leaves

Cypriot Pasta Bake

Chicken Doner Kebab

Creamy Moussaka

BBQ Wings & Thighs

Halloumi, Olive & Herb Loaf

Tahini & Carob Molasses Baklava

With easy-to-follow steps and no special equipment needed, this book will bring sunshine to your kitchen every day.

The Baghdad Villa

By Zuheir El-Hetti

Love, war, violence, and social disintegration as seen through the eyes of a young Iraqi woman and interpreted through the values and emotions expressed in seven world-famous paintings hanging in her family’s Baghdad villa.

The novel is set in Baghdad following the 2003 American invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein and unleashed chaos. At the center of the narrative is a young woman, Ghosnelban, who belongs to what would have been an aristocratic family under the former Iraqi monarchy and sees herself and her family as guardians of an aristocratic code of noble values and traditions. She witnesses her world and family life collapsing as the violence around her intensifies.

The story encompasses three generations of the same family, and shows the effects of successive coups and wars on Iraqi society by focusing on the uprooting of a well-established family that has deep roots in Iraq.

Ghosnelban interprets the events unfolding around her through detailed descriptive analysis of seven paintings hanging on the walls of a formal reception room in the family’s palatial villa. The family’s fate embodies the wider ruination affecting the country at large.

Pandemic of Delusion

Staying Rational in an Increasingly Irrational World

By Tyson Gill

Resisting the outbreak of virulent delusion in our modern world and contributing to a healthier society by helping people to be more fact-based in their thinking.

As it promised, technology has produced an explosion of information. Unfortunately, much of that information consists of misinformation and seemingly conflicting facts. Our innate capacity to process all these purported facts, to distinguish fact from fiction and truth from lies, has become a nearly impossible challenge.

Yet, it is a challenge that we must meet because actual, verifiable facts and truth do still matter. Pandemic of Delusion is a very readable book that takes you on a wild journey through all of the ways that beliefs are spread and how they break through our defenses to become delusions. It offers practical advice to resist misinformation and to recognize fallacious arguments.

And beyond helping you to merely immunize yourself from delusional thinking, Pandemic of Delusion offers an inspirational vision of lives and societies that embrace the wonder of the universe as seen through science and fact-based thinking.

Folktales for a Better World

Stories of Peace and Kindness

By Elizabeth Laird

Photography by: Mehrdokht Amini

Seven stories celebrating peace, kindness, and forgiveness from seven countries that have all suffered from wars and conflicts in recent times told by an award-winning author.

Will two clans in Ethiopia make peace by throwing their most precious possessions in the river? Can a poor Palestinian shepherd show a rich sultan the value of true kindness? Or will an angel in Afghanistan find a way to turn the selfish Emir into a caring ruler? Buried treasure and an act of forgiveness reunite a father and daughter in Sudan while a camel is the key to choosing a kind and fair ruler for the kingdom of Yemen. Hear the Syrian story of the woodcutter and the lion to discover the meaning of friendship, and then follow nine courageous Uighur princesses of Kashgar, as they bring peace to their kingdom – without any fighting.

The importance of peace and kindness in our lives shines through these timeless, inspirational stories from seven countries, beautifully told and illustrated with empathy and humor.

100 Best Paintings in London

By Geoffrey Smith

Will not ship for the holidays

The only book to provide a single volume introduction to the finest art in London.

100 Best Paintings in London is an essential guide to the cream of the great public collection of art in the capital. Each of the 100 chosen paintings is reproduced in full-color with a vivid description that provides both appreciation and analysis and includes fascinating details of why, how, and where the picture was painted. A biographical chronology of the artist’s life accompanies each entry together with a listing of works by contemporary painters.

Geoffrey Smith’s illuminating text makes you want to look afresh at favorite paintings and invites you to discover some that are not so familiar. From Duccio and van Eyck to Mark Rothko and Anselm Kiefer, 100 Best Paintings in London covers the complete spectrum of the treasures to be found in the city’s unsurpassed galleries.

Contains descriptions of works from: The Courtauld Institute • Dulwich Picture Gallery • The Estorick Collection • Kenwood House • The National Gallery • Sir John Soane’s Museum • Tate Britain • Tate Modern • The V & A • The Wallace Collection.

Provence: The Cookbook

Recipes from the French Mediterranean

By Caroline Rimbert Craig

Photography by: Susan Bell

Caroline Rimbert Craig’s love story with the food and flavors of Southern France is shared through over 100 simple recipesp assed to her from generations of family who have farmed, foraged, and cooked there.

Provence is the fruit and vegetable garden of France, where much of its most beautiful produce is grown. These ingredients, combined with Provence’s unique identity, position, and history have resulted in a cuisine full of heart, balance, and soul—a cuisine that showcases its peoples’ reverence for the produce, the changing seasons, and the land.

Caroline Rimbert Craig’s maternal family comes from the foothills of Mont Ventoux in the South of France, close to the Mediterranean coast, where the sun beats hard and dry, but aromatic herbs, vines, and fruit trees prosper. This is her guide to cooking the Provençale way, for those who want to eat simply but well, who love to cook dishes that rhyme with the seasons, and who want to recreate the flavors of the Mediterranean at home, wherever that may be.

With stunning color photographs to accompany the recipes, the book is also interspersed with shots of Provence’s beautiful landscapes, reflecting the region’s rich culinary culture

New Middle Eastern Street Food: 10th Anniversary Edition

Snacks, Comfort Food, and Mezze from Snackistan

By Sally Butcher

Photography by: Photography by Yuki Sugiura

Will not ship for the holidays

A fabulous collection of quick, healthy, and easy-to-prepare recipes from Snackistan, a fictitious land where tummies are always full, and there’s a slightly naughty smile on every face.

Tenth Anniversary Edition!

A fabulous collection of quick, healthy, and easy-to-prepare recipes from Snackistan, a fictitious land where tummies are always full, and there’s a slightly naughty smile on every face. This book features simple fare that people actually eat on a daily basis: street food, or dishes they prepare at home, or cook to share with friends, or look forward to indulging in at the end of the week. Street food has come of age and, increasingly, formal dining is being nudged aside in favor of mezze-style spreads. In malls and farmers markets across the world, food on the go has become a stylish and popular way to eat.

This book picks out the Middle East’s most exciting street foods and mezze dishes, together with a variety of homey and simple snack recipes elicited from family and friends. Chapters comprise Nuts and Nibbles, Fishy Things, Meat on Sticks, Meat Not on Sticks, Salady Stuff, Hot Veggie Dishes, Mostly Carbs, Desserts, and Something to Wash it Down with. The burst of flavors is intoxicating, as is Sally’s trademark wit and attention to detail—a must-buy for all Middle Eastern food enthusiasts.

100 Best Paintings in New York

By Deanna MacDonald & Geoffrey Smith

100 Best Paintings in New York combines art history, commentary, and tourists’ guide to provide you with a deeper understanding and appreciation of New York’s greatest works of art.

The descriptions draw attention to fascinating details in each work and look at why, where, or for what occasion they were painted. A biographical chronology of each artist accompanies the essays as well as a sample listing of works by other contemporary painters. From Jan van Eyck to Mark Rothko, from Diego Velazquez to Georgia O’Keefe, 100 Best Paintings in New York covers the complete spectrum of masterpieces in New York’s great galleries.

100 Best Paintings in New York will inform and amuse both visitors and residents who wish to make the most of what their city has to offer. This accessible – and occasionally irreverent – guide has been written with both novice and veteran museum-goers in mind.

Contains descriptions of works displayed in: the Brooklyn Museum · the Cloisters · the Frick Collection · the Hispanic Society of America · Metropolitan Museum of Art · MOMA · Neue Gallerie · the Guggenheim Museum · Whitney Museum of American Art

Kilimanjaro

A Photographic Journey to the Roof of Africa

By Michel Moushabeck

Photography by: Hiltrud Schulz

A spectacular collection of images and words that offer a detailed glimpse into the unique beauty and rhythm of Africa’s natural wonder.

Mount Kilimanjaro is the African continent’s highest mountain and the world’s tallest freestanding mountain. It is a geological wonder formed, sculpted, and molded by the natural forces of volcanic fire and glacial ice. At 19,340 feet (5895 meters) high, Kilimanjaro towers above the Great Rift Valley and lies 3 degrees south of the equator, on the northern border of Tanzania, close to southeast Kenya. Kilimanjaro is an accessible mountain that one can climb without the help of any technical equipment. The ascent starts from the cultivated lower slopes with dry blistering heat, through a lush, wet rainforest jungle, into heath and moorland zones, all the way up to the desolate alpine desert landscape and the steep, exposed arctic summit area, where one will experience breathtaking views of the legendary snows of Kilimanjaro.

Moushabeck and Schulz invite you along as they explore and climb Mount Kilimanjaro. In this book they capture the essence of this majestic mountain with over 200 full-color photographs and an engaging and entertaining narrative that smoothly ties together personal observations with the mountain’s history, its people, and its ecology.

A Traveller’s History of Ireland

By Peter Neville

A Traveller’s History of Ireland gives a full and accurate portrait of Ireland from its prehistory right up to the present. The story opens with mysterious, early Celtic Ireland where no Roman stood, through Saint Patrick’s mission to Ireland which began the process of making it “an island of saints,” to the legendary high King Brian Boru and his struggle with Viking and Irish enemies alike.

It moves on through the arrival of the Norman “Strongbow” in the twelfth century, and the beginnings of the difficult and tragic Anglo-Irish relationship. Great historical figures like Hugh O’Neill, Oliver Cromwell, and Jonathan Swift figure, as well as ordinary people like the Londonderry “apprentice boys” who helped change the course of Irish history. The book then moves into modern times with the great revolts of 1798, the horrors of the potato famine, and the careers of the leading constitutional nationalists, Daniel O’Connell and Charles Parnell. The book ends with a description of modern Ireland, and of its two separate Catholic Nationalist and Protestant Unionist traditions.

Amber Revolution

How the World Learned to Love Orange Wine

By Simon J. Woolf

NEW YORK TIMES BEST WINE BOOK OF 2018

A must-have volume for all wine lovers and those who love orange wine.

Written by renowned orange wine expert and award winning writer Simon J. Woolf, Amber Revolution is the world’s first book to tell the full, forgotten story of this ancient wine (white wine made like a red wine) and its modern struggle to gain acceptance. It is a tale of lost identity, the fight for survival, and pioneering winemakers- from the Caucasus to the Adriatic.

White grapes are left in contact with their skins for days, weeks or months during fermentation, creating stunning complexity, unusual aromas and intense flavors. The extended skin contact gives these wines bold amber, russet, or orange tints. The technique is ancient, but the hype is new and fast growing.

This book includes profiles of 180 of the best producers from 20 countries worldwide and is crammed full of all the information you need to find the best orange wines worldwide together with tips for how to buy, enjoy, food-match and age them.

Beautifully illustrated with over 150 specially commissioned photos, Amber Revolution is an essential reference work for any wine lover, sommelier, retailer or producer who loves orange wine.

The Dalai Lama

Leadership and the Power of Compassion

By Ginger Chih

A moving story of an influential global voice and a potent example of what leadership informed by compassion and selflessness could become in the 21st century. The Dalai Lama crafts an intricate tapestry of the Tibetan diaspora with evocative and moving photographs.

Framed with the eye of a photographer, The Dalai Lama: Leadership and the Power of Compassion crafts an intricate tapestry of the Tibetan diaspora, finely woven through accounts from the Dalai Lama’s storied life, the everyday lives of the Tibetan people, and the insights of a leadership coach who has applied the principles of Buddhism in her professional life.

Along the way, evocative and moving photographs of the author’s decade long journey provide deeper context into the Dalai Lama’s organic evolution into a dynamic global leader who has modernized Tibetan culture and shaped a potential humanitarian catastrophe into a thriving, if exiled, community. The Dalai Lama emerges as an influential global voice and a potent example of what leadership informed by compassion and selflessness could become in the 21st century.

The Dalai Lama’s passionate appeal for a spiritual and ethical revolution, which calls for a total reorientation away from our habitual preoccupation with the self, and toward the wider community, has new urgency. Nothing illustrates this concept of global interconnection more than the rapid spread of the global corona virus pandemic, which spared no one and affected every one of us. Because COVID has played out at a global scale, we can see how important a strong, effective, compassionate leader is. The Dalai Lama provides this selfless, compassionate role model.

Ida in the Middle

By Nora Lester Murad

WINNER ARAB AMERICAN BOOK AWARD

2023 WINNER MIDDLE EAST BOOKS AWARD (MEOC) 2023

FINALIST 2024 JANE ADDAMS CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD (JACBA)

Ida, a Palestinian-American girl, eats a magic olive that takes her to the life she might have had in her parents’ village near Jerusalem. An important coming of age story that explores identity, place, voice, and belonging.

Every time violence erupts in the Middle East, Ida knows what’s coming next. Some of her classmates treat her like it’s all her fault—just for being Palestinian! In eighth grade, Ida is forced to move to a different school. But people still treat her like she’ll never fit in. Ida wishes she could disappear.

One day, dreading a final class project, Ida hunts for food. She discovers a jar of olives that came from a beloved aunt in her family’s village near Jerusalem. Ida eats one and finds herself there—as if her parents had never left Palestine! Things are different in this other reality—harder in many ways, but also strangely familiar and comforting. Now she has to make some tough choices. Which Ida would she rather be? How can she find her place?

Ida’s dilemma becomes more frightening as the day approaches when Israeli bulldozers are coming to demolish another home in her family’s village…

For more resources related to Ida in the Middle, check out www.idainthemiddle.com, which includes tools teachers can use to bring Palestine into the classroom. You can also sign up there to get emails about the book, reviews, events related to the book, and other information about Palestine.

Salamati: Hamed’s Persian Kitchen

Recipes and Stories from Iran to the Other Side of the World

By Hamed Allahyari & Dani Valent

Photography by: Armelle Habib

A heartwarming story of resilience, homesickness, and good Persian cooking in 70 accessible recipes

Hamed Allahyari cooks to connect—for that joyful moment you can say “salamati” (Farsi for “health” and “cheers”) around the table. The food of his native Tehran is a resonant and delicious gift, and a way of staying bonded to a country he hasn’t returned to for a decade.

Hamed’s food is anchored in tradition but accessible to all. The recipes are simple, celebratory, appealing, flexible, and full of flavor. As well as working as a chef and caterer, Hamed has road-tested his dishes at hundreds of cooking classes: he melds Persian culinary culture and an understanding of Western palates to create recipes that are truly his—and now ours to share.

Beyond the recipes, Salamati is a gateway to Persia. “It’s sharing my culture,” says Hamed. “It’s my dream that everyone tries Persian food. And with my food, they come into my family. They are sitting with me, with my grandparents, parents, and cousins, talking, sharing, and enjoying the feeling of being together.”

Wanda the Brave

By Sihle Nontshokweni

Illustrated by: Chantelle & Burgen Thorne

Meet Wanda, with her glorious head of hair. Written and illustrated by the South African team who brought you the award-winning book Wanda.

Today, Wanda is visiting the hair salon where she’ll use all the hair secrets Makhulu taught her. But Aunty Ada wants her to straighten her hair with a white chemical. Wanda and her new friend Nkiruka come up with a plan and both girls stand strong and brave in the face of this big challenge.

Bold and zesty, Wanda the Brave is a celebration of girl power, and a reminder that courage and friendship is a mighty force!

Palestine Hijacked

How Zionism Forged an Apartheid State from River to Sea

By Thomas Suarez

How terror was used by Zionist militias to transform Palestine into an apartheid settler state

The Israel-Palestine “conflict” is typically understood to be a clash between two ethnic groups—Arabs and Jews—inhabiting the same land. Thomas Suárez digs deep below these preconceptions and their supporting “narratives” to expose something starkly different: The violent take-over of Palestine by a European racial-nationalist settler movement, Zionism, using terror to assert by force a claim to the land that has no legal or moral basis.

Drawing extensively from original source documents, many revealed here for the first time, Suárez interweaves secret intelligence reports, newly-declassified military and diplomatic correspondence, and the terrorists’ own records boasting of their successes. His shocking account details a litany of Zionist terrorism against anyone in their way—the indigenous Palestinians, the British who had helped establish Zionism, and Jews who opposed the Zionist agenda.

Far from being isolated atrocities by rogue groups, the use of terror was deliberate and sustained, carried out or supported by the same leaders who then established and led the Israeli state. We are still living this history: The book proves that Israel’s regime of Apartheid against the Palestinians and the continued expropriation of their country are not the result of complex historical circumstances, but the intended, singular goal of Zionism since its beginning.

What Shall We Play Now?

By Taghreed Najjar

Illustrated by: Charlotte Shama

A fun picture book about the power of imagination from an award-winning female author and pioneer of children’s literature in the Arab world

Just imagine all the things you can do with a green piece of cloth. Will you turn it into the sail of a pirate ship or into a small tent? Just imagine. Will you turn it into a beautiful butterfly that will fly from one flower to another or into a super heroine that will protect everybody from evil? Just imagine…

Raya and Samar just imagine and have great fun playing with a green piece of cloth. This delightful picture book from the Middle East celebrates the imagination and creativity of children.

Only the Dead

A Levantine Tragedy

By T.J. Gorton

Only the Dead is part adventure story and part exploration of the moral complexities arising from war, brutality, and the desire for revenge

As old Vartan sits reading mystical Persian poetry among the dust and disintegration of war-torn Beirut, the fluted pillars of his decaying house weathered in shadows, his thoughts wander back, inevitably, to another conflict, many years before…

Only the Dead is the story of Vartan Nakashian, a young Armenian from Aleppo caught in the midst of a world war that is proving catastrophic for his people. We follow his journey of love, espionage, tragedy, betrayal, and revenge across the tumultuous Levant of 1915-1918, as the crucible of war and genocide makes a man of the boy we first encountered. Now advanced in years, Vartan ruminates on life, loss, guilt, and the many adventures and horrors of his youth, seeing them mirrored in the fresh catastrophe of the Lebanese Civil War.

This novel—based in part on a real man, a true story—is about the struggle to reconcile conflicting loyalties and affections, the desire for revenge, the search for atonement, and poetry’s power to make sense of the human condition.

Motherland

A Jamaican Cookbook

By Melissa Thompson

Photography by: Patricia Niven & Aaron Dabee

A cookbook charting 500 years of influence on the vibrant cuisine of Jamaica, written by acclaimed food writer Melissa Thompson

Acclaimed food writer and chef Melissa Thompson takes us on a journey to this Caribbean jewel through 80 recipes and more than 500 years of history and influences. The recipes include classic Jamaican favorites, such as Jerk Pork, Braised Oxtail, Ackee & Saltfish, and Peanut Punch, as well as original dishes created with Jamaica’s abundant natural larder and twists on classics.

This beautiful cookbook features in-depth research into the evolution of Jamaica’s food. It charts the contribution of indigenous Jamaicans, the Taino. It follows the impact of colonization, and how the periods under Spanish and British rule left an indelible mark on the nation’s gastronomy, without shying away from their brutality: Eyewitness accounts describe the barbarity of the colonial powers. And it recounts how enslaved men and women from West and Central Africa brought inspiration from home and familiar cooking techniques to create legacy dishes that are still celebrated today. The contribution of Indian and Chinese indentured workers is also examined. These stories are woven into the recipes, so the reader is invested in the dishes they cook.

Girls Rock Indonesia

By Claudia Bellante

Illustrated by: Josefina Schargorodsky

Three young Muslim girls in Indonesia discover their passion for heavy metal music in this empowering new picture book. 

In a small village in Java, Indonesia, three young Muslim girls begin to explore their passion for heavy metal music after watching a Metallica concert on YouTube. They worry about what their parents and friends?and even their Imam?will think about their new interest. But they persevere regardless, and find new meaning in their lives and new ways to connect to their religion.

The stories told in the Against All Odds picture book series are true stories of brave boys and girls from different parts of the world, who, with their small everyday actions, beat the odds and achieve something great. The series is intended to promote diversity and acceptance by exposing children to kids? stories from faraway places facing unfamiliar situations or overcoming prejudice. 

NEW SERIES LAUNCH: The first installments in Crocodile Books’ new Against All Odds children’s books

INSPIRING TRUE STORIES FOR YOUNG READERS: Real life and relatable stories of brave boys and girls from different parts of the world, who, with their small everyday actions, beat the odds and achieve something great

BEAUTIFUL & EXCITING ILLUSTRATIONS: Bright, bold artwork makes this book a fun visual feast for the eyes

ASSETS FOR S&L MARKET: Educator guide and event kit with geography, vocabulary, history, and art activities

PROMOTIONAL STICKERS: Against All Odds series sticker sheets available for indies; 1 sticker sheet per book, while supplies last. Limit 5 per store.

The Wrestling Cholitas of Bolivia

By Claudia Bellante

Illustrated by: Anna Carbone

Two girls in Bolivia, with a passion for wrestling, beat the odds in this new empowering picture book

Noelia and Wara are two girls who live in the city of El Alto, Bolivia. Wrestling is their passion. They are often told that “fighting is for boys.” But despite this resistance, every Sunday they proudly put on the traditional costume of the Cholitas, the Aymara women of Bolivia, and head to the ring, where they would fight with courage and defy all the odds stacked against them.  

The stories told in the “Against All Odds” picture book series are true stories of brave boys and girls from different parts of the world, who, with their small everyday actions, beat the odds and achieve something great. The series is intended to promote diversity and acceptance by exposing children to kids’ stories from faraway places facing unique situations or overcoming prejudice. 

The Bookseller’s Notebooks

By Jalal Barjas

Winner of the 2021 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, this novel explores themes of loneliness, homelessness, and mental illness.?

After losing his job and refuge, Ibrahim al-Warraq, a bookseller, decides to live with the homeless people in his city and assuming the identities of the heroes of the novels he has read.

Set between 1947 and 2019, this novel is based on several notebooks of stories about people facing different hardships, such as losing their homes or not knowing who their families are. Their interwoven destinies reveal the value of the house, as a symbol of one’s homeland, as opposed to the surrounding ruination. The central character is Ibrahim the bookseller, a cultured man, and voracious reader of novels who takes on the identity of the protagonists in novels which appeal to him.?He becomes a professional thief who robs banks and the very wealthy in order to help the abject poor and impose his own form of justice like Robin Hood.?But due to his isolation, loneliness, and maltreatment by a cruel world, he suffers mental illness and descends into full schizophrenia. He attempts suicide, before meeting a mysterious woman who will change his life.

As events unfold, Barjas opens up many surprises for his reader, illustrating through his flawed characters the ruined state and complete emptiness of the world. In intensely poetic language, he throws light on a totally schizophrenic reality in his country, and brilliantly uses all the tools of emotional stress and engagement and of psychological exploration of human behavior that narration necessitates.

Chinese-ish

Home Cooking Not Quite Authentic, 100% Delicious

By Rosheen Kaul & Joanna Hu

Photography by: Armelle Habib

A cookbook celebrating the blending of cultures and identity through food, with a bounty of Chinese-influenced dishes from all over South-East Asia

As immigrants with Chinese heritage, Rosheen Kaul and Joanna Hu spent their formative years living between (at least) two cultures and wondering how they fitted in. Food was a huge part of this journey; should they cling to the traditional comfort of their parents’ varied culinary heritage, attempt to assimilate wholly by learning to love mashed potatoes, or forge a new path where flavor and the freedom to choose trumped authenticity? They went with option three.

Chinese-ish celebrates the confident blending of culture and identity through food—take what you love and reject what doesn’t work for you. You’ll find a bounty of inauthentic Chinese-influenced dishes from all over South-East Asia, including all the best rice and noodle dishes, wontons, and dumplings. There are also plenty of tips and shortcuts to demystify any tricky-sounding techniques, and a reassuring list of pantry staples and where to find them.

Home Food: 100 Recipes to Comfort and Connect

Ukraine � Cyprus � Italy � England � And Beyond

By Olia Hercules

Photography by: Joe Woodhouse

Acclaimed chef and food writer Olia Hercules shares 100 comforting recipes that can unite us no matter where we are from and where we end up

In her most personal book yet, Olia Hercules distills a lifetime of kitchen curiosity into her 100 most loved recipes. She draws on her broad influences: her childhood in Eastern Europe; her years in Cyprus and Italy; her simple, plant-centric family meals at home in London; and the special festive recipes she has gleaned along the way. All these seemingly diverse recipes are centered in comfort and connection. These are recipes that have been hand written, handed down, and shared among friends: “They are nostalgic like the potatoes of my childhood, they share trade secrets like Bisque-style red mullet pasta, they interweave every day like Joe’s beet, feta, and potatoes, and they make everything ok like Life-giving rhubarb cake. The foods we choose to cook time and again are part of what makes us, and when we share those recipes, we give a little of ourselves.” In this book Olia gives us her food story through her very favorite recipes.

The Dispersal

By Inaam Kachachi

Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

Tashari, the title of the novel in Arabic, is an Iraqi word for a shot from a hunting rifle, which scatters creatures in all directions. The word tashari expresses the scattering of Iraqis as a people across the globe and the separation from home and loved ones that pursues them.

The Dispersal, follows the career of Wardiyah Iskander, a physician working in the Iraq countryside in the 1950s. Delivering babies and tending to the many health needs of her rural women patients, she struggles to improve care for them. But as the years pass, the upheavals the country faces continue to worsen. Her family, like many others, is pressed to leave. Wardiyah finally goes, arriving in France. There her poet niece helps her now elderly aunt to get settled and, reflecting on their family’s dispersal, to tell her story.

Wardiyah develops a bond with her niece’s son Iskander, who has grown up in France alienated from his extended family, his language, and his culture. As he gets to know his great-aunt, the doctor, he learns more about his people’s calamities and extraordinary heritage. He is inspired to construct a virtual graveyard online, a digital resting place where families can be reunited again.

Inaam Kachachi’s unhurried, spontaneous reflection on the closest ties of family evokes quiet power and beauty, relayed by the warmth of Inam Jaber’s translation. Throughout it, Doctor Wardiyah’s journey conveys her dedication to the healing properties of trust and belonging, treasures lost whenever any homeland falls prey to the Beast of division and conflict.

Forever Beirut

Recipes and Stories from the Heart of Lebanon

By Barbara Abdeni Massaad

Photography by: Barbara Abdeni Massaad

A new cookbook from the bestselling author of Soup for Syria to support the Lebanese Food Bank and help families in dire need of food after the devastating blast and ensuing economic collapse

Beirut, nicknamed “Paris of the East,” is the capital of Lebanon. It is the culinary capital of the Arab world, with an unmatched cuisine that has ancient roots and is influenced by a number of civilizations and cooking styles, including Arab, Turkish, and French. It is one of the oldest cities in the world and one of the most cosmopolitan and religiously diverse in the region. Situated on the Mediterranean coast and flanked by the majestic Mount Lebanon, it boasts an abundance of flavorful ingredients and spices, including whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and seafood. 

Written by renowned Lebanese chef and award-winning cookbook writer Barbara Abdeni Massaad, Forever Beirut is a collection of 100 easy-to-prepare recipes that celebrate Beirut’s rich culinary heritage, its resilience, and healing power. It is Barbara’s way of honoring the city of her childhood, her dreams, her Lebanese family kitchen, and the food that roots her. It is filled with stories and anecdotes about the customs, food, people, and traditions, with sections for soups, salads, breads and savory pastries, mezze, kibbeh, grilling, main dishes, pickles and preserves, and sweets.

With beautiful food and location photography, Forever Beirut is a must-have for cooks who love healthful and delicious Middle Eastern food.

Only in Seville

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

Discover Seville’s colorful history, astonishing architecture and dynamic street life with this explorer’s guide to Spain’s most alluring city.

It features more than 55 fascinating and unusual historical sites, including grand palaces and closed convents, artistic havens and secluded patios, fervent traditions and epicurean delights. From Moorish minarets and medieval shipyards to Andalusia’s tallest tower and the most modern suspension bridge, this guide is a must-have for visitors. The author visits the world’s largest wooden structure, Spain’s oldest tapas bar, a museum of tile making, and a former royal cigar factory. Escape the crowds and set off on your own urban expedition with the Only In Guides!

The Other End of the Sea

By Alison Glick

A stirring story of love discovered in unexpected places, growing us beyond who we thought we were—or imagined we could become

Summer, 1981—Following the death of her father, Becky Klein, an adventurous, naive young woman from the Midwest, sets out for the Middle East, in search of her Jewish roots. She discovers something more, in a Gaza garden near a refugee camp by the sea. There she befriends the garden’s owner, a Palestinian activist who has served time in Israeli jails. As their relationship grows, Rebecca finds herself drawn into a story of roots unlike the one she had imagined.

The West Bank, Cairo, Yarmouk, Benghazi—before long, their romance careens across a region in flames, child in tow, wrestling with conflicting maps of love, family and home.

Moving, yet brimming with flashes of humor, Alison Glick’s tangle with the search for purpose and commitment yields a bracing, radiant story for these times.

Bosnian War Posters

By Daoud Sarhandi-Williams

Bosnian War Posters is a unique compilation of posters and political graphic design. It includes key archive photos from the war as well as new photos that put all the images in context today.

This book illustrates the entire conflict: from April 1992—when the first shots were fired in Sarajevo—to December 1995—when peace was agreed upon in Dayton, Ohio. Subsequent images depict the post-war reconstruction period and the hunt for war criminals. The posters were gathered together in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia shortly after the Bosnian war ended. They form the only large, pan-Bosnian collection of such material that exists, offering an eye-witness account of the war from the point of view of those who lived through all its horrors.

A unique pictorial study of the bloodiest European conflict since 1945, Bosnian War Posters will engage all those interested in graphic design, poster art, the tragic story of Yugoslavia, and the politics of nationalism in the modern age.

Babylink: Luna and the Moon

By Laura Wittner

Illustrated by: Pum Pum

Enjoy the cool and colorful illustrations by Argentinian street artist, known as Pum Pum, in this early concept board book

Two characters, Luna and the Moon, introduce children to basic concepts like above, below, far and close. A wonderful bedtime story for babies and toddlers!

Mystery Bottle

By Kristen Balouch

Illustrated by: Kristen Balouch

Winner of the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award

A delightful picture book that shows us that love has no borders 

A boy in Brooklyn receives a package from Iran. When he opens up the mysterious bottle that lies within, a great wind transports him over the oceans and mountains, straight into the arms of his grandfather. Despite being separated by politics and geography, the boy and his Baba Bazorg can share an extraordinary gift, the bond of their love.

Glory to God in the Lowest

Journeys to an Unholy Land

By Donald E. Wagner

A personal, political, and religious journey from Evangelical Christian faith and conservative politics to solidarity with the poor and advocacy for anti-war, anti-racism, and Palestinian rights.

After serving for five years as a pastor in a remarkable Black church, Donald Wagner comes to fully understand the original sin of racism. As his journey continues, he encounters another marginalized people—the Palestinians—and witnesses their struggle for justice and equality. Touched by their resilience and fight against injustice, he leaves the pastorate to assume full time work as an advocate for Palestinian political and human rights.

The memoir begins in mid-September 1982, with a gut-wrenching day interviewing survivors of the Sabra-Shatila massacre in Lebanon, as they wept and waited for the bodies of family members to be pulled from the rubble. Donald Wagner’s conversation with the local Imam ended with a challenge: “You must return home and tell what you have seen. This is all we ask. Go back and tell the truth.”

Glory to God in the Lowest is a metaphor for his counter intuitive journey with the victims of the “chosen people” in the “unholy land,” also called historic Palestine or Israel. The irony of the journey reminds us that God is everywhere especially with the disinherited, the victims of the powerful, including the victims of Israeli oppression.

The memoir touches on history and includes political analysis and theological reflection. In it, Donald Wagner describes Israel’s continued colonization and destruction of Palestinian lives and chronicles his involvement in a grassroots movement of resistance that demands justice based on full equality, an end to the Israeli military occupation and settler colonization project, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and full political rights for the Palestinian people.

Filled with stories—some humorous and some shocking—as well as encounters with people of every race, gender, and religious affiliation working below the radar, this book will inspire, challenge, and offer a narrative that envisions a transformed “unholy land,” where justice, liberation, and equality for all is the reality for every citizen.

Sitti’s Bird

A Gaza Story

By Malak Mattar

Photography by: Malak Mattar

A sensitive and heart warming story of how a little girl in Gaza finds strength and hope through her discovery of painting

Malak is a little girl who lives in Gaza with her parents. She goes to school, plays in the ocean, and visits Sitti’s house on Fridays. One day while she is in school, bombings begin. She spends the next 50 days at home with her parents worrying and feeling scared, until one day she picks up her paintbrush …

Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story is a unique children’s picture book, written and illustrated by Palestinian artist, Malak Mattar. Reflecting her experiences of childhood in occupied Palestine, Malak’s story brings warmth and wonder to children as it tells of her rebirth as an artist during the 2014 airstrikes on Gaza. It is the story of a young girl whose love for her family and discovery of art help her channel her fears and overcome traumas that few of us can imagine—traumas shared by countless children in Gaza and around the world.

Malak began painting at age 13. Unable to leave Gaza, she built up a reputation for her artwork through social media, garnering attention and praise from around the world. Now Malak’s paintings have been featured in exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe and she continues to be an important Palestinian voice on social media.

“Palestine is the place where I was inspired by the first art piece I saw, the place where I started painting, and where I grew up with a family who supported me in my journey. The struggles and the injustice I have witnessed in my life in Gaza inspired me to advocate for Palestine and Palestinian women through art and storytelling.” — Malak Mattar 

The King of India

A Novel

By Jabbour Douaihy

The story of a Lebanese murder case set against the backdrop of sectarian animosity
Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

In mysterious circumstances, the body of Zakaria Mubarak is found in an orchard on the outskirts of his village of Tel Safra in northern Lebanon. He had just returned from a long exile in Europe, the US, and Africa, carrying with him a painting by Marc Chagall, the “Blue Violinist,” a gift from his girlfriend in Paris. Suspicion falls on the cousins, who may have killed him to get their hands on a treasure supposedly buried underneath the house built by their grandmother when she returned from America.

As investigator Abu Khalid wrestles with conflicting evidence surrounding Zakaria’s death, he is drawn into a picture of the victim’s life, one that recalls fables of gold, sibling strife, the love of French women, false promises of revolution, and the corruption and sectarian enmities that have plagued their homeland.

A riveting meditation on the riddle of a crime, Paula Haydar’s eloquent translation pays fitting homage to a compassionate, guiding light of Lebanese fiction.

Egyptian-American Journeys

An Anthology

By Fikry F. Andrawes & Mahmoud A. El-Shazly

Egyptians are relative newcomers to the United States. For thousands of years, ruling powers came and went, but the inhabitants of the Nile valley tended to stay in the land of their birth. They rarely emigrated from Egypt.
Modern times have seen a notable reversal. Successive waves of emigration from Egypt started after the Second World War. Independence from colonial rule, the creation of the state of Israel, and the 1956 War against England, France, and Israel caused increased political instability in the region. Small numbers of Egyptians began to leave the country. But after the 1967 War with Israel, the trickle became a flood. Many Egyptians became disillusioned with the governmental system and decided to emigrate.

Why did they leave Egypt? How did they adjust to and integrate into their new lives in the US? How did they relate to their motherland? The answers to these questions can be found in this anthology. The autobiographical essays include personal reflections of thirty-two Egyptian-American women and men from diverse backgrounds, living in cities and towns across the United States. They include engineers, medical doctors, taxi drivers, business people, scientists, stay-at-home moms, Egyptologists, artists, teachers, and university professors, among others. There are Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheists.

Egyptians immigrated to the US for a variety of reasons: educational, political, religious, and economic. Some were pushed out of Egypt by adverse circumstances; others were pulled toward the United States seeking new opportunities. Often it was a combination of both.

Contributors include: Annie Whitney • Awatef Hamed • Dina Samir • Fayek Andrawes • Fekri A. Hassan • Fikry Andrawes • Gamal Omar • Giselle Hakki • Hisham Issawi • Joyce Zonana • Lofty Basta • Magda Saleh • Mahmoud F. Agha • Marlene Barsoum • Maysaa Barakat • Mohamed Elgamal • Mona Michail • Mona Mobarak • Moustafa Elkhashab • Naeem Mady • Nahla Bakry • Mahmoud EL-Shazly • Nimet Habachy • Norm Toma • Rawia El Wassimy-Agha • Reda Athanasios • Samia I. Spencer • Samir Ansary • Sherif Abou Sabh • Sherif Nasr • Souheir Eldefrawy Elmasry • Sylvia Iskander • Tarek Nazir Saadawi

My Damascus

By Suad Amiry

A nostalgic voyage that reveals the Syrian capital’s majestic past

Writer and architect, Suad Amiry, was born in an old neighborhood of Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. In My Damascus she takes her reader by the hand through not only the narrow alleys and lively souqs adjacent to the grand Umayyad Mosque, but also into the intimate spaces of her rich merchant grandfather’s Baroudi Mansion.

Through a web of interwoven personal stories and an intricate mix of simple, complicated or sometimes devious characters, Amiry travels across space and time, spanning three generations of family history. The Baroudi women animate the story and sparkle like no others: Teta, Amiry’s grandmother, rendered mute after her husband’s great betrayal; her cousin, Norma, torn between love for her adoptive mother and longing for a real mother she will never know; Fatima and Ghalia, Karimeh and Laila, maids and aunts, in a kaleidoscope of vignettes.

Through them Amiry traces the social and political history of Greater Syria from the Ottoman Empire era until its present-day devastation, juxtaposing them with the most intimate, loving, often contentious, family relations and secrets. In the end, her Damascus becomes a metaphor for a dispersed family and a lost past, as well as an elegy for a city she can no longer claim as her own.

PEN

An Illustrated History

By Carles Torner & Jennifer Clement, Peter McDonald, Rachel Potter, Carles Torner & Laetitia Zecchini

One hundred years of protecting freedom of expression–literature knows no frontiers

Defending freedom of expression • Supporting persecuted writers • Promoting literary culture

What was PEN’s role in shaping the very concept of human rights even before it was adopted by the United Nations in 1948? How did PEN develop fundamental ideas on free speech as well as the equality of languages and literatures?

This book tells the extraordinary story of how writers from around the world placed the celebration of literature and the defense of free speech at the center of humanity’s struggle against repression and terror. The extraordinary writers who have been PEN cases is a history of bravery and include, Federico García Lorca, Stefan Zweig, Musine Kokalari, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Anna Politkovskaya, Hrant Dink, Svetlana Alexievich, and many others.

PEN was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship, intellectual co-operation, and exchange between writers from around the world. It has grown into a worldwide network of writers, a community extended to more than 100 countries who for 100 years has worked to celebrate all literatures without exception and protect freedom of expression.

Today, PEN plays a unique part in the defense of free expression, celebration of literary excellence, amplification of marginalized voices, and the fostering of dialogue across political and ideological boundaries.

Foot Trodden

Portugal and the Wines that Time Forgot

By Simon J. Woolf & Ryan Opaz

NEW YORK TIMES BEST WINE BOOK OF 2021

A stunning book on one of Europe’s top wine-producing countries

Portugal’s rich wine culture dates back at least two millennia. Its vineyards teem with fascinating native grape varieties and its cellars harbor heritage wine styles and ancient techniques (including foot treading in stone troughs) that have died out elsewhere.

Foot Trodden is a book for everyone who loves a good story, wine, Portugal or modern social history—and for anyone who wants to dig deeper into Portuguese culture and the Portuguese soul. Written in an accessible, narrative style, this book is above all else about the people behind the wines: the challenges they faced, what drives them, and how they succeeded against the odds to put Portugal on the map.

With 80 specially commissioned photos, beautiful layout and design, Foot Trodden is crammed full of detail and depth about the wines and winemaking, but it’s emphatically not a text book or a Master of Wine study guide. You don’t need to be a wine geek or a history nut to enjoy it—this book is written for everyone.

Through eight chapters, Foot Trodden takes you on a journey from north to south, from the past to the future. The diversity of characters, landscapes and wines will have you salivating for your next bottle of Portuguese wine—and dreaming of the moment when you visit these historic winemaking regions.

Ammu

Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul

By Asma Khan

Book Riot’s Most Anticipated Books of 2022
Food 52’s Cookbooks We Can’t Wait For in 2022
Food & Wine Best Cookbooks for Spring 2022
Asma Khan named Activist Chef 2022 by Le Cordon Bleu 

A new cookbook from the star of Netflix’s Chef’s Table and one of the world’s most prominent female chefs

A heart-warming cookbook of comforting aromatic Indian flavors: Indian food from home, cooked with heart

Ammu is a collection of recipes from Asma Khan’s childhood, her Indian family kitchen. It is a celebration of where she comes from, of home cooking, and the inextricable link between food and love. It is also a chance for Asma to honor her ammu—mother—and to share with us the recipes that made her and rooted her to home.

This book is a joyful celebration of memories of food, and its power to heal, restore, and comfort. It includes her ammu’s comfort food from childhood, the recipes with which she was taught to cook, celebratory food for special occasions, and slow-cooked recipes passed through the generations of her family.

The recipes and the memories she shares all possess something that is universal: food is a way for us to have this conversation about how similar we all are—how it connects us and unites us beyond differing appearances, accents, races and backgrounds.

With stunning food and family photos, this cookbook is a must-have for cooks and lovers of Indian food.

Skirting History

Holocaust Refugee to Dissenting Citizen

By Eva S. Moseley

How public events affect private lives is a Leitmotiv of this moving memoir. Eva and her secular Jewish family managed to evade the Holocaust and lesser public disasters, but not some private ones. They were able to leave Vienna a year after the Nazi Anschluss (Annexation) of Austria. In New York and several other places and cultures, she evolved from a shy, often fearful child and adolescent to an increasingly self-confident feminist and outspoken peace activist.

She married George Moseley believing he was the “black sheep” of his right-wing military family. While his political views and attitude toward her Jewishness sometimes wavered, she remained true to her parents’ social-democratic principles and the “Jewish value” of justice for everyone. Family relations and troubles play out in a context of the Cold War and changes in Jewish status with the rise of Israel. After a not-so-amicable divorce and George’s violent death (an unsolved murder?), her attitude toward Jewishness changed because of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.

Worried about the future her offspring—and everyone else—will face, she devoted much of her time as a dissenting citizen concerned with issues ranging from nuclear weapons and climate change to advocacy for Palestinian rights and opposing unquestioning US support of militarized Israel.

The Body by the Shore

By Tabish Khair

A novel of suspense and intrigue set in the post-pandemic world

Harris Maloub, a killer with an erased official past, now in his fifties, is visited by someone who could not be alive and given an assignment. In Aarhus, Denmark, Jens Erik, police officer on pre-retirement leave, somehow cannot forget the body of a Black man recovered from the sea some years ago. On an abandoned oil rig in the North Sea, turned into a resort for the very rich, Michelle, a young Caribbean woman, realizes that the man she has followed to this job is not what he claims to be. And neither is the rig, where a secret laboratory bares to her a face that is neither human nor animal. Behind all this, there lurks the ghost of a seminar in 2007: most of the participants of that seminar are dead or untraceable. Why was their obscure research on plants and fungi and microbes so important? What is the secret that killed them? What is the weapon that powerful syndicates are trying to obtain – or develop?

Narrated from the perspective of the post-pandemic world around 2030, but moving back in time to cover all of the 21st century, and even bits and pieces from the 20th and the 19th, The Body by the Shore is a novel of suspense and speculation about the complexity of life and intricacy of the earth. It is also a novel about reason and emotion, love and despair, greed and hope, human beings and microbes. When the narrative strands come together, a world of great terror and beauty is revealed to the reader.

Taste Tibet

Family Recipes from the Himalayas

By Julie Kleeman & Yeshi Jampa

Dumplings, Noodles, and Bowls for Comfort, Pleasure, and Wellbeing

Nourishing, simple, seasonal food that heals as well as fuels:
This way of eating might be popular today, but it has been traditional in Tibet for over 8,000 years. Taste Tibet is a collection of over 80 recipes from the Tibetan Plateau, written for today’s home cook. Create comforting soups and stews, discover the secrets of hand-pulled noodles, and learn everything you need to know about making and eating momo dumplings, Tibet’s most legendary and addictive culinary export.

Alongside the recipes, award-winning food writer Julie Kleeman and Tibetan cook Yeshi Jampa, who run the Taste Tibet restaurant and food stall, interweave stories of Yeshi’s childhood in Tibet, and the shared love of food that brought them together. They reveal nomadic Himalayan food culture and practices, including mindful eating and communal cooking—a way of life that celebrates family, togetherness, and respect for food—while exploring the relationship between landscape and diet, evoking the simple, subtle, and unique flavors of Tibet.

Saka Saka

South of the Sahara � Adventures in African Cooking

By Anto Cocagne

A continent with a great diversity of climates, Africa has a rich culinary heritage and a formidable wealth of produce and recipes with varied cuisines and flavors.

In her debut cookbook, Anto Cocagne—Chef Anto—takes us on a unique food journey and introduces us to the best pan-African recipes from Gabon, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, Congo, and beyond. We will discover the main characteristics of these cuisines, the specialties of each region, the produce, the ideal pantry, the basics, as well as mouthwatering recipes for appetizers, main courses, side dishes, street food, desserts, and drinks.

And since no one evokes a cuisine better than its daughters and sons, we will meet famous African personalities who tell stories about their favorite dishes, their family cooking memories, and what these recipes represent for them today.

With stunning food and landscape photography, complemented by beautiful and colorful design, this book is an ode to conviviality, generosity, and positivity. It is a love letter to Africa.

A Storm of Horses

The Story of Artist Rosa Bonheur

By Ruth Sanderson

You can order signed copies of all Ruth Sanderson titles! Write ‘signed copy’ in the note section at checkout. 

2023 Rise Feminist Literature Honoree

 2023 Rainbow Book List Honoree

An inspiring picture book about Rosa Bonheur, the most famous and best-selling painter of her century

In a stunning ode to underrepresented women everywhere, award-winning illustrator Ruth Sanderson tells the untold story of French artist Rosa Bonheur in this picture book biography.

Rosa Bonheur was born in 1822 in France at a time when young women had limited options beyond being a wife and mother. But Rosa wouldn’t stand for this. She wore pants, rode horses astride, and often broke society’s rules. She wanted to be a famous painter just like her father. Female artists at the time were encouraged to paint domestic scenes of children and family, but Rosa was determined to capture the unbridled wild beauty of horses.

Her masterpiece The Horse Fair was eight feet high and sixteen feet wide. Rosa went on to become the most celebrated artist of her time with paintings purchased by art collectors, museums, and galleries around the world. With the decline in popularity of realistic painting, Rosa’s trailblazing story was almost forgotten. 

Revel at the bravery and fortitude of young Rosa as you take in Ruth Sanderson’s immaculate rendition of her life and artistry. 

Download a teacher’s guide here

Babylink: Animal Opposites

By Marcos Farina

Illustrated by: Marcos Farina

Revel in the warm, inviting, retro-style illustrations from Argentinian creator, Marcos Farina, in these early concepts board books featuring Animal Opposites and Colors In the Garden.  

Small or large?

Few or many? 

Hot or cold?

Teach your child early concepts while they delight in the playful depictions of some of their favorite animals. They can even spot subtle references to their favorite fairytale characters within the pages. Using whitespace and high contrast, graphic illustrations, these books make the perfect first gift for baby and toddler development. 

Babylink: Colors in the Garden

By Marcos Farina

Illustrated by: Marcos Farina

Revel in the warm, inviting, retro-style illustrations from Argentinian creator, Marcos Farina, in these early concepts board books featuring Colors in the Garden and Animal Opposites.

In the garden you will find…

Yellow dandelions

Green clovers

Pink cherry blossoms

Teach your child early concepts while they delight in the playful depictions of colors found in the garden! Featuring an eclectic collection of plants and animals, children will recognize their favorites and may learn about a new plant or two! Using whitespace and high contrast graphic illustrations, these books make the perfect first gift for baby and toddler development.

Forest Fighter

The Story of Chico Mendes

By Anita Ganeri

Illustrated by: Margaux Carpentier

A picture book that tells the important story of Chico Mendes, who led the fight to protect the Amazon rainforest and demand fair treatment for the people whose livelihoods depended on it

Chico Mendes lived in the depths of the Amazon rainforest where trees grew tall and strong and wildlife roamed freely. From the age of 8, Chico worked with his father collecting sap from trees that could be sold to make rubber. Rubber tappers were very poor and the rainforest was increasingly being destroyed by burning and logging, threatening their livelihoods. Chico knew he had to take a stand. He became a spokesperson for the community, fighting hard to preserve the Amazon rainforest, and speaking up for the rights of other rubber tappers. He won several international awards for his campaigns, but the loggers still wouldn’t stop. At the age of 44, Chico was murdered by one of the loggers.

Grippingly written by award-winning author, Anita Ganeri, and vibrantly illustrated by Margaux Carpentier, Forest Fighter tells the inspiring story of Chico Mendes, who was not afraid to speak up for others and worked tirelessly to protect the rainforest. It depicts the incredible wildlife and peoples who co-exist there and shows why it is so important that all rainforests are protected.

• AWARD WINNING AUTHOR: Anita Ganeri has written over 300 books, including the best-selling Horrible Geography series
• NOTED ILLUSTRATOR: Illustrated by Margaux Carpentier, a celebrated artist, printmaker, and children’s book illustrator named in Taschen’s The Illustrator: 100 Best from Around the World; she has over 12k followers on social media
• ACTIVISM FOR YOUNG READERS: Forest Fighter is the latest in Crocodile Books’ popular social and environmental justice series that includes Planting Peace by Gwendolyn Hooks
• EARTH DAY PROMOTION: Print & online ads targeted at school and library markets tied to World Planting Day/International Day of Forests (March 21) and Earth Day (April 22)
• TARGETED PUBLICITY OUTREACH: Dedicated campaign to children’s environmental, science, and social justice publications: NatGeo Kids, The Natural Parent, Cricket, Ranger Rick, The Week Junior, Zoobooks, Owl, and Chirp, among others
• PRE-ORDER CAMPAIGN FOR SCHOOLS: Plant a Tree promotion aimed at classrooms, libraries, and independent bookstores
• FEATURED TITLE AT S&L CONFERENCES: Promotion at school and library conferences, including Winter Institute, ALA, TLA, and SLJ Picture Book Palooza

Amber & Rye: A Baltic Food Journey

Estonia � Latvia � Lithuania

By Zuza Zak

Longlisted for the 2021 André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards

A culinary journey through Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

In the Baltics, two worlds meet: the Baltic Sea connects Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, bringing with it cultural exchange and culinary influences. All three Baltic capitals, Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius, are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, steeped in history and culture.

Amber & Rye explores this exciting part of Eastern Europe, guiding you around the capitals, sharing stories from the locals, and discovering a dynamic, new style of cooking. Contextualized within the Baltics’ rich history and culture, this food journey is a doorway to a deeper understanding of what makes the region so exciting.

The recipes in this book explore new culinary horizons—grounded in Baltic traditions yet inspired by contemporary trends—making them modern, unique, and easy to recreate at home. In addition to the food and stories of travel, there are snippets of poetry, literature, songs, and proverbs, adding a rich layer of context that makes Amber & Rye a cultural reference point for travelers as well as a showcase for the vibrant new cuisine of the Baltic States.

Adrift

By Heidi E.Y. Stemple

Illustrated by: Anastasia Suvorova

A timely and relevant picture book about the power of community

Finding himself alone and scared in the middle of a storm, a small mouse finds comfort and strength when he sees another boat and is joined by others. They ride out the storm together—close enough to see each other, but not close enough to crash. 

In a gentle metaphor for the global pandemic, Adrift is a way to start conversations with young readers about fear, hope and being together even from afar. It was written by award-winning children’s author Heidi E. Y. Stemple while she was in lockdown missing her friends and family. Her beautiful words are brought to life by Anastasia Suvorova, who has won high acclaim for illustrating stories about nature, children, dreams, traveling, magic, hope, and kindness.

Memoirs of a Militant

My Years in the Khiam Women's Prison

By Nawal Qasim Baidoun

Shattering the notion that Muslim women did not play an active role in armed resistance and national liberation struggles

“In order to carry on with life in prison, you must believe you will be there forever.”

In the haunting and inspiring Memoirs of a Militant: My Years in the Khiam Women’s Prison Nawal Baidoun offers us her first-person account of the life of a young woman activist imprisoned for four years, as well as the events leading up to her arrest and detention. Born into a nationalist family in Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, not far from the location of the prison itself, Baidoun, like so many others, found herself compelled to take up arms to resist the Israeli occupation. Her memoir skillfully weaves together two stories: that of the oppressive conditions facing ordinary people and families in South Lebanon, and that of the horrors of daily life and the struggle for survival inside the prison itself.

Arrested for her role in planning the assassination of the well-known Israeli agent and collaborator, Husayn Abdel Nabi, Baidoun was at one point detained with Soha Bechara, a fellow militant whose similar operation is better known. Her activism rooted in her Islamic faith, Baidoun shatters the notion that Muslim women did not play an active role in the armed resistance. Much like her sisters in Algeria and Palestine, Nawal Baidoun belongs to a generation of Muslim women in the Arab world who played a significant role in their national liberation struggles. She describes the intense mental and physical torture she endured, and her refusal to confess despite this. Memoirs of a Militant offers us rare and unique insight into the strength and courage of Baidoun in extreme circumstances and conditions. Nawal Baidoun herself has said that she wrote this book as a sort of history lesson for the generations who come after her, to show the ways in which women actively took part in the resistance and struggle against the occupation. Her strongly abolitionist message about prisons and the need to liberate all prisoners and detainees resonates strongly today, as does her call for solidarity in the face of injustice.

The Kitchen Witch

Seasonal Recipes, Lotions, and Potions for Every Pagan Festival

By Soraya

An essential guide to following a Pagan/Wiccan lifestyle

You don’t need to be Wiccan to enjoy this friendly book of home cooking and natural remedies. To the kitchen witch, every recipe is like a little spell bringing the opportunity to create love and positive energy in the home and for loved ones.

The word “witch” comes from the words “wise” or “wisdom” and witches or Wiccans originally were called “The Wise Ones.” They study natural remedies and the influences of the cycles of the moon and the planets. Witches seek to harm no one, knowing that the energy they send out comes back threefold. Wicca is a peaceful, balanced, and harmonious way of life. This year-round guide to seasonal recipes and rituals for all the pagan festivals will be invaluable to Wiccans and those wishing to celebrate the good things that are given to us by the land.


The Kitchen Witch follows the eight pagan festivals: Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, and Mabon. These festivals celebrate birth, life, death, rebirth, and union, and involve sharing food with loved ones or friends. In this book, you will find delicious recipes to accompany each of the eight festivals, using a variety of seasonal foods and ingredients commonly found in most kitchens. There is also information on herbs, plants, spices, flowers, and essential oils that you can use for spell or circle work, and homemade lotions and potions. 

This book is a guide for the everyday witch that can be enjoyed by everyone. 

Eeny Up Above

By Jane Yolen

Illustrated by: Kathryn Brown

Curious Eeny Mole emerges from her dark hole home to discover the world up above

Eeny Mole lives with her family at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. One day she discovers something wonderful Up Above. And she goes exploring.

The amazingly prolific Jane Yolen, has been called “America’s Hans Christian Andersen.” She is the distinguished author of over 365 books, including Fairy Tale Feasts, Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts, Owl Moon and Devil’s Arithmetic. She lives on an old farm in western Massachusetts with numerous moles who do not seem to be afraid of anything. She enjoys taking walks along the river near her house and visiting people, including her editors—in fact, she wrote this book in the office of one of them.

The Seafood Shack

Food and Tales from the Scottish Highlands

By Kirsty Scobie & Fenella Renwick

Photography by: Clair Irwin & Charlotte Watters

Winner of the Jane Grigson Trust Award 2020
Winners of BBC Radio 4 Food & Farming Award for Best Street Food

Welcome to The Seafood Shack, a small food truck in Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands. It’s here that Kirsty Scobie and Fenella Renwick take whatever their fishermen friends bring them each day and serve it up for their ever-growing band of loyal customers.

Join them and discover how easy it is to cook mouthwatering seafood with over 80 down-to-earth recipes, plus essential tips on how to responsibly source, prepare, dissect, fillet, and cook white fish, smoked fish, and shellfish. The recipes are punctuated with tall tales from the fishermen who go out on fine days and foul to catch this fantastic produce from the clear and icy North Atlantic waters.

Whether it’s their signature haddock wrap for a mid-week dinner or their garlic & thyme langoustines for a weekend party treat, this is food that is simple and quick, but more importantly fresh, delicious to eat and an absolute joy to cook.

Arab Fairy Tale Feasts

A Literary Cookbook

By Karim Alrawi

Illustrated by: Nahid Kazemi

Winner of the Saskatchewan Arts Council's 2021 Wallace Stegner Award 

An entertaining, multifaceted, and delicious way to explore Arab culture

Arab Fairy Tale Feasts is the latest title in the highly-praised Fairy Tale Feasts Collection, a creative series that folds enchanting folk tales into cookbooks of kid-friendly recipes.

Award-winning writer and storyteller, Karim Alrawi, draws on his deep knowledge of Arab culture to create original stories that are a feast for young imaginations. Told with intriguing details, the tales take young readers on a delicious cultural journey and invite them to consider an Arab perspective. Each tale symbolically incorporates food and concludes with a traditional recipe, lovingly flavored with colorful folkloric illustrations, making this a literary banquet to savor with family and friends across generations time and again.

This charming, whimsical, and beautifully illustrated book will capture children’s fancy and will be enjoyed by the whole family.

Gennaro’s Limoni

Vibrant Italian Recipes Celebrating the Lemon

By Gennaro Contaldo

Photography by: David Loftus

Gennaro Contaldo’s love letter to his Amalfi Coast home

Ask a foodie about the Amalfi Coast and lemons immediately spring to mind. The sweet, aromatic, large and thick-skinned sfusato Amalfitano is the extraordinary and delectable citrus fruit that Gennaro Contaldo grew up with.

Lemons were and still are a part of daily life for locals of the Amalfi Coast, and Gennaro continues this tradition in his everyday cooking. From a sliver of zest in his morning espresso to helping with minor ailments and even household chores, lemons have a wealth of uses. No part of the lemon is wasted—flesh, pith, and skin are chopped into salads, juice is drizzled over meat, fish, and veggies, while the aromatic zest adds a complexity to a dish’s flavor. Even the leaves are used to wrap meat, fish and cheese for extra flavor, or finely chopped and made into a tea infusion.

Lemons can cleanse, refresh, preserve, “cook,” and add a vibrant flavor to dishes, giving color and an uplifting aroma. Through vibrant recipes like Ravioli with Ricotta, Lemon, and Mint; Sicilian Chicken Involtini; Lemon Cookies; and Coffee and Lemon Semi-Freddo, this is a beautiful and inspiring homage to the most revered of fruit.

Chapters include: The Amalfi—a little history including stories of Gennaro’s childhood; Lemons in the kitchen; Salads & Appetizers; Pasta & Risotto; Meat & Fish; Veggie & Vegan; Dressings & Sauces; Desserts; and Drinks.

– Gennaro Contaldo is one of the world’s most-loved chefs regularly appearing in Jamie Oliver’s TV show “Jamie Cooks Italy.”
– Beautiful food and location photography on the Amalfi coast by celebrated photographer David Loftus.
– “Gennaro’s Pasta Perfecto deserves to become a well-thumbed kitchen classic.” (The Daily Mail, “Best Cookbooks of 2019”)

Ashia’s Table

Family Recipes from India and beyond

By Ashia Ismail-Singer

Photography by: Manja Wachsmuth

Authentic Indian recipes that are simple and totally doable

Ashia’s Table features well-known traditional Indian dishes alongside a selection of exciting new dishes based on Indian flavors and textures, all of which can be easily made at home.

Ashia Ismail-Singer’s debut cookbook pays homage to her heritage, blending it seamlessly with a modern and authentic take on her native Indian cuisine. Her recipes aren’t just a list of ingredients and measurements: For Ashia, they are memories of childhood, food experiences that have been passed down through generations, and which connect her to her family and homeland. With chutneys and bites for grazing, light lunches, nourishing main dishes, desserts, home baking, and more, this book brings you a collection of recipes inspired by India’s rich food culture, made with ingredients that are easy to find wherever you are. 

Ashia’s Table is a beautiful book to be cherished for its delicious recipes, stunning photography, and attractive design.

The Bad Immigrant

By Sefi Atta

An account of an immigrant family’s struggle and the lessons learned about diversity

Writing at the height of her powers, The Bad Immigrant cements Sefi Atta’s place as one of the best storytellers of our time. Through the voice of her first male protagonist, Lukmon, Atta peels away nuanced layers to expose the realities of migration from Nigeria to the USA, such as the strains of adjustment and the stifling pressure to conform without loss of identity.

Covering a wide range of issues, including interracial and intra-racial tensions, and familial strains exacerbated in a new geographic and cultural environment, this novel is a thoroughgoing exposition of the many challenges that confront a modern migrant, told from the perspective of a protagonist whose sophistication and educational prowess is no guarantee of success in a country that is prone to valuing conformity over merit. Atta grounds Lukmon’s narrative in a wide array of cultural and literary allusions that testify to the author’s wit and sophisticated management of complicated matters in a manner at once erudite and accessible.

In The Bad Immigrant, Atta deftly drives the narrative forward with repartee that forges deep intimacy with the characters and engenders sympathy for all of them, even those we find infuriating. 

The Drowning

By Hammour Ziada

Lifting a corner of the veil that covers the misery of so many women’s lives

Sudan, 1968, the military coup taking place in Khartoum echoes all the way to the small rural town of Hajer Narti, where the body of a young girl has just been found in the Nile.  Like every time a body is washed up on the shore, Fatima shows up. According to popular belief, when the Nile brings a new body back, it also brings back an old one. Fatima is still looking for her daughter Su’ad, believed to have drowned many years ago.

The Drowning is Hammour Ziada’s third novel. With scarce descriptions, and just the minimal amount of words, Ziada succeeds in portraying very convincing characters, and in poignantly capturing the violence of social relations in a strictly codified society. Only 13-year-old Abeer eludes the reader. Like a dream all men try to catch throughout the novel, Abeer floats silently across town, a fluttering butterfly.

Sumac

Recipes and Stories from Syria

By Anas Atassi

Photography by: Rania Kataf & Jeroen van der Spek

NPR BEST COOKBOOK OF 2021

Exploring the connection of food and culture

The Syrian kitchen, shaped by influences from neighboring countries, has deep historical roots and evolved to perfection over thousands of years.

Sumac is filled with traditional and contemporary Syrian recipes that were inspired by personal stories. The gorgeous photography illustrates how beautiful this country was and still is, and family photographs add depth to the author’s history. Each chapter is filled with the author’s memories of family celebrations and the country that inspired the book. He tells stories of traditional weekend breakfasts in his grandmother’s garden and of the mezze his mother cooked for family gatherings. There are memories of the rich aromatic flavors of the Syrian kitchen where fragrant spices like the lemony and deep red sumac are prized ingredients.

In the author’s words: “With this book, I hope to build a bridge between Syrian culture and the rest of the world, with food the common denominator. But even more, I hope that Sumac will present a positive image of my country, in spite of all the unfortunate events now taking place in Syria.”

– Over eighty recipes, inspired by the author’s family recipes and his travels

– Beautiful location photography by Rania Kataf, who shot Humans of Damascus

– For anybody curious about a country so often in the news headlines but so difficult to visit as a tourist

All the Women Inside Me

By Jana Elhassan

Shortlisted for the International Prize of Arabic Fiction

Surviving a cold childhood, overshadowed by her parents’ unhappiness and their distant relationship to her, Sahar expects to escape through marriage when she meets the compelling and charming Sami, who is interested in every detail of her life. But what seemed at first to be his loving interest rapidly becomes controlling and ultimately abusive. Sahar yearns for a way out of her intertwined experiences of loss and loneliness.

In All the Women Inside Me, Jana Elhassan presents an intricate psychological portrait of a woman, as well as the complexities of interpersonal relationships. The novel’s innovative structure allows it to plumb psychological and philosophical depths beyond the specific characters revealing a profound humanity. Sahar’s father is the lapsed leftist who masks his boredom by busying himself with great causes. Her depressed mother’s nerves are as delicate as the crystal she keeps immaculately polished in her home. A charlatan sheikh trades in religious magic, making a profit off of people’s misery. A boyfriend leaves his great love to marry a “more appropriate” good girl.

Sahar navigates her way through so many relationships, ill-prepared by her parents and unhappy childhood home. Her imagination is what allows her to act out all of the desires she has been denied throughout her whole life, from her childhood to her abusive marriage. But she also finds solace in her best friend, Hala, who has faced her own difficult childhood and adolescence and later a series of destructive relationships. At the same time that this novel is able to capture the intensity of emotions and experiences in women’s lives, it is not merely a story about the power of imagination to enrich the lives of oppressed women. Elhassan’s novel is a stark appraisal of how far women are pushed and the length to which women will go to escape a reality that is rotten at the core.

Determined to Stay

Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village

By Jody Sokolower

Palestinian youth and the fight for their village

Silwan is a Palestinian village located just outside the ancient walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village is a moving story of a village and its people.

As Silwani youth and community members share their lives with us, their village becomes an easily accessible way to understand Palestinian history and current reality. Written with young people in mind, the richly illustrated text stresses connections between the lives of youth in the US and Palestine: criminalization of youth, forced relocation, the impact of colonialism on Indigenous communities, efforts to bury history, and inspiring examples of resistance and resilience.

Planting Peace

The Story of Wangari Maathai

By Gwendolyn Hooks

Illustrated by: Margaux Carpentier

Explores political and environment issues in an inspirational way

This picture book tells the inspiring story of Wangari Maathai, women’s rights activist and one of the first environmental warriors.

Wangari began the Green Belt Movement in Kenya in the 1960s, which focused on planting trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights. She inspired thousands across Africa to plant 30 million trees in 30 years and was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

– Explores environmental and political issues in an inspirational way

– Vibrant illustrations from print-maker Margaux Carpentier, one of the featured artists in Taschen’s The Illustrator: 100 Best from Around the World

– Narrative non-fiction text by Gwendolyn Hooks, winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Children

Under the Gaze of Angels

Stories

By Said Habib

Under the Gaze of Angels offers treasured views of family and neighborhood life, native to the Galilee, in the years leading up to and following the upheavals of 1948. A collection of four stories, told with simplicity and warmth, they include three set during the time of British mandate rule: “Zuha and the Book Vendor,” “The English Gramophone,” and “Yildiz the Turkish Woman.” These are followed by the book’s title work, a remembrance that travels from childhood to elder years, pursued by loss.

Imagined or recalled in exile, these vivid, evocative mementos quietly disarm the violence that surrounds them, restoring a stolen past to memory under the gaze of angels.

Morocco in a Box

By

India in a Box

By

The Barbara Abdeni Massaad Collection

By

Palestine in a Box

By

The Caine Prize African Short Story Collection

By

The Food Lover’s Collection

By

The Gennaro Contaldo Collection

By

The Mahmoud Darwish Collection

By

Cedar of Lebanon Journal

By

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large and pocket formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages and includes a matching elastic band and pen loop. Each also has a ribbon-marker and an expandable inner note holder as well as informative text on the specific design used.

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.   

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

Cedar of Lebanon Pocket Journal

By

Shipping December 1st

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large and pocket formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages and includes a matching elastic band and pen loop. Each also has a ribbon-marker and an expandable inner note holder as well as informative text on the specific design used.

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.   

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

Map of Palestine Pocket Journal

By

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large and pocket formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages and includes a matching elastic band and pen loop. Each also has a ribbon-marker and an expandable inner note holder as well as informative text on the specific design used.

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.   

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

Map of Palestine Journal

By

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large and pocket formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages and includes a matching elastic band and pen loop. Each also has a ribbon-marker and an expandable inner note holder as well as informative text on the specific design used.

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.   

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

Red Kaffiyeh Journal

By

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large and pocket formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages and includes a matching elastic band and pen loop. Each also has a ribbon-marker and an expandable inner note holder as well as informative text on the specific design used.

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.   

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

Red Kaffiyeh Pocket Journal

By

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large and pocket formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages and includes a matching elastic band and pen loop. Each also has a ribbon-marker and an expandable inner note holder as well as informative text on the specific design used.

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.   

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

Black Kaffiyeh Pocket Journal

By

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large and pocket formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages and includes a matching elastic band and pen loop. Each also has a ribbon-marker and an expandable inner note holder as well as informative text on the specific design used.

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.   

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

Stand with Gaza Journal

By

Stand with Gaza.

Show your support for the people of Gaza and for the right to freedom for all Palestinians.

We are donating 100% of profits of all our garments for Gaza to to Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for food, hygiene supplies, water, and fuel for hospital generators in Gaza.

**Please note, due to the urgency of the situation we are going on sale to raise funds during manufacture, expected ship time is 3 week from order. 

This project is undertaken with the support of Plusfile UK based in Cambridge, United Kingdom, for more information visit: https://www.plusfile.co.uk/

The Interlink Notebooks are high quality printed and bound volumes available in large formats. Each notebook has 192 ruled pages, acid-free paper, 70 gsm cream shade pages .

All Interlink Notebooks use ecological paper from sustainable forests.

High quality papers are sourced from paper mills promoting sources of sustainable forests using clean energy, without the use of harmful chemicals such as chlorine.   

A new tree is planted for every tree felled.

The Ruth Sanderson Collection

By

The Eve Lloyd Knight Collection

By

The Middle East YA Collection

By

The Middle East Children’s Picture Book Collection

By

Palestinian Cooking Collection

By

The Rob Ryan Trilogy

By

Syria in a Box

By

Italy in a Box

By

Turkey in a Box

By

Russia in a Box

By

For Lebanon with Love: 50 bundle

By

For Lebanon with Love: 100 bundle

By

For Lebanon with Love: 150 bundle

By

The Camel’s Neighbor

Travels and Travelers in Yemen

By Andrew Moscrop

Insightful descriptions of an enchanting country and its people

In 2014, a coup d’état in Sanaa paved the way for a devastating conflict in Yemen. Andrew Moscrop, a physician, cancelled plans to return to the country that he had once called home. Instead, he returned to his diaries and delved into memories of a time when he lived in a rambling old tower house in Sanaa. As the war unfolded, he re-read the accounts of past travelers to the country. And while working in Greece, treating refugees from other Middle Eastern war zones, he began writing a book set in Yemen.

Both a personal travelogue and a reflection on travel and travelers in Yemen, The Camel’s Neighbor offers a unique window into the country and provides a context and alternative to the often dehumanizing stories of conflict and crisis. Examining the impressions of adventurers, merchants, and scientists, as well as travel writers, Moscrop explores how Yemen has been seen and understood by foreigners from Europe and the US. These visitors include blundering missionaries, aristocratic Englishmen, and unlikely spies such as Norman Lewis and Freya Stark.

Moscrop delivers an intriguing perspective on Western encounters with the Islamic world, examining the imagery and clichés by which Yemen has been represented from the sixteenth century to the present. Evocative descriptions of Sanaa and its unique cityscape, as well as empathetic portrayals of people encountered and events experienced, all create a narrative by turns thoughtful and unexpected.

Let Freedom Reign

The Words of Nelson Mandela

By Henry Russell

On February 11, 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island after 27 long, hard years of imprisonment. Four years later he became president following the first fully representational democratic election in South Africa. He is a universally revered bastion of freedom, unity, and sacrifice, whose life story and reputation often obscure the man behind the icon. This book reveals the nature of that man through his own words.

Mandela’s oratorical prowess and irrepressible conviction have been his most potent tools in the struggle against apartheid and the forging of a new, inclusive South African national identity. His is not the rhetoric of a demagogue but that of an educated man engaging in a logical and reasoned argument against an illogical, oppressive system and its values. His unashamed honesty and the accessibility of his language have earned him the love and respect of rich and poor, white and black, politician and layman.

Let Freedom Reign is a collection of Mandela’s greatest speeches, showing that he stood for the principles of equality and democracy as a man, and transparency and accountability as a politician. This is the essence of his universal, enduring popularity.

Henry Russell is the author of eighteen books, including The Politics of Hope: The Words of Barack Obama. He has contributed to numerous international newspapers and magazines, including Cosmopolitan, The New Statesman and The Literary Review. 

In Let Freedom Reign, he analyzes the linguistic features, content, and context of Mandela’s speeches.

The Mysterious Stones

By Enrique Peréz Díaz

Illustrated by: Yayo

Kiki is a young boy, growing up in Cuba in a house by the sea. He lives with his uncle and grandmother ever since his father sailed off across the ocean in search of a new life. One night, Kiki dreams about a ghost-like woman in white. He is amazed to encounter her the next day on a nearby beach, the same beach his father sailed off from. She leaves him a mysterious gift of colorful stones that give him newfound hope to be reunited with his father.

Interlink Publishing eGift Card

By Anna Arutunyan

Choose the amount you would like to purchase below and give the gift of Interlink books to someone special in your life! Once purchased, the eGift card will be delivered to the recipients email address immediately with your message.

The American Granddaughter

By Inaam Kachachi

WINNER OF FRANCE'S THE LAGARDERE PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE OF ARABIC FICTION

In her award-winning novel, Inaam Kachachi portrays the dual tragedy of her native land: America’s failure and the humiliation of Iraq.

The American Granddaughter depicts the American occupation of Iraq through the eyes of a young Iraqi-American woman, who returns to her country as an interpreter for the US Army. Through the narrator’s conflicting emotions, we see the tragedy of a country which, having battled to emerge from dictatorship, then finds itself under foreign occupation.

At the beginning of America’s occupation of Iraq, Zeina returns to her war-torn homeland as an interpreter for the US Army. Her formidable grandmother—the only family member that Zeina believes she has in Iraq—gravely disapproves of her granddaughter’s actions. Then Zeina meets Haider and Muhaymin, two “brothers” she knows nothing of, and falls deeply in love with Muhaymin, a militant in the Al Mehdi Army. These experiences force her to question all her values.

Summer with the Enemy

By Shahla Ujayli

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

An intergenerational tale of life and love seen through the eyes of three women from Raqqa

The western popular imagination about the now devastated city of Raqqa, Syria is filled with static and clichéd images of the Arab world. On the news, Raqqa looks like a dusty and abandoned desert village overrun by ISIS and other brands of Islamic fundamentalists, making its desperate, impoverished people yearn to flee at all costs. In the Arab popular imagination, the image of Raqqa is not much different—this ancient city, nestled along the Euphrates river in northeastern Syria, is typically thought of by Arabs as a remote Bedouin outpost, far removed from the nearest large metropolis, Aleppo.

People’s real lives, however, are always more complex. Nothing could help bring these real and complex histories to more widespread attention than Shahla Ujalyli’s brilliant new novel, Summer with the Enemy. This novel is a compelling tale that follows the charming, if at times difficult, everyday life of three women—Lamis, her mother Najwa, and her grandmother Karma – and all of the complexities of their relationships with each other, their extended family, and the wider social worlds they inhabit. The diversity of life in Syria, especially Raqqa, is on display throughout this book, and the stories told in its seven chapters move back and forth between time and place, with attention to the intimate details of lives and relationships, and with an eye to the larger historical and political contexts in which they live.

An intergenerational novel, Summer with the Enemy traces the lives of these women not only in Raqqa where the bulk of the novel is set, but also in the places their families lived before — Turkey, Jerusalem, Aleppo and Damascus. It reminds us that Syria and Syrians have never been isolated from the world, and that indeed the lives of people stretched far beyond the confines of Raqqa’s city limits, long before the online world existed.

Dream of Ages

By Simon Louvish

A tale of a Jewish family in Eastern Europe in 1905, a novel of history, ideas and delusions

Fanning out from the small Moldavian village of Celovest at the turn of the 20th century, the Dream of Ages follows the global saga of the four sons and two daughters of a traditional Jewish family as their lives twist and turn in the storms of war, politics, art and ideology that rip apart the old Empires of the 19th century and create the schisms, aspirations, conflicts and realities of the modern world. Through WW I, the Russian Revolution and civil war, the dream of Zion, the magnet of America, the lure of the far east in China, the epic narratives of the scattered siblings turn from 1905 Odessa, the golden ages of Paris and Berlin, to the foundation years of Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, the mad frenetic world of vintage vaudeville, the Jewish settlements in Palestine, resistance and terror, the tale is drawn together by the reluctant quest of the next generation for answers to the moral, social, political and psychological puzzles that bedevil our own Age of Confusion, our worship of the “new” undermined by the unavoidable consequences of what passed before.

Told in the intertwined voices of the protagonists, a novel of history, ideas, delusions, myths, magic, the trials and errors of life, and the forces that made us what we are.

His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

An Illustrated Biography and Tibetan Chronicle

By Tenzin Geyche Tethong

This biography of the Dalai Lama—blessed by His Holiness himself—is the most authentic and intimate profile of the world’s greatest living spiritual figure. Tenzin Geyche Tethong, a close aide of His Holiness for forty years who became family, offers readers unprecedented access to the Dalai Lama in this beautifully illustrated book. The Dalai Lama’s youngest brother, Ngari Rinpoche Tenzin Choegyal, who was only 12 years old when he accompanied His Holiness on his dangerous 1959 escape to India, is a personal friend of Tethong and the mentor for this book project. As “elders” to the Tibetan community in exile, these men have come together to tell the true story of His Holiness—their brother, friend, and leader.

Featuring previously unpublished photographs, as well as interviews and memories of those closest to him, this book renders unparalleled insights into the Dalai Lama’s experiences as the preeminent leader of Tibet, and the wealth of his compassion and gentle humor in the face of the ongoing conflict. This is in no small part due to Tethong and Ngari Rinpoche’s unique perspectives on many sensitive issues.

Richly compelling, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama: An Illustrated Biography is a stunning visual celebration of the Dalai Lama, sketching a memorable portrait of an icon and a cause that have won the attention and hearts of billions across the world.

• As his long-time personal secretary, Tethong was privy to the Dalai Lama’s difficult relationship with India during his exile, with many challenges arising from his host country’s ambivalence to Tibet. Tethong candidly discusses India’s lackluster attempts at uplifting his people—denying them official documentation, restricting employment, and crowding refugees in the remote location of Dharmsala—citing its fear of angering China as the reason behind its ambivalence towards Tibet.

• Tethong also sheds much-needed light on the Dalai Lama’s Nobel Prize-winning campaign for the spiritual and political liberation of his people. He adopts a nuanced approach towards the Dalai Lama’s non-violent struggle for Tibetan autonomy, writing frankly about their attempts to mediate the political differences between younger Tibetans in Dharmsala and the Tibetan administration. He also explores the numerous political difficulties faced by the Dalai Lama’s cause in the years before its worldwide recognition.

Aegean

Recipes from the Mountains to the Sea

By Marianna Leivaditaki

So much more than a cookbook; it is a love song to a special place and its cuisine

Marianna Leivaditaki is a natural storyteller. She grew up in Chania, on the Greek island of Crete, and spent her childhood helping out in the family-run taverna. After school, she carried around her blue notebook, writing down all the recipes she would like to cook, helped by the kitchen wisdom of her Greek grandmothers.

Marianna’s love for the food of her heritage flows through every page, but she brings it her own contemporary style, honed through an illustrious career in professional restaurant kitchens. As head chef of the celebrated London restaurant Morito, she has championed high-quality ingredients, presenting them in simple, beautiful sharing plates.

The recipes in her book, inspired by the Sea, the Land, and the Mountains of the Aegean islands, celebrate the wealth of the Mediterranean diet, rich in olive oil, fresh vegetables and fruit, nuts, fish, and whole grains, and a passion for good food and shared meals. Marianna offers achievable, delicious dishes celebrating fresh, seasonal ingredients that you can take time to enjoy with friends and family.

Parwana

Recipes and Stories from an Afghan Kitchen

By Durkhanai Ayubi

Winner of the Art of Eating Prize for Best Food Book of the Year 2021

Authentic Afghan recipes with family narratives and stunning photography

Parwana tells one family’s story of a region long afflicted by war, but with much more at its heart. Author Durkhanai Ayubi’s parents, Zelmai and Farida Ayubi, fled Afghanistan with their young family in 1987, at the height of the Cold War. When their family-run restaurant Parwana opened its doors in Adelaide, Australia in 2009, their vision was to share an authentic piece of the Afghanistan the family had left behind—a country rich in culture, family memories infused with Afghanistan’s traditions of generosity and hospitality.

These recipes have been in the family for generations and include rice dishes, curries, meats, dumplings, Afghan pastas, sweets, drinks, chutneys and pickles, soups and breads. Some are celebratory special dishes while most are day to day dishes. Each has a story to tell.

With beautiful food and location photography, this compilation offers valuable insights into the origins and heritage of Afghan cuisine and a fresh perspective to one of the oldest civilizations.

• Authentic recipes from an Afghan kitchen.

• Inspiration and ideas for special and everyday dishes, combined with stories about the ritual and significance of Afghan ingredients and recipes.

• A vivid and enriching story about how food connects people and communities, showing how food anchors us to our ancestry and can also be a bridge that connects us to people with very different experiences of life.

• With more than 65 million refugees, asylum seekers or displaced people worldwide, there is a poignant universality in this story, regardless of where in the world the story starts and ends.

• Approximately 100 recipes that have been in the family for generations, especially adapted for the home cook.

• Breathtakingly beautiful food photography and family photos.

Portuguese Home Cooking

By Ana Patuleia Ortins

Photography by: Hiltrud Schulz

Authentic Recipe that unlock the mysteries of Portuguese cooking

The Mediterranean diet is famed for its fresh and vibrant cuisine. In this book, Ana Patuleia Ortins invites you to discover or revisit the soul-comforting, peasant food of Portugal, just as vibrant, yet distinct from that of its neighbors.
Peppered with a lifetime of anecdotes from a passionate cook, Portuguese Home Cooking draws us into an immigrant kitchen where traditional culinary methods were handed down from father to daughter, shared and refined with the help of the family and friends who watched, chopped, and tasted. The recipes in this cookbook are of dishes prepared as they are in Portugal–with the measurements tried and tested, and the ingredients and methods fully explained.

With warmth and gusto, Ana Patuleia Ortins shares garden-fresh salads, hearty wine and garlic braises, legumes and leafy greens, meat and shellfish dishes, rustic breads, and the luscious desserts for which Portugal is known. Beautiful food and location photography will transport you to Portugal’s picturesque countryside, and novices and experienced chefs alike will delight in the culture and cuisine, whether nostalgic for home, or discovering it for the first time.

Macedonia: The Cookbook

Recipes and Stories from the Balkans

By Katerina Nitsou

Photography by: Oliver Fitzgerald

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 TASTE CANADA AWARDS IN THE REGIONAL/CULTURAL COOKBOOKS CATEGORY

Discover the flavors and traditions of Northern Macedonia

The cuisine of Northern Macedonia is a rich mosaic of influences from the Mediterranean and Middle East, and the neighboring countries of the Balkan Peninsula. Known for its opulent family meals, the regional dishes play important symbolic roles in local traditions and family celebrations.

Macedonia: The Cookbook is a love letter to Macedonian culture, and a cuisine deeply rooted in its land and traditions. Through over 100 mouthwatering recipes for mezze dishes, salads, soups, fish, poultry, meat, vegetables, and delicious sweets and preserves, chef and food writer Katerina Nitsou shares the authentic flavors and wisdom brought along with her family from the mountainous villages of Northern Macedonia, recreated and adapted in her North American kitchen.

Coupled with beautiful photography of the food, people, and landscapes of Northern Macedonia, this cookbook captures the country’s essence and belongs on the kitchen shelf of every foodie.

Wanda

By Sihle Nontshokweni & Mathabo Tlali

Illustrated by: Chantelle and Burgen Thorne

 Skipping Stones Honor Award Winner 2021

An empowering picture book from South Africa about a young girl who overcomes endless teasing

Meet Wanda, with her beautiful head full of hair. She is brave and strong, but she’s unhappy because of the endless teasing by the boys at school for her “thorn bush” and “thunderstorm cloud.” Through Grandma Makhulu’s hair secrets and stories she finds the courage to face her fears and learn to appreciate that her hair is a crown‚ “not a burden‚” and it is something to be proud of. This book is about identity and beauty, celebrating how cultural pride is learned and passed on over generations.

Every Child a Song

A Celebration of Children's Rights

By Nicola Davies

Illustrated by: Marc Martin

For every book purchased we are donating 5% of the selling price to The Young Center for Immigrant Rights, a human rights organization that advocates for the rights and best interests of immigrant children.

An international look at children’s rights, exploring global issues faced by children, encouraging compassion and empathy. Illustrated by award-winning illustrator Marc Martin. 

When you were born, a song began…

So begins this lyrical and unique nonfiction picture book by award-winning children’s author Nicola Davies. With tenderness and heart, Nicola introduces young readers to the universal rights that every child is entitled to under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Using the metaphor of song, the book opens with the arrival of a newborn and its unique “song,” then pans out to explore all the essential things that every song needs to thrive—love, protection, a home, a name, the chance to explore and learn. In the latter half of the book, the issues of child labor, exploitation and war are sensitively introduced to emphasize that we all must play our part in championing children’s rights and offering support to those who need it most.

With deeply moving watercolor illustrations by award-winning artist Marc Martin, this is a book that encourages children and adults alike to speak up for young people all around the world, and to treat one another with compassion and kindness.

Crocodile Books, an imprint of Interlink Publishing, will donate 5% of the selling price of each book sold to The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, a human rights organization that advocates for the rights and best interests of immigrant children.

About The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights: 

The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights is a human rights organization that advocates for the rights and best interests of immigrant children.  It protects and advances the rights and best interests of immigrant children according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and state and federal law. It is a champion for the rights and best interests of unaccompanied immigrant children, making sure that wherever they land, whether here in the U.S. or in their home country, they are safe.

There’s a Rang-Tan in My Bedroom

By James Sellick

Illustrated by: Frann Preston-Gannon

A stunning picture book about one little girl and her orangutan friend, based on the Greenpeace film that became a viral sensation

When a little girl discovers a mischievous orangutan on the loose in her bedroom, she can’t understand why it keeps shouting OOO! at her shampoo and her chocolate. But when Rang-tan explains that there are humans running wild in her rainforest, burning down trees so they can grow palm oil to put in products, the little girl knows what she has to do: help save the orangutans!

Published in collaboration with Greenpeace, featuring a foreword from Emma Thompson and brought to life by award-winning illustrator Frann Preston-Gannon, this is a very special picture book with a vital message to share.

This timely picture book focusing on the environmental crisis we all face includes information about orangutans and palm oil plus exciting ideas about how young readers can make a difference.

How to Build an Orchestra

By Mary Auld

Illustrated by: Elisa Paganelli

Find out what makes up an orchestra and learn about its different instruments!

A beautifully illustrated book produced in association with the London Symphony Orchestra

This wonderfully illustrated story follows a conductor who is auditioning each instrument for his orchestra, building to a performance of two pieces of classical music. With links to downloadable music, follow our conductor on his journey and discover the beautiful music of an orchestra.

With pictograms of a full-size symphony orchestra and information on all of the instruments and music featured, as well as a foreword by Sir Simon Rattle, renowned Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, this is the must-have book on the makeup of an orchestra and its instruments for children aged 7 .

Man’oushe

Inside the Lebanese Street Corner Bakery

By Barbara Abdeni Massaad

Photography by: Barbara Abdeni Massaad & Raymond Yazbeck

The Arabic pizza that is fast becoming the world’s most favorite snack. 

The man’oushe is the cherished national pie of Lebanon. It has a reserved place on the country’s breakfast table and has the unique ability to be worked into every meal of the day due to its simple versatility. This cookbook is dedicated entirely to the art of creating the perfect man’oushe. With over 70 simple recipes, it offers you a way to enjoy these typical pies- traditionally baked in street corner bakeries- in the comfort of your own home.

Man’oushe: Inside the Street Corner Lebanese Bakery is a journey to discover Lebanon’s favorite snack. One only has to leaf through the pages in order to realize that this typical Lebanese creation can be as simple as an on-the-go breakfast and as intricate as a family meal. Anyone who enjoys the simplicity of good food and appreciates a good story will love this book from cover to cover.

Sicily

A Cultural History

By Joseph Farrell

An engaging introduction to a cultural giant

Long before it became an Italian offshore island, Sicily was the land in the center of the Mediterranean where the great civilizations of Europe and Northern Africa met. Sicily today is familiar and unfamiliar, modernized and unchanging. Visitors will find in an out-of-the-way town an Aragonese castle, will stumble across a Norman church by the side of a lesser travelled road, will see red Muslim-styles domes over a Christian shrine, will find a Baroque church of breathtaking beauty in a village, will catch a glimpse from the motorway of a solitary Greek temple on the horizon and will happen on a the celebrations of the patron saint of a run-down district of a city, and will stop and wonder. There is more to Sicily than the Godfather and the mafia.

Only in Cologne

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

Often overlooked by visitors, Cologne is a fascinating city just waiting to be explored. Discover more than 80 unusual locations with this explorer’s guide to Germany’s most historic city. Roman ruins and religious relics, forgotten fortresses and abandoned cemeteries, industrial relics and historic hotels. Where did the Red Baron learn to fly? Is there really a chandelier in the sewers? Where is Europe’s first art hotel? Descend into the city’s crypts, marvel at the cathedral’s curiosities, and smell the city’s famous perfume. The author also visits a mustard museum, samples Cologne’s famous Kölsch beer, and goes in search of wartime bunkers.

Venetian Republic

Recipes from the Veneto, Adriatic Croatia, and the Greek islands

By Nino Zoccali

Charting the culinary history and traditions of the lands that once belonged to the Venetian Republic

Part Culinary journey, part cookbook this gorgeous cookbook is informed by the cultural heritage of Italian Chef Nino Zoccali and his Greek wife. 

The food of the Venetian Republic is diverse: prosecco & snapper risotto, Croatian roast lamb shoulder with olive oil potatoes, the sweet & sour red mullet of Crete, zabaglione from Corfu, or Dubrovnik’s ricotta & rose liqueur crepes.

These are recipes steeped in history; dishes from the days when Venice was a world power. How did this small city state rule the waters of the Mediterranean, enjoying unrivaled wealth and prestige? How could this serene, safe-haven city of canals come to play a defining role in shaping the cuisine, culture, and architecture of her Mediterranean neighbors? Yet, for a thousand years, the ships and merchants of the Republic dominated salt, silk, and spice trade routes.

To tell this story, respected writer and restaurateur Nino Zoccali focuses on the four key regions that geographically encapsulate the Venetian Republic, each of which has its own distinct cuisine: Venice and its lagoon islands; the Veneto, of which Venice is the capital; the Croatian coast and the Greek Islands formerly under Venetian rule. The 80 dishes he has selected all have strong traditional Venetian roots or influence, celebrating ingredients and techniques that show how, to this day, food in this magnificent region continues to be influenced by neighboring cultures.

Stunning food and location photography from around Venice, the Dalmatian Coast, and Greek Islands make this cookbook a must-have for foodies and lovers of Mediterranean cuisine.

Carpathia

Food from the Heart of Romania

By Irina Georgescu

The first book to celebrate the culturally diverse and delicious cuisine of Romania

A true fusion of East and West, where traditional recipes are given a truly modern twist

Romania is a true cultural melting pot, its character rooted in many traditions from Greek, Turkish, and Slavic in the south and east, to Austrian, Hungarian, and Saxon in the north and west.

Carpathia, the first book from food writer Irina Georgescu, aims to introduce readers to Romania’s unique, bold and delicious cuisine. Bringing the country to life with stunning photography and recipes, it will take the reader on a culinary journey to the very heart of the Balkans, exploring Romania’s history, traditions, and food, one mouth-watering recipe at a time.

From chargrilled eggplants, polenta fritters, and butter bean hummus, to tangy borş, stuffed breads, and Viennese-style layer cakes, this book is a true celebration of a country that’s never afraid to mix things up!

Badger’s Journey

By Cecilia Heikkilä

Illustrated by: Cecilia Heikkilä

There was once a lonely Badger. She had been a brave captain who sailed the world’s seas. But now she was too old for adventure, and she didn’t like when unexpected things happened…

Rainbow Revolutions

Power, Pride, and Protest in the Fight for Queer Rights

By Jamie Lawson

Illustrated by: Eve Lloyd Knight

A beautifully illustrated children’s book about the fight for queer rights

Around one o’clock in the morning on June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York, sparking days of intense rioting. What happened at Stonewall sent shockwaves around the world, and became a defining moment for the LGBTQ community.

From the impassioned speeches of bold activists Karl Ulrichs and Audre Lorde to the birth of Pride and queer pop culture, Rainbow Revolutions — a middle grade children’s book — charts the dramatic rise of the LGBTQ rights movement, and celebrates the courageous individuals who stood up and demanded recognition. With bold and beautiful illustrations by pop artist Eve Lloyd Knight.

Eating for Pleasure, People and Planet

Plant-based, Zero-Waste, Climate Cuisine

By Tom Hunt

Cooking and eating more consciously every day to help fight food waste and climate change

Tom Hunt is on a mission to have us all sourcing, cooking, and eating more consciously every day to help fight food waste and climate change. His recipes are seasonal and sustainable, enabling us to eat better food that supports not only our health but also the well-being of the planet.

Eating for Pleasure, People, and Planet showcases Tom’s manifesto—Eat for Pleasure; Eat Whole Foods; Eat the Best Food You Can—and is filled with inspirational recipes divided into Breakfasts, Slow Lunches & Dinners, A New Way with Salads, Family Meals & Feast Plates, Sweet Treats and Pantry essentials.

This is the End

The Last Cartoons from The New York Times

By Patrick Chappatte

Patrick Chappatte’s eighth—and last!— collection of editorial cartoons published in The New York Times

This is the End offers us a witty, savage, and thought-provoking testimony of a dizzying world, swirling around an oxygen-sucking black hole named Donald Trump. In this era of strongmen, closing borders and selfie narcissists, humor is needed more than ever.

On June 10, 2019, Chappatte posted an essay titled “The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times,” breaking the news that was quickly confirmed by the newspaper. Chappatte’s piece, which received worldwide attention and triggered a global discussion about self-censorship by the media in the age of internet angry mobs, appears as an appendix to this cartoon book. It has inspired a TED talk given by Chappatte on July 23, 2019 at TED Summit.

Aesop’s Fables

The Cruelty of the Gods

By Carlo Gébler

The greatest collection of fables ever written, updated for our turbulent times

A witty, scatological illustrated version of the world’s greatest collection of fables, allegedly written by a slave in the 5th century BC. A book for our times: as Gebler notes, Aesop has two subjects–the exercise of power and the experience of the powerless who endure life and all that it inflicts on them. This retelling of the Fables makes them relevant and richly enjoyable.

Large and fierce animals kill and butcher weaker creatures; gods play games with the hopes and fears of lesser species, including men and women; and occasionally the weak turn the tables on the strong, exposing their pretensions. This is a stunning new version of a book that was often bowdlerized and used to teach moral lessons to children. Gebler’s Aesop is darker and more realistic, and compulsively readable.

Wrestling with Zionism

Jewish Voices of Dissent

By Daphna Levit

A Chronology of voices, from the birth of Zionism until today

Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Noam Chomsky, Tanya Reinhart, Zeev Sternhell, Uri Avnery, Tikva-Honig Parnass, Shlomo Sand, Tom Segev, Simha Flapan, Baruch Kimmerling, Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, and Michael Sfard

Portrayals of Israel in mainstream Western media as the “homeland of the Jews” and “the only democracy in the Middle East” are commonplace. Since the realities behind them are rarely shown, these truisms have become habitual assumptions underlying news coverage, public policy, and ordinary conversation. At the same time, while criticism of a government’s policies is considered an essential right and safeguard of democracy, criticism of Israeli policy is persistently attacked as anti-Zionist—or even anti-Semitic—by a majority of Israelis and by those outside the country who claim to be Israel’s friends. The views of independent Israelis and Jews who examine, challenge, or oppose extreme Israeli governments and policies are rarely heard. This book attempts to recover a history of dissent.

In Wrestling with Zionism: Jewish Voices of Dissent, Daphna Levit amplifies the voices of twenty-one Jewish and Israeli thinkers—scholars, theologians, journalists, lawyers, activists—who have grappled with the evolution of Zionism since its inception on political, religious, cultural, ethical, or philosophical grounds. Beginning in the late-nineteenth century, well before the founding of the State of Israel, and surveying pioneering figures up until the present, she introduces, examines, and brings together a range of contrasting viewpoints into a single historical conversation. As well, with these portraits she honors a tradition of courageous intellectual inquiry and activism, rooted in Jewish ethical imperatives. Drawing on her own lifetime of activism and research, Levit has assembled a foundational text, enabling us to consider the relationship of modern political Zionism and Judaism today, in revealing historical light.

Tales of the Seal People

Scottish Folk Tales

By Duncan Williamson

WINNER OF THE ANNE IZARD STORYTELLERS' CHOICE AWARD

A collection of 14 selkie (half-seal half-human creatures) tales from the Orkney and Shetland islands off the northern tip of Scotland, which embrace the fantasy, romance, and unusual perspective of the Scottish travellers.

Walking Palestine

25 Journeys into the West Bank

By Stefan Szepesi

NEW UPDATED AND REVISED EDITION

With the images of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so dominant in our minds, walking for leisure is the one activity probably least associated with the West Bank region. But Stefan Szepesi’s book wanders well off the beaten track of Palestine as only a synonym for occupation and strife, exploring its inspiring natural and cultural landscape, its intriguing past and present, and the hospitality of its people.

The book takes first-time walkers and experienced hikers, as well as armchair explorers, through Palestine’s steep desert gorges, along its tiny herders’ trails and over its quiet dirt roads running past silver green olive groves. With side stories and anecdotes on heritage, history, culture and daily life in the West Bank, the book ventures into the traits and character of Palestine today. Beyond the 250 km of walking trails described and mapped in detail throughout the book, Walking Palestine offers a wealth of practical walking tips, including references to local guides, the West Bank’s best leisure spots and countryside restaurants, and the most charming places to spend the night.

Traditional Palestinian Costume

Origins and Evolution

By Hanan Karaman Munayyer

A joyous celebration of pattern and color, and of an enduring Palestinian tradition.

The historical and cultural richness of Palestine is reflected visually in its costume and embroidery. Distinguished by boldness of color, richness of pattern, and diversity of style, and combined with great needlework skill, these textiles have long played an important role in Palestinian culture and identity and manifested themselves in every aspect of Palestinian life.

Based on over twenty-five years of extensive field research and the culling of museum resources and publications from around the world, this book presents the most exhaustive and up-to-date study of the origins of Palestinian embroidery and costume—from antiquity through medieval Arab textile arts to the present. It documents region by region the evolution of costume and the textile arts in Palestine in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is lavishly illustrated with over 500 full-color photographs from the highly praised Munayyer Collection, which includes a whole range of embroidered textiles from traditional costumes and coin headdresses of Palestinian village women to cloaks and jackets worn by village men to belts, sashes, and footwear. The exquisite colors of the silk stitching on natural linens are a feast for the eye.

The sumptuous photography and author’s well-informed text greatly enrich our appreciation of Palestinian embroidery and make this book a valuable resource that displays this unique art in all its splendor.

Valencia

A Cultural History

By Michael Eaude

A thoughtful examination of this contradictory and divided land, pulled between the Spanish state and Catalonia.

The towns of Valencia’s long coast and privileged climate, in particular Benidorm, southern EuropeÍs skyscraper capital, are famous beach tourism destinations. Country of fire, fireworks and long meals (often featuring the renowned paella), Valencia is a Mediterranean land where people know how to enjoy life. This book tells the story of today’s Spanish provinces of Valencia, Castelló and Alacant (Alicante), with their profound Moorish legacy. The Moors designed the intricate system of irrigation that still nourishes Valencia’s prosperous horta (market garden). They brought, too, the silk, paper, and orange industries.

The area is rich in monuments, many from its golden fifteenth century, when the capital became the wealthiest city on the Western Mediterranean. This book discusses Sagunt’s Roman theater and castle; Gandia, home to the ill-reputed Borja (or Borgia) family of popes; Elx, embraced by 200,000 palms; and Alcoi, anarchist stronghold. Michael Eaude discusses ValenciaÍs art, literature and architecture: the painters Ribera and light-filled Sorolla; the great medieval poet of anguish Ausiös March. Santiago Calatrava’s architecture, conjuring the sensation of soaring flight from steel, has given Valencia City its new trophy buildings.

Despite its continuing popularity as a tourist destination, there are still deserted beaches, sinister and beautiful marshland, orange groves and a depopulated mountainous interior. Valencia: A Cultural History seeks to explain this contradictory and divided land, its identity pulled between the Spanish state and Catalonia.

A Traveller’s History of Poland

By John Radzilowski

NEW REVISED AND UPDATED EDITION

Poland is a major European country with nearly 40 million inhabitants and a land area comparable to Spain. It has played a major role in European history but its subjugation by foreign powers in the nineteenth century and during the Cold War eclipsed Poland in the minds of many in Western Europe and the United States. Throughout its long and diverse history it has been a meeting place of many cultures and has given the world the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, the music of Chopin, and the scientific discoveries of Copernicus and Marie Curie, to name but a few.

In A Traveller’s History of Poland, John Radzilowski vividly describes the beginnings of the country, first fragmented then reborn to overcome the aggression of the Teutonic Knights and its greedy neighbors. Poland enjoyed a Golden Age in the fifteen and sixteenth centuries but a gradual decline then led to Poland losing its autonomy despite winning many battles with its armyÍs legendary military skill and gallantry. Yet the spirit of the country and its people lived on.

Since the horrors of the Second World War and Soviet control, Poland has gradually regained its rightful place in Europe, joining NATO in 1989 and in May 2004, the EU. It is playing a new role on the European and international stage. This makes now an ideal time to introduce students and travellers to Poland and its complex history.

The book includes a full chronology, a list of monarchs and rulers, a gazetteer, historical maps and is fully illustrated.

That Untravel’d World

Seven Journeys through Turkey

By Nicholas Dylan Ray

Nicholas Dylan Ray grew up next to a US national park, whose mountains and forests he explored to escape his troubled home. As a young man, he left the United States, and aged twenty-two set out on a six-month journey from France to Tibet, traveling through Turkey. That journey forms the first chapter of this book, and led to a career working with the Middle East. In middle age, the author returned to the road, traveling throughout Turkey. In the six subsequent chapters, one for each journey, he recounts his adventures, discusses the archaeology and history of the places visited, and the people met along the way.

In Konya he is transported by the beauty of an Arabic quotation from the Qur’an inscribed on Rumi’s tomb. In Istanbul, among Syrian refugees, he considers the concept of charity in Islam. In Antalya, just after the ISIS terrorist attack in his adopted country of France, he analyses the textual foundations of jihadism in Islamic law. Within earshot of the shelling in Syria, he contemplates genocide, and climbs Musa Dagh mountain, the last redoubt of the Armenians who fought the Ottoman troops in 1915. In the coastal region of the Black Sea, he examines the monastic urge in religion and experiments with fasting during Ramadan. And finally, on the northwestern Mediterranean coast, he visits two battlefields, Troy and Gallipoli, before returning to Istanbul for a last visit to Sultanahmet, the center of the Islamic world for five centuries.

During these wanderings Nicholas Dylan Ray shares with the reader his deep knowledge of Islamic religion, culture, and history, discussing the foundational texts and their role in current events in the Middle East. He also takes note of those who have traveled these lands before him and reflects on the mixed experience of travel itself.

The Ghoul

By Taghreed Najjar

Photography by: Hassan Manasra

Kirkus Reviews Best Children’s Book 2020

A story about facing your fears and accepting differences, inspired by Arabic folk tales.

The villagers are afraid of the “Ghoul.” For years, they’ve tiptoed around the village for fear of disturbing it. The monster doesn’t look like them, and it is believed to eat humans.

One day, the brave Hasan embarks on a dangerous mission to face the long-feared Ghoul. When Hasan finally meets the Ghoul living on top of the mountain, he discovers that the Ghoul is just as terrified of people as they are of him. Hasan and the Ghoul realize that they can still be friends, despite their differences.

The Ghoul is a beautifully illustrated story that can be used as a springboard to discuss how we perceive those who are different and how our fears and prejudices may be built on false assumptions.

Mother Goose and Friends

By Ruth Sanderson

Illustrated by: Ruth Sanderson

You can order signed copies of all Ruth Sanderson titles! Write ‘signed copy’ in the note section at checkout. 

Here’s dear Mother Goose and the entire clan–all our old friends are together again.

Whether at storytime, playtime, or bedtime, Mother Goose will once again have children giggling at jumpy Miss Muffet and clumsy Jack and Jill, twisting their tongues in knots with Peter Piper, and singing along to well-loved verses such as “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush,” “Yankee Doodle,” and “Ring Around the Rosies.”

You’re sure to find your favorites in this stunning new version of the classic, now made complete with other beloved nursery verses traditionally not included in most Mother Goose collections.

Ruth Sanderson soars as never before in her elegant portrayal of these enduring rhymes.

Gennaro’s Pasta Perfecto!

The Essential Collection of Fresh and Dried Pasta Dishes

By Gennaro Contaldo

Photography by: David Loftus

Over 100 ideas for sauces, fillings, and bakes.

This new book from celebrated chef Gennaro Contaldo is all about pasta, one of the most popular of all Italian dishes. Bestselling author and much-loved personality Gennaro reveals all of his tips and tricks to making the best of the most versatile of dishes.

Featuring recipes for dried, fresh, filled, and baked pasta dishes such as lasagna four ways, classic minestrone soup, homemade ravioli and perfect pesto, these are dishes that can be quickly whipped up for the whole family. An inexpensive staple that can be easily transformed into a luxurious meal, the possibilities of pasta are endless–perfect for busy families and for easy entertaining. Join Gennaro on an exciting Italian adventure, and discover both new and traditional recipes that will quickly become household favorites.

A delicious collection of over 100 recipes and featuring beautiful photography by distinguished photographer David Loftus, many of these recipes can be cooked in a matter of minutes. Packed full of tips for picking the best shape for sauces and featuring recipes from across Italy, this is an essential book for any pasta enthusiast.

– Gennaro appears in every episode of “Jamie Cooks Italy.” He is one of the world’s most-loved chefs and here he shines attention on one of the most popular of Italian dishes.
– Featuring recipes for dried, fresh, filled, and baked pasta dishes–these are recipes that can quickly come together to feed the whole family.
– Features beautiful photography by celebrated photographer David Loftus.

Salt & Time

Recipes from a Russian Kitchen

By Alissa Timoshkina

Photography by: Lizzie Mayson

A collection of delicious modern recipes from Siberia and beyond.

Salt & Time will transform perceptions of the food of the former Soviet Union, and especially Siberia–the crossroads of Eastern European and Central Asian cuisine–with 100 inviting recipes adapted for modern tastes and Western kitchens, and evocative storytelling to explain and entice. Why not try the restorative Solyanka fish soup (a famous Russian hangover cure), savor the fragrant Chicken with prunes or treat yourself to some Napoleon cake.

In Alissa Timoshkina’s words:

“Often we need distance and time, both to see things better and to feel closer to them. This is certainly true of the food of my home country, Russia–or Siberia, to be exact. When I think of Siberia, I hear the sound of fresh snow crunching beneath my feet. Today, whenever I crush sea salt flakes between my fingers as I cook, I think of that sound. In this book, I feature recipes that are authentic to Siberia, classic Russian flavor combinations and my modern interpretations. You will find dishes from the pre-revolutionary era and the Soviet days, as well as contemporary approaches–revealing a cuisine that is vibrant, nourishing, exciting and above all relevant no matter the time or the place.”

August the Tiger

By Marieke van Ditshuizen

Illustrated by: Marieke van Ditshuizen

A funny picture book from a leading Dutch children’s book author and illustrator.

August is a tiger, that’s for sure, because Mom always says he’s wild.
And tigers are wild, so August must be a tiger.
But what if he becomes a real tiger?

A funny and imaginative picture book about an energetic boy for wild tigers ages four and up.

A Christmas Sweater for Nina

By Cecilia Heikkilä

Illustrated by: Cecilia Heikkilä

A heartwarming Christmas story that will delight young readers.

During the wintertime, life is not easy for Nina the homeless cat. She lives in the middle of a big city in a house made of cardboard. When it gets cold, Nina puts on her warm woolly red sweater. But one day when she’s out for a walk, the sweater starts unraveling. Without her sweater, the windy winter weather is unbearably hard! Nina follows the yarn as it winds through alleys, up walls, and over rooftops and towers. Luckily for her, this race ends in an unexpected place, where Nina receives her first Christmas present.

The Reader

By Luciana De Luca

Illustrated by: Cynthia Alonso

An enchanting picture book about the magic of books and reading

While their parents are sleeping in, a young bookworm sneaks out of bed with one goal in mind: to spend the day reading.

The Reader is a whimsically illustrated love letter to books. This breathtaking picture book, from two acclaimed Argentinean creators, is a celebration of reading and a child’s imagination. Inspire beginning readers to become armchair adventurers by exploring what lies between the pages of a book.

Twenty Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing

By The Caine Prize Committee

The leading African Literary Award, known as the African Booker, named after the Booker Prize Founder, Michael Caine.

Now entering its twentieth year, the Caine Prize for African Writing is Africa’s leading literary prize, and is awarded to a short story by an African writer published in English, whether in Africa or elsewhere.

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Caine Prize for African Writing–often referred to as the “African Booker Prize”–this collection showcases the winning short stories of African writers from the past 20 years and reflect the vast range of modern African experience. The writers include:

As Ben Okri said: “That’s what the Caine Prize is about: celebrating the genius of human diversity. The idea is to enrich the world through its greater contact with Africa, and to enrich Africa through its greater contact with the world.”

Writings on the Wall

Palestinian Oral Histories

By Thomas Suarez

“[We express our] grave concern about the continuing construction, contrary to international law, by Israel of the wall inside the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem … in departure from the Armistice Line of 1949 … [and] the failure of the Government of Israel to cooperate…” – United Nations Commission on Human Rights

Oral histories of Palestinians collected by Bethlehem’s Arab Educational Institute.

A book that truly “sees through walls,” Thomas Suàrez has organized a remarkable collection of Palestinian oral histories, most of which hang on IsraelÍs apartheid Wall. Following his forthright introduction deconstructing the so-called “conflict,” the author’s annotations and photographs provide background to these testimonies of ordinary people living under a sadistic, seven-decade military occupation.

Lost in the chaos of Israel’s war against Palestine are the voices of the ordinary Palestinians who are its primary victims. This book puts a dent in that injustice by preserving oral testimonies collected and translated by the Sumud Story House project of Bethlehem’s Arab Educational Institute and hung as posters on Israel’s apartheid Wall.

Despite their brevity–each oral history occupies a single page in this book–each conveys the fears, the hopes, the resolve, the humanity of people under brutal military occupation, and their unwavering determination to realize a better future for their children.

June Rain

By Jabbour Douaihy

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARAB FICTION

A moving novel about Lebanon shortlisted for the International Prize for Arab Fiction.

One of Lebanon’s leading writers recreates a village forever transformed by the massacre of one Christian community by another, and its impact on a mother and her long-estranged son.

On June 16, 1957, a shoot-out in a village church in northern Lebanon leaves two dozen people dead. In the aftermath of the massacre, the town is divided in two: the Al-Ramis in the north and their rivals, the Al-Semaanis, in the south. But lives once so closely intertwined cannot easily be divided. Neighbors turn into enemies, and husbands and wives are forced to choose between loyalty to each other and loyalty to their clan.

Drawing on an actual killing that took place in his home town, Douaihy reconstructs that June day from the viewpoints of people who witnessed the killings or whose lives were forever altered by them. A young girl overhears her father lending his gun to his cousins but refusing to accompany them to the church. A school boy walks past the dead bodies, laid out in the town square on beds brought out from the houses. A baker, whose shop is trapped on the wrong side of the line, hopes the women who buy his bread will protect him.

At the center of Douaihy’s masterful novel is Eliyya, who, twenty years after emigrating to the US, returns to the village to learn about the father who was shot through the heart in the massacre: the father he never knew. But can the village, alive with the ghosts of his childhood, really provide Eliyya answers to questions he canÍt even articulate?

With an incredible eye for detail, Douaihy describes that fateful Sunday when rain poured from the sky and the traditions and affections of village life were consumed by violence and revenge.

Dune Song

By Anissa M. Bouziane

WINNER OF THE SPECIAL JURY PRIZE, PRIX LITTÉRAIRE SOFITEL TOUR BLANCHE

“I came to the Sahara to be buried.”

After witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Center, Jeehan Nathaar leaves her New York life with her sense of identity fractured and her American dream destroyed. She returns to Morocco to make her home with a family that’s not her own. Healed by their kindness but caught up in their troubles, Jeehan struggles to move beyond the pain and confusion of September 11th. On this desiccated landscape, thousands of miles from Ground Zero, the Dune sings of death, love, and forgiveness.

Palestine as Metaphor

By Mahmoud Darwish

First English publication of interviews with the late Mahmoud Darwish.

Palestine as Metaphor consists of a series of interviews with Mahmoud Darwish, which have never been translated and published in English before. The interviews are a wealth of information on the poet’s personal life, his relationships, his numerous works, and his tragedy. They illuminate Darwish’s conception of poetry as a supreme art that transcends time and place.

Several writers and journalists conducted the interviews, including a Lebanese poet, a Syrian literary critic, three Palestinian writers, and an Israeli journalist. Each encounter took place in a different city from Nicosia to London, Paris, and Amman.

These vivid dialogues unravel the threads of a rich life haunted by the loss of Palestine and illuminate the genius and the distress of a major world poet.

Only in Munich

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

A Jugendstil swimming pool, Little Asia, the sunken village, and Hitler’s secret headquarters. There’s a lot more to the Bavarian capital than beer and the Oktoberfest. It’s time to experience Munich off the beaten track.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Prague

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

The Faust House, the Hunger Wall, the English sewers and the Alchemists’ tower. There are many guidebooks to beautiful Prague but none quite like this one. Escape the throng and dive into the back streets for an adventure with a difference.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Hamburg

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

John Lennon’s doorway, a floating church, the English sewers, and the grave of an Arabian princess. A unique guide to unusual spots in the port on the Elbe. A heady mix of the workaday and the cosmopolitan in Germany’s second city.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Berlin

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

Devil’s Mountain, the Bridge of Spies, Checkpoint Charlie and the FŸhrer Bunker. Berlin’s unique wartime remains still fascinate many visitors. This guide covers them all and much more besides from medieval churches to modern art.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colourful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Budapest

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

The Children’s Railway, Rabbit Island, Ruin Pubs and the Hospital in the Rock. Discover Budapest with this explorer’s guide to the Paris of the East. The first and only guide to the Hungarian capital’s unique and unusual locations!

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Paris

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

The long and colorful story of Paris told through an original and eclectic mix of unusual historic locations. Quiet cloisters and eccentric museums, covered passageways and secret gardens, idiosyncratic shops and unusual places of worship.

Who was the real Hunchback of Notre-Dame? Is there really a lake hidden beneath the Opera? Where is the best bistro in Paris? Explore the Pagoda cinema, the Museum of Magic, Foucault’s pendulum, and a subterranean necropolis. The author also throws new light thrown on old favorites, including La Tour Eiffel and the Arc de Triomphe.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with memorable itineraries.

Only in London

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

The Necropolis Railway, Soho’s Buddhist temple, ghost stations on the Tube, and the best Eel and Pie shop. From Roman ruins to City skyscrapers. Uncover the treasures of old London and the delights of the new with this fascinating guide!

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Boston

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

The Boston Molasses Flood, America’s first subway, Harvard’s monster computer, and the skull of Phineas Gage. The author’s offbeat explorations reveal more than a hundred unusual locations in the Massachusetts’ capital. A practical guide and a handsome tribute to one of America’s most storied cities.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Zurich

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

A complicated clock, an elephant in the woods, the emperor’s paddle steamer, and the first “Dark Restaurant.” There is obviously more to Zurich than banking, clean streets, and punctuality. This guide shows a very different side to Switzerland’s largest city.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Edinburgh

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

The Innocent Railway, the Arthur’s Seat Coffins, Trainspotting in Leith, and the Skating Minister. The author’s offbeat explorations reveal more than a hundred unusual locations in the Scottish capital. A practical guide and a handsome tribute to one of Europe’s most fascinating cities.

Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.

Only in Krakow

A Guide to Unique Locations, Hidden Corners and Unusual Objects

By Duncan J. D. Smith

Explore Kraków rich royal heritage, astonishing architecture and dynamic street life with this new explorer’s guide.

Legendary churches and mysterious monasteries, novel art spaces and industrial remains, colorful customs and candlelit cellars. Where is the city’s prettiest street? Was there a dragon beneath Wawel Hill? Where was Schindler’s List filmed?

Venture beneath Europe’s biggest medieval marketplace, wander around a Communist-era steelworkers’ town, and climb mysterious mounds in the suburbs. The author also visits a stained glass workshop, a paradise for pinball machine players, and Poland’s oldest university

Ethiopia

Recipes and Traditions from the Horn of Africa

By Yohanis Gebreyesus

Photography by: Peter Cassidy

WINNER 2020 JAMES BEARD AWARD FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL COOKBOOK

WINNER IACP JULIA CHILD FIRST BOOK AWARD FOR BEST COOKBOOK 2020

SHORTLISTED GUILD OF FOOD WRITERS AWARD 2019

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER BEST NEW COOKBOOk

Experience the wonderful flavors of Ethiopia and Chef Yohanis’ dazzling collection of recipes.

Ethiopia stands as a land apart: never colonized, it celebrates ancient traditions. The fascinatingly distinct cuisine is influenced by a history enriched with a religious mix of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as some of the most fertile land on the continent.

In this cookbook, Ethiopia’s gourmet guru seeks to spread love for the country’s cuisine. After working as a chef around the world, Yohanis Gebreyesus decided it was time to go home and put his skills to showing off what his home country has to offer. Now, he’s dedicating his work to opening the world’s eyes to Ethiopian cuisine

The delicious dishes featured here include Doro Wat, chicken stewed with berbere spice, Siga Tibs, flashfried beef, and Asa Shorba, a hearty spiced fish soup, plus vegetarian dishes such as Gomen, collard greens with ginger and garlic, Azifa, green lentil salad, and Dinich Alicha, potatoes and carrots in an onion turmeric sauce.

Along with photography of the stunning landscapes and vibrant artisans of Ethiopia, combined with insightful cultural and historical details, this book demonstrates why Ethiopian food should be considered one of the world’s most singular and enchanting cuisines.

Asma’s Indian Kitchen

Home-Cooked Food Brought to You by Darjeeling Express

By Asma Khan

Photography by: Kim Lightbody

WINNER GOURMAND COOKBOOK AWARD

Feed your soul with Asma Khan’s collection of Authentic Indian Recipes. 

Asma Khan stars in Netflix’s award-winning series Chef’s Table.

Award-winning restaurant Darjeeling Express began life as a dinner party with friends; Indian food lovingly cooked from family recipes that go back generations. In this book, Asma reveals the secret to her success, telling her immigrant’s story and how food brought her home. The recipes pay homage to her royal Mughlai ancestry and follow the route of the Darjeeling Express train from the busy streets of Bengal, through Calcutta, where she grew up, and along the foothills of the Himalayas to Hyderabad.

Platters of dishes boasting texture and intense flavor encourage you to gather for a traditional dawaat (feast). Starting with simple midweek Feasts for Two, Asma then reveals the way to quick and easy cooking with less spice for Family Feasts. There are Feasts for Friends, for when you want to show off a little, and Celebratory Feasts. Many of the recipes are vegetarian, there are sweet treats and drinks, too, and all feature alongside lesser-known recipes and stories unique to Asma’s family.

This is more than just a collection of delicious and accessible recipes, it is a celebration of heritage, culture, community and quality. This is Asma’s Indian Kitchen.

Goldilocks and the Three Rhinos

A South African Retelling

By Joan Rankin

Illustrated by: Joan Rankin

A new whimsical picture book from the award-winning illustrator of The African Orchestra

Goldilocks was not supposed to be in the forest alone, but she didn’t always do as she was told.

Join Goldilocks as she stumbles across the Rhino family’s home, unknowingly dabbling in their daily activities, and the hilarity that follows.

Darwin’s Tree of Life

By Michael Bright

Illustrated by: Margaux Carpentier

A beautifully illustrated exploration of the evolution of plants and animals on earth.

From the first living things six billion years ago to the animals living around the world today, explore how the huge diversity of the life on Earth came to be. Follow the branches of Charles Darwin’s “Tree of Life” and discover how plants and animals have evolved in many amazing ways.

Find out why crabs run sideways, which fish was the first to walk on land, why birds are similar to dinosaurs, and why brains are located in our heads and not in our feet.

The book is stunningly illustrated by Margaux Carpentier in a bright and bold distinctive style.

When All Else Fails

By Rayyan Al-Shawaf

A darkly humorous saga set in post-9/11 America and the Middle East

When All Else Fails begins on September 12th, 2001. It is the story of Hunayn, a luckless and lovelorn Iraqi college student living in Orlando, Florida, after having graduated from high school in Beirut. Hunayn’s life is upended by 9/11—but not immediately, and not in the way that he, fearful in the aftermath of the attacks, initially expects.

As America settles into its post-9/11, open-ended “Septemberland” phase (vigilant but also overly suspicious and even paranoid), many Arab and Muslim Americans are made to feel it’s no longer their home. With Hunayn, who muddles through a series of surreal episodes in Orlando and nearby Indiantown, the situation proves almost the opposite: Septemberland—so many of whose citizens think they have Hunayn figured out just because of his name or origins—comes to remind him of his most recent unhappy home, Lebanon, which he assumed he’d left behind. Now, having had his fill of disconcerting experiences, Hunayn returns to Beirut. At least he knows how to navigate life back there—or so he thinks.

It turns out that Lebanon is about to undergo political upheaval of its own: a former prime minister opposed to neighboring Syria’s control of the country is assassinated; subsequent popular protests compel the Syrian regime to withdraw its army; a spate of mysterious bombings terrorizes everyone; and Israel, another neighbor, launches a war on Lebanon in retaliation for an attack by a Lebanese militant group. Hunayn finds himself aswirl in the maelstrom. And all the while, he watches from afar as Iraq, his fabled homeland and the owner of his heart, unravels in the wake of the US-led invasion.

The Old Woman and the River

By Ismail Fahd Ismail

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

After the ceasefire in 1988, the devastation to the landscape of Iraq wrought by the longest war of the twentieth century – the Iran-Iraq War – becomes visible. Eight years of fighting have turned nature upside down, with vast wastelands being left behind. In southeastern Iraq, along the shores of the Shatt al-Arab River, the groves of date palm trees have withered. No longer bearing fruit, their leaves have turned a bright yellow. There, Iraqi forces had blocked the entry points of the river’s tributaries and streams, preventing water from flowing to the trees and vegetation. Yet, surveying this destruction from the sky, a strip of land bursting with green can be seen. Beginning from the Shatt al-Arab River and reaching to the fringes of the western desert, several kilometers wide, it appears as a lush oasis of some kind. The secret of this fertility, sustaining villages and remaining soldiers, is unclear. But it is said that one old woman is responsible for this lifeline.

My Nakba

A Palestinian's Odyssey of Love and Hope

By Samir Toubassy

The story of a refugee child uprooted with his family from their home in Jaffa.

The exodus of Palestinians from their homes during the 1948 war—the Nakba, or catastrophe—is the starting point for this memoir by Samir Toubassy. But it is his trek to excel, while wrestling with his roots and identity as a Palestinian in the shadow of his family’s expulsion that is at the heart of his story.

Global business leader, philanthropist, and educator, Samir Toubassy left Jaffa with his family when he was nine, seeking refuge from the fighting that had engulfed their city. Amid never-ending turbulence, we accompany him from Jaffa to Tripoli, to Beirut where he becomes a student of business and politics, to Riyadh, London and finally to the US, as he seeks to raise a family and build an international business career, most prominently with the noted Olayan Group and its rags-to-riches founder Sulaiman Olayan. After a long career in international business, Samir embarks on a new path, as a Harvard Advanced Leadership Senior Fellow, seeking to apply his experience to global education in the developing world.

Toubassy shatters glass ceilings that hold Palestinians back over lifetimes and generations. But his race to achieve and to succeed is always inseparably tied to, and tempered by, the fate of his homeland. Searching to regain what is lost, his memoir My Nakba offers unique perspective, encouragement, and cherished lessons learned from the aspirations of a refugee.

Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism

Stories of Personal Transformation

By Carolyn L. Karcher

Personal narratives by Forty Jewish activists and scholars.

Today Jews face a choice. We can be loyal to the ethical imperatives at the heart of Judaism—love the stranger, pursue justice, and repair the world. Or we can give our unconditional support to the state of Israel. It is a choice between Judaism as a religion and the nationalist ideology of Zionism, which is usurping that religion.

In this powerful collection of personal narratives, forty Jews of diverse backgrounds tell a wide range of stories about the roads they have traveled from a Zionist world view to activism in solidarity with Palestinians and Israelis striving to build an inclusive society founded on justice, equality, and peaceful coexistence.

Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism will be controversial. Its contributors welcome the long overdue public debate. They want to demolish stereotypes of dissenting Jews as “self-hating,” traitorous, and anti-Semitic. They want to introduce readers to the large and growing community of Jewish activists who have created organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Open Hillel. They want to strengthen alliances with progressives of all faiths. Above all, they want to nurture models of Jewish identity that replace ethnic exclusiveness with solidarity, Zionism with a Judaism once again nourished by a transcendent ethical vision.

Contributors include: Joel Beinin • Sami Shalom Chetrit • Ilise Benshushan Cohen • Marjorie Cohn • Rabbi Michael Davis • Hasia R. Diner • Marjorie N. Feld • Chris Godshall • Ariel Gold • Noah Habeeb • Claris Harbon • Linda Hess • Rabbi Linda Holtzman • Yael Horowitz • Carolyn L. Karcher • Mira Klein • Sydney Levy • Ben Lorber • Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber • Carly Manes • Moriah Ella Mason • Seth Morrison • Eliza Rose Moss-Horwitz • Hilton Obenzinger • Henri Picciotto • Ned Rosch • Rabbi Brant Rosen • Alice Rothchild • Tali Ruskin • Cathy Lisa Schneider • Natalia Dubno Shevin • Ella Shohat • Emily Siegel • Rebecca Subar • Cecilie Surasky • Rebecca Vilkomerson • Jordan Wilson-Dalzell • Rachel Winsberg • Rabbi Alissa Wise • Charlie Wood

Contents:

Introduction: History of Zionism and Anti-Zionism from 1880–1948 by Carolyn L. Karcher

Chapter 1: Rabbinic Voices
Non-Zionism and the New Jewish Diaspora by Rabbi Brant Rosen
Zionism in My Life by Rabbi Linda Holtzman
From Zionism in Jerusalem to Diasporism in Chicago by Rabbi Michael Davis

Chapter 2: Transformative Experiences in Israel/Palestine
Becoming a Jew without Borders by Joel Beinin
Remembering a Baghdad Elsewhere: An Emotional Cartography by Ella Shohat
A Mural with No Wall by Sami Shalom Chetrit
Their Cries I Cannot Forget: How My Investigation of the Yemenite Babies Affair Disillusioned Me with Zionism by Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber
Coloring the Closets of Transparency: The Endless Struggles of One Feminist Mizrahi Lawyer by Claris Harbon
Dismantling Zionism: Centering Equality and Justice by Ilise Benshushan Cohen
X-Ray Glasses by Cecilie Surasky
Finding Community and the Right Pair of Glasses by Emily Siegel
Owe Me Nothing by Tali Ruskin
Not a Birthright, an Obligation by Charlie Wood
My Jewish Story by Ariel Gold
From the Tokyo JCC to JVP DC Metro by Carolyn L. Karcher
From AIPAC to JVP: My Evolution on Zionism and Israel by Seth Morrison

Chapter 3: Voices from the Campuses
Wrestling with History: My Journey in the Movement for Palestinian Rights by Ben Lorber
Moving Away from Zionism by Yael Horowitz
An Epiphany in Slow Motion: Solidarity in Seven Parts by Moriah Ella Mason
Denial by Noah Habeeb
I’ll Live Where My Feet Are: Imagining My Jewishness with and Beyond the Bund by Natalia Dubno Shevin
From Compost Queen to BDS: Arriving at Anti-Zionism through Environmental Justice by Mira Klein
Faith, Loss, and Liberation by Rachel Winsberg
Redefining My Values, Myself, and My Jewish Community by Carly Manes
Healing Myself, Healing Community by Jordan Wilson-Dalzell
My Journey from Zionism to Anti-Zionism by Chris Godshall
To Dream of a Just Jewish Future in a World of Suffering by Eliza Rose Moss-Horwitz

Chapter 4: Progressive Values versus Zionism
Choosing a Different Path by Alice Rothchild
Palestine and My Journey of Self-Discovery by Ned Rosch
Widening My Field of Vision by Rebecca Subar
Unlearning Zionism, Learning to Listen to Palestinians by Sydney Levy
Escape from Zion by Hilton Obenzinger
Choosing Sides by Marjorie N. Feld
My Jewish Journey by Hasia R. Diner
East of Eden and West of Jerusalem: Two Sisters on Opposite Sides of the Israel-Palestine Divide by Cathy Lisa Schneider
Who Are the Chosen People? by Linda Hess
A “Nice Jewish Girl” Critiques Israel by Marjorie Cohn

Chapter 5: Reflections of Leading Organizers
Zionism versus Anti-Zionism: Not My Main Concern by Henri Picciotto
“The Discarded Materials Have Become the Cornerstone” by Rebecca Vilkomerson and Rabbi Alissa Wise

Afterword: American Jews’ Changing Attitudes toward Israel, 1948–2018 by Carolyn L. Karcher

Acknowledgements

Look Back!

By Trish Cooke

Illustrated by: Caroline Binch

A beautiful picture book that tells children that it is okay to be afraid.

Who was the mysterious Ti Bolom? Could he be real or was he just one of Grandma’s inventions from her Caribbean childhood? Illustrator Caroline Binch and writer Trish Cooke – both acclaimed award winners – come together to tell this magical story of Grandma’s rainforest adventure.

When All the Lands Were Sea

A Photographic Journey into the Lives of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq

By Tor Eigeland

Rare and visually stunning images of a lost world.

This remarkable collection of photographs, captured by internationally acclaimed photojournalist Tor Eigeland in 1967, offers unprecedented insight into the daily life of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq. These photographs illustrate the beauty of this unique environment – the marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers – and show a culture that existed practically unchanged for over 2,000 years. Some have even speculated that this place was the site of the original Garden of Eden. Under Saddam Hussein’s rule, vast areas of the marshlands were dammed and drained, causing catastrophic environmental damage and brutally forcing the marshes’ inhabitants to abandon their way of life.

Now Tor Eigeland’s photographic journey stands as a monument, a rare record of a lost world and an ancient civilization. These precious photographs celebrate the people and culture of the marshlands and bring us back to a time and place where people lived in harmony with their environment.

Miami

A Cultural History

By Anthony P. Maingot

Sociologist and Miami resident Anthony P. Maingot has written a cultural history of this vibrant city, which boasts the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the US. Miami, or “Sweet Water” in the Creek Indian language, is one of the newest cities in the United States.

While northern Florida was fought over by European powers and finally taken by the Americans as part of the slave-worked plantation South, Miami lay largely ignored and populated by more alligators than humans until its incorporation as a city in 1896. The driving force was Henry Flagler, who brought his railroad down to Miami and from there to Key West- and trade with Cuba. Once settled, “Tin Can” tourists from the North, Midwest and South rode their Model-T Fords down to Florida and Miami and the boom in land sales began. After the Prohibition period and the heyday of the bootleggers, a new but still segregated Miami emerged from the Second World War. Miami Beach became a tourist mecca and once Disney World opened in Orlando, millions passed through Miami to reach it and Florida and Miami entered a new era of growth and development. It was Fidel Castro, however, who created present-day Miami by exiling over a million of Cuba’s middle class.

Showing enormous entrepreneurial skill and an exuberant taste for life, Cubans and more recently, Brazilians, Venezuelans and Colombians created the first Latin and “tropical” city in the US. Anthony P. Maingot explores the momentous history and vibrant culture of this most cosmopolitan city. With the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the US, Miami is a melting-pot of music, dance, visual arts, cuisine sports and political argument. Maingot reveals how this unique cultural mix keeps the new city humming and ensures the perpetuation of its tropical joie de vivre.

– City of migrants and tourists: “capital of Latin America and the Caribbean”; Little Havana and Little Haiti; exiles and entrepreneurs; the world’s biggest cruise ship hub.

– City of crime: the Prohibition boom; Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and the mob; Miami Vice and modern-day drug crime.

– City of culture: art deco architecture; the Latin recording industry; writers of the Caribbean Diaspora; center of performing arts.

Wrapped

Crepes, Wraps, and Rolls from around the World

By Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra

Photography by: Keiko Oikawa

Wrap! Roll! Eat! A delicious collection of world food recipes from the award-winning author of Warm Bread and Honey Cake.

Whether as a snack on-the-go or as part of a family feast, filled pancakes or wraps are found on every Main Street and served up in homes the world over. Each country has a favorite way of serving these batter- and dough-based morsels and they are fun and easy to prepare. This eye-catching collection of international recipes covers crêpes, galettes, tacos, burritos, spring rolls, dosa, kebabs, dumplings, griddle cakes, pancakes and pastries… all wrapped, rolled or parceled. It’s a truly exciting mix.

Wrapped has a touch of the homely and the exotic in one volume, with simple dishes that are perfect for students, family cooks and street food enthusiasts alike. With beautiful photography and delectable design, the book itself is a treat and makes an ideal gift.

The Snow Princess

By Ruth Sanderson

Illustrated by: Ruth Sanderson

You can order signed copies of all Ruth Sanderson titles! Write ‘signed copy’ in the note section at checkout. 

A beautiful retelling of the classic Russian folktale with lavish full-color oil paintings.

When the Snow Princess sets off to see the world, Father Frost and Mother Spring warn her never to fall in love, lest she lose her immortality. She journeys alone through many lands, keeping her heart cold, but finds herself drawn to a kind and handsome young shepherd named Sergei. The Snow Princess begins to fall in love with him, but her parents’ warning haunts her dreams, and she must finally decide her own fate in the chaos of a powerful snowstorm that threatens Sergei’s life.

Inspired by a Russian ballet and illustrated with Ruth Sanderson’s lush oil paintings, this original fairy tale will charm readers of all ages.

The Aleppo Cookbook

Celebrating the Legendary Cuisine of Syria

By Marlene Matar

WINNER OF THE ART OF EATING PRIZE 2017

An inspiring collection of recipes from one of the world’s oldest cities.

It is hardly surprising that Aleppo, one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, is also home to one of the world’s most distinguished and vibrant cuisines. Surrounded by fertile lands and located at the end of the Silk Road, Aleppo was a food capital long before Paris, Rome, or New York.

Here, one of the Arab world’s most renowned chefs unlocks the secrets to this distinctive cuisine in this comprehensive cookbook filled with practical guidance on Middle Eastern cooking techniques as well as step-by step explanations of over 200 irresistible recipes, such as Chili and Garlic Kebab, Syrian Fishcakes, Lamb Stuffed Eggplants, Semolina and Butter pudding, and the queen of the mezze table, Red Pepper and Walnut Spread. Divided into 15 chapters (Basic Recipes, Appetizers and Mezze, Soups, Salads and Accompaniments, Grains, Fish, Poultry, Meat, Kibbeh, Stuffed Dishes, Vegetables, Stews, Bread, Desserts and Sweets, Pickles and Preserves, and Beverages), traditional cooking and pre-servation methods go hand-in-hand with modern combinations of flavors and today’s desire for healthful and natural meals.

Wonderful full-color photography of the food, people, and markets of Aleppo make this a stunning cookbook, a great gift for food lovers, and a fitting tribute to a beautiful city and the suffering its people have endured.

Divine Names

The 99 Healing Names of the One Love

By Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi

The path to self-discovery and inner and outer peace…

Divine Names is a unique contribution to understanding life and oneself on a deeper level: by learning to open to the Divine. It draws on original Arabic literature- often not available in European languages- and on the author’s many years of personal practice, teaching, and guiding others on their spiritual paths to healing, to becoming whole. It focuses on the use of the Divine Names in dhikr, individual meditations and healing practices.

Whether we admit it or not, human beings are searchers: we want to understand; we want to know; we want to be known. Our quest may take many forms, yet ultimately it ends in nothing but pure praising of the Divine, even if this comes after our last breath. The outside always furthers the inside because the task and the meaning of life is always about reuniting- about connecting everything on the outside to its inner truth. It is the knowledge of the heart which is always capable of uniting. Such is the path of the Sufis.

The Sufi tradition centers on the opening of the heart and nothing touches the heart as much as beauty. In this book, the author’s unique style of writing, which combines clarity and poetic inspiration, is coupled with distinctive and ornamental Arabic calligraphy of each of the 99 Divine Names to make it a visually stunning tribute to this tradition. It will be enjoyed regardless of a person’s religious beliefs.

Sherazade

By Leila Sebbar

Sherazade, aged 17, dark curly hair, green eyes, missing.

Sherazade is seventeen, Algerian, and a -runaway in Paris. Although she has no morals, no scruples, no politics, no apparent emotional depth and little education, Sherazade remains curiously unattached but innocent in the city’s underworld of drop-outs, outcasts, political activists and junkies.

With honesty and lyricism this novel exposes the various issues that affect a young woman living in a city which is both sophisticated and provincial, liberal and conservative, tolerant and prejudiced.

In Paris, Sherazade is pursued by Julian, the son of French-Algerians who is an ardent Arabist. Pigeon-holed by Julian into the -traditional exotic mold, Sherazade endeavors to create her own definition of Algerian -femininity and in doing so breaks down conventions and stereotypes. It is Julian’s obsession with her that spurs her on to self-discovery and to make decisions about her future.

Sherazade is about a young woman haunted by her Algerian past. It is a powerful account of a person who searches for her true identity but is caught between worlds- Africa and Europe, her parents’ and her own, colony and capital. Ultimately it is an -account of possession, identity and the realities of urban life today and what can happen when society fails to acknowledge its younger generations.

Chinese Fairy Tale Feasts

A Literary Cookbook

By Paul Yee

Illustrated by: Shaoli Wang

A fun book for parents and children to enjoy and treasure.

The fairy tales and folklore of China- like stories told throughout the ages everywhere- bring the fantastic world of ghosts and demons into our everyday lives. So it is not surprising that food makes an appearance here- each story is followed by a simple recipe.

Chinese Fairy Tale Feasts is a creative book which folds fairy tales into a cookbook of kid-friendly recipes. Most of the thirteen fairy tales included in the book have been adapted and retold from original sources by master storyteller, Paul Yee- a few are original to this text, but remain true to the spirit of the collection. They are accompanied by an introduction by Jane Yolen, one our most celebrated folklorists. The splendid illustrations by Shaoli Wang bring the collection to life.

Salmagundi

A Celebration of Salads from around the World

By Sally Butcher

Photography by: Yuki Sugiura

Fresh • Seasonal • Hot • Cold • Raw • Delicious

Salmagundi is a 17th century English expression denoting a salad dish comprising, well… everything. The nearest modern equivalent is Fiambre, a Guatemalan salad containing in excess of twenty ingredients. This comprehensive new book from acclaimed author, Sally Butcher, looks at salad bowls across the world in 150 recipes. The recipes feature a number of archaic, traditional and staple dishes—and a whole lot of funky new stuff as well.

Divided into fourteen chapters (Herbs and Leaves; Vegetables; Beans; Roots; Grains and Pasta, Rice, Cheese, Fish, Meat, Dips, Fruity Salads, Salads for Pudding, The Dressing Room, The Prop Cupboard), no stone is left unturned in pursuit of the ultimate salad recipe. Recipes are flagged where relevant with tags such as “super-healthy” or “skinny-minny” or “main course” to make it more user-friendly. Heavily punctuated with Sally’s trademark mixture of folklore and anecdotes, this is an essential update for the foodie bookshelf.

– Fourth book from an acclaimed cookbook author

– Over 150 salad recipes from around the world

– An inspirational and uplifting read as well as a gold-mine of unusual salad recipes

– A beautifully photographed culinary and cultural tour

Persiana

Recipes from the Middle East and Beyond

By Sabrina Ghayour

Photography by: Liz Haarala & Max Hamilton

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
WASHINGTON POST BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR
LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR
SAVEUR MAGAZINE BEST COOKBOOK RELEASES
THE OBSERVER FOOD MONTHLY BEST NEW COOKBOOK
LIBRARY JOURNAL COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR
BBC GOOD FOOD MAGAZINE’S BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR
DELICIOUS MAGAZINE BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR
THE TELEGRAPH BEST COOKBOOK TO READ
THE SPECTATOR BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR

A fabulous collection of recipes from one of the strongest voices in Middle Eastern food today.

A celebration of the food and flavors from the regions near the Southern and Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, with over 100 recipes for modern and accessible Middle Eastern dishes, including Lamb & Sour Cherry Meatballs; Chicken, Preserved Lemon & Olive Tagine; Blood Orange & Radicchio Salad; Persian Flatbread; and Spiced Carrot, Pistachio & Coconut Cake with Rosewater Cream.

Chinese Love Poetry

By Jane Portal

Classical and modern Chinese love poems, illustrated with brushwork calligraphy and scenes from rarely exhibited paintings.

The three arts of poetry, calligraphy and painting are regarded in China as the Triple Excellence, and they are brought together here in a beautifully presented anthology of forty Chinese love poems ranging from the earliest known works in the famous Book of Songs to the work of Chairman Mao and other twentieth-century poets, including poignant examples from the high point of Chinese poetry in the Tang dynasty (618-906). The subject of all the poems and extracts is love, in all its variations: the love of husbands and wives, family and friends, times and places as well as courtship, passion and parting.

Selected English translations are each illustrated with a scene from a Chinese painting and are illuminated by the artistic brushwork calligraphy of Qu Lei Lei. Jane Portal’s introduction summarizes the history and development of Chinese poetry and provides brief biographical notes on the poets.

Rebel Voices

The Global Fight for Women's Equality and the Right to Vote

By Louise Kay Stewart

Illustrated by: Eve Lloyd Knight

A timely, beautiful and bold compendium of women around the world who said “time’s up” on inequality.

Rule Breakers. Risk Takers. Rebel Women. Law Makers. This book is a celebration of women standing up, speaking out, and sticking together to battle inequality and win the vote.

In January 2017, more than 3 million women around the world marched, demanding their voices be heard and their rights defended. Rebel Voices is a book about historical events, but truly for our times. It features the brave campaigners who fought for women’s right to vote. Discover that it was never illegal for women to vote in Ecuador, or how 40,000 Russian women marched through St. Petersburg demanding their rights. Find out how one Canadian woman changed opinions with a play, and Kuwaiti women protested via text message. And learn that women climbed mountains, walked a lion through the streets of Paris, and starved themselves, all in the name of having a voice. Tracing its history from New Zealand at the end of the 19th century, follow this empowering movement as it spread from Oceania to Europe and the Americas, then Africa and Asia up to the present day. Meet the women who rioted, rallied and refused to give up.

Stunningly illustrated by Eve Lloyd Knight, this book celebrates the women who refused to behave, rebelling against convention to give women everywhere a voice. If you loved Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, or Women in Science then you’ll love this!

From the Land of Nightingales and Roses

Recipes from the Persian Kitchen

By Maryam Sinaiee

In From the Land of Nightingales and Roses, Iranian food blogger and home cook, Maryam Sinaiee, takes us through a full year in the Persian kitchen.

Each seasonal chapter offers up delicious recipes alongside insights into the festivals, traditions and rituals that color day-to-day life in this region. From spring through to winter, Maryam offers the reader a true taste of real Persian cooking- Lamb and Eggplant Stew, Baked Fish with Tamarind, and Rosewater Ice Cream with Pistachios. Full of flavor, history and culture, Maryam’s recipes are a wonderful introduction to the varied and delectable cuisine of this region.

Colorful, stunning photography evoking the vibrancy and romance of the country will bring Iran into your home and make you fall in love with this unique way to cook and enjoy food.

Aya Dane

A novel

By Mhani Alaoui

An evocative novel from the award-winning author of Dreams of Maryam Tair.

Aya Dane creates mixed media paintings and writes a diary in her studio above a strange, old Cambridge townhouse. There she lives alone, having left her childhood home in Tangiers. Though she has carved a name for herself in the art world, she allows herself just one close relationship, to an intimate companion named David.

One day, Aya receives a letter from a powerful, enigmatic patron, an invitation to submit her ultimate work to his collection. If he deems it worthy, he promises, her art will live on forever. Aya finds herself unable to resist the mysterious invitation, and challenge.

But as she begins to work on the commissioned painting, from her top-floor perch, the streets of Tangiers reappear to her. Their white-and-blue walls, purple bougainvillea, sweetness and sorrow bring back to life people and events she thought she’d left behind. Aya becomes haunted by forgotten scenes, only to discover that she herself is being painted, on a canvas from which it seems impossible to escape.

Redemption Song

and Other Stories

By Chris Brazier & the Caine Prize Committee

The leading African literary award, known as the African Booker, named after the Booker Prize founder, Michael Caine.

Now entering its nineteenth year, the Caine Prize for African Writing is Africa’s leading literary prize, and is awarded to a short story by an African writer published in English, whether in Africa or elsewhere. This collection brings together twelve short stories- the five 2018 shortlisted stories, along with others written at the 2018 Caine Prize Writers’ Workshop that took place in Rwanda.

The collection showcases young writers who go on to publish successful novels, for instance: Leila Aboulela, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, Brian Chikwava and Helon Habila.

The collection also includes the following twelve stories written at the workshop:

No Ordinary Soiree by Paula Akugizibwe, Tie Kidi by Awuor Onyango, Calling the Clouds Home by Heran T. Abate, America by Caroline Numuhire, All Things Bright and Beautiful by Troy Onyango, Departure by Nsah Mala, Where Rivers Go to Die by Dilman Dila, Ngozi by Bongani Sibanda, The Weaving of Death by Lucky Grace Isingizwe, Redemption Song by Arinze Ifeakandu, Spaceman by Bongani Kona, Grief is the Gift that Breaks the Spirit Open by Eloghosa Osunde

The prize was launched in 2000 to encourage and highlight the richness and diversity of African writing by bringing it to a wider audience internationally. The focus on the short story reflects the contemporary development of the African storytelling tradition.

The Storyteller of Damascus

By Rafik Schami

Illustrated by: Peter Knorr

KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST CHILDREN'S BOOK 2018

An authentic taste of the old Damascene tradition of storytelling that will inspire children’s imagination.

An old storyteller roams through the old quarter of Damascus. For only one piaster, he offers to show the children the wonders of the world. The children look through the peepholes of his magic box, which he carries on his back from one neighborhood to the next. There they see and hear the love story of Sami, the shepherd boy, and the beautiful Leyla. But over time, the story changes” pictures inside the wonder box become old and start to fade away, replaced by cutouts from recent advertisements.

A stunningly-illustrated children’s book filled with love, intrigue, courage, loyalty, and the sounds and smells of old Damascus.

Indivisible

Global Leaders on Shared Security

By Ru Freeman & Kerri Kennedy

Global leaders and activists writing about what they understand shared security to be.

More than forty global leaders and activists reflect on the state of the world, and the indivisibility of lasting peace and security.

From renowned peacemaker Archbishop Desmond Tutu to the twenty-eight year old UN Secretary General’s Envoy for Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, from UK Minister of Parliament Caroline Lucas to IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner and creator of Story4, Colum McCann, a world-renowned cast of writers disavow the notion of security as stemming from walls, x-ray machines, armed security forces, and other militarized means of separating one population or group from another, refuse to identify particular groups or demographics as threats to other groups, and redefine security as being inclusive and egalitarian.

Taken together these global citizens articulate a persuasive and powerful argument in favor of a new way of looking at a world where we reframe security as a shared goal. This is an exceptional compilation of voices whose places of origin reflect the world of which they speak, and who, in chorus, become a testament to the fact that we can come together, no matter how far-flung we are, how solitary our endeavors, to shape our common future.

Contributors include: Amy Siskand · Andrés Álvarez Castañeda · Andrei Gómez-Suárez · Ashu Varshney · Azza Karam · Archbishop Desmond Tutu · Brian Ganson · Caroline Lucas · Charlie Taylor · Cindy and Craig Corrie · Colum McCann · Diana Francis · Edwin Rekosh · Haifa Najjar · Hector Rosada Granados · Jayathma Wikramanayake · Jean Paul Lederach · Jimmy Carter · John Freeman · Johan Galtung · Kerri Kennedy · Khaled Mansour · Khury Peterson-Smith · Lana Baydas · Maya Tudor · Nancy Lindborg · Nigel James Kudzanai Nyamutumbu · Raja Shehadeh · Ru Freeman · Scilla Elworthy · Steven Pinker · Sue Williams · Tatyana El-Kaur · Victor Ochen · and others

Spiralize!

40 Nutritious Recipes to Transform the Way You Eat

By Stephanie Jeffs

Photography by: Tony Briscoe

Quick and easy spiralizing recipes, coupled with expert tips and advice for a healthy lifestyle.

This book is the ultimate beginners guide to spiralizing, featuring over 40 quick and easy recipes for super-healthy, flavor-packed, spiralized meals. A brief introduction to spiralizing explains all of the health benefits and features a step-by-step guide to transforming your vegetables with a few cranks of a spiralizer’s handle.

Having a healthy relationship with food should never mean denying ourselves enjoyment from the meals that we eat but making small changes to our diet and incorporating more of the food that truly nourishes our bodies is something that can be easily achieved with the help of one simple tool: a spiralizer.

Giving you all of the tools that you need to transform your diet, this is a must-have book for anyone looking to make small, positive changes towards living a healthier, happier life. 

– Add exciting new dimensions to the way you cook with a spiralizer, an innovative slicer that quickly transforms vegetables and fruit into noodles, shoestrings, thin spreads and wafer-like slices 

– 40 low-cal, low-carb, quick and easy spiralizing recipes, coupled with expert tips and advice for a healthy lifestyle 

– Beautiful photography illustrate step-by-step instructions to help you get the most out of your spiralizer

Bali

A Cultural History

By Arthur Cotterell

Bali is unlike anywhere else. Despite the advent of international tourism, this Indonesian island remains an untarnished cultural gem set in an idyllic landscape.

Spirit-haunted as is the rest of Southeast Asia, Bali boasts a unique mixture of beliefs because Hinduism overlays a much older relationship with the physical world. Nothing is considered to be inanimate. Towering volcanoes, majestic lakes, lush forests, gushing springs, flooded paddies, golden sands and blue seas- all these spectacular features have convinced the Balinese that their island is in itself a cosmos.

Even though Bali suffered under the Japanese during World War II, in the struggle afterwards to expel the Dutch, and through the violence which accompanied the military overthrow of President Sukarno, the resilience and kindness of its inhabitants ensure that no visitor leaves the island today unimpressed by its heritage.

– Land of Temples: Besides an estimated 20,000 temples, there are hundreds of thousands of shrines for the good reason that hardly anywhere is said to lack divine significance.

– Festivals and Drama: So widespread are places of worship that every village and town possesses its own religious festival, an important part of which is dance-drama. Most popular is the story of the defeat of the chief witch Rangda by the good lion Barong, but the audience knows that she will be back again.

– Art and Handicrafts: Because the Balinese believe that making beautiful objects is pleasing to the gods, artists and craftsmen are highly esteemed. On display along roadsides are their astounding works, which range from monumental sculpture to bright textiles.

Frankfurt

A Cultural Guide

By Brian Melican

Frankfurt is a city that punches well above its weight.

Despite its diminutive size- it has fewer than a million inhabitants- it is a financial center of global importance, named alongside metropolises and capitals such as Tokyo, London, and New York. Yet Frankfurt is a city that is also continually underestimated: many of the millions who visit it on business- both German and from other countries- see little more of it than its airport and its skyscrapers.

The city’s role in the global financial markets often obscures its importance as a historical and cultural center, not just for Germany, but for Europe and the West as a whole. In the Middle Ages, Frankfurt was the city in which the Holy Roman Emperors were crowned and in which, at the dawn of the Renaissance, a tradition of printing and publishing was established which lives on in today’s Frankfurt Book Fair. The German language’s most enduring author, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was born in the city, and the university named for him gave birth to one of the twentieth century’s most revolutionary academic developments, the Frankfurt School. Architecturally, too, the city has always been a pioneer: its famous skyline is only the latest and most visible in a series of bold experiments. Frankfurt has always been a capital without a country: the capital of the book trade, the capital of modern social studies, the capital of the Eurozone. Today, it rivals Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and London, and yet retains a deeply provincial, down-to-earth identity interwoven with the thick forests and farming country of its Hessian hinterland. While its population is one of the world’s most international, its dialect is one of Germany’s most impenetrable.

For those looking to do more than just change flights or sign a contract, this cultural guide takes a closer look at Frankfurt, exploring and explaining these dichotomies.

Man Enough?

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity

By Jackson Katz

Why has the U.S. never had a woman president?

The big story about gender in the 2016 presidential year was supposed to be about Hillary Clinton, and her quest to become the first woman president of the United States. Then Donald Trump’s candidacy for the Republican nomination took off, and the narrative took an unexpected turn. Gender was still a central force to be reckoned with, but contrary to the popular understanding of “gender” as synonymous with “women,” the gender issue at the heart of the Trump phenomenon had less to do with women and more to do with men.

Trump’s appeal was rooted in right-wing populism and know-nothing racism, but it was also based on his performance of a kind of can-do white masculinity that had been in decline in recent decades. Like Ronald Reagan, Trump understood implicitly that the desire for a strong, virile man in the White House runs deep in the American DNA. His supporters confirmed this every time they opened their mouths: He tells it like it is. He’s his own man. He’s not politically correct. He’s got balls. In other words, it’s time to return a “real man” to the White House.

To date, most conversations about gender and the presidency have focused on the special challenges women presidential candidates face: endless media scrutiny about their looks, their clothes, the deeply sexist attitudes and beliefs that keep people from believing a woman is capable of serving as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. 

But gender has always been a crucial factor in presidential politics. In Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity, Jackson Katz puts forth the original and highly provocative thesis that in recent decades presidential campaigns have become the center stage of an ongoing national debate about manhood, a kind of quadrennial referendum on what type of man—or one day, woman—embodies not only our ideological beliefs, but our very identity as a nation. 

Whether he is examining right-wing talk radio’s relentless attacks on the masculinity of Democratic candidates, how fears of appearing weak and vulnerable end up shaping candidates’ actual policy positions, how the ISIS attacks on Paris and elsewhere have pushed candidates to assume an increasingly hypermasculine posture, or the groundbreaking quality of Hillary Clinton’s runs for the presidency in 2008 and 2016, Katz offers a new way to understand the role of identity politics in presidential campaigns. In the end, Man Enough? offers nothing less than a paradigm-shifting way to understand the very nature of the American presidency.  

Kahlil Gibran

Beyond Borders

By Jean Gibran & Kahlil Gibran

Painter and poet, immigrant, rebel, global citizen, author of the beloved classic, The Prophet.

Kahlil Gibran: Beyond Borders tells the inspiring saga of the artist’s life and creative vision Gibran’s story is one of overcoming barriers faced by many immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century – and still today.

From his childhood and spiritual roots in Mount Lebanon to the city wilderness of urban America; from his apprenticeships in the creative circles of Boston, Beirut, Paris, and New York to his art and activism for “Greater Syria”; and from his friendships and loves to his emergence during the populist waves of the early 1900s as a people’s poe, Gibran crafted an art embracing a universal message that has become treasured in over forty languages. Exiled between the worlds and conflicts of the Middle East and the West, Gibran defied boundaries to assert a vision of an underlying humanity and faith that people share.

This colorful, richly illustrated biography draws on a lifetime of dedicated, persistent research to bring Gibran’s compelling story into our time. It will make obsolete all previous accounts and will become the definitive study of this extraordinary and well-loved writer.

Frontline Madrid

Battlefield Tours of the Spanish Civil War

By David Mathieson

Takes the reader into the gripping world of the Spanish Civil War: gun emplacements, bunkers, trenches and more.

In July 1936 insurgent Spanish troops organized a military coup to oust the elected Republican government in Madrid. The rebel generals expected to force a quick, clean regime change but they failed. The botched uprising turned into a bloody civil war. Hundreds of thousands died in a bitter conflict which tore the country apart and rapidly turned into the prelude for an even greater conflict yet to come- World War II. The siege of Madrid was the key battle of the war. The world watched and waited for the city to surrender as General Franco’s Nationalist army, backed by Hitler and Mussolini, closed in on the Spanish capital. But Madrid did not fall. Madrileños fought tooth and nail to defend their city. Helped by volunteers from fifty other countries- the International Brigades- they held out against all the odds until the end of the conflict in 1939. Despite its central role in twentieth-century history, the siege of Madrid is an episode largely hidden from today’s visitor. There is no guide to the war sites and few clues for the inquisitive traveler who wants to know more. Frontline Madrid fills that gap.

This unique guide book explains what life was like in the city under siege and what happened in the battlefield dramas. The simple to follow maps and diagrams make it easy to visit the frontline sites. The vividly written descriptions bring events and people compellingly to life. The role of prominent individuals, American and British- Orwell, Hemingway, John Cornford- is explored. Off the beaten track, from the University district in the city center to the mountains of Guadarrama less than an hour away, the remains of the war in Madrid can still be found- gun emplacements, bunkers, trenches and occasional debris. Frontline Madrid retraces the footsteps of those who lived through the conflict to take the reader on a tour in time. The usual tourist traps are left far behind to enter the gripping world of a war which shaped modern European history.

Oxford

A Cultural Guide

By Martin Garrett

Entertainingly-written and concise guide to Oxford and its environs.

Oxford started as an Anglo-Saxon border outpost, with a bridge replacing the “oxen ford” from which it takes its name. It became a center for trade and religion and developed one of the oldest universities in Europe from the late twelfth century. Since the Middle Ages its individual colleges have gone on building- chapels, halls, accommodation, libraries- in an extraordinary variety of styles from Gothic to Brutalist. Oxford also has many churches, a Covered Market, an extraordinary museum of Natural History in soaring iron, glass and stone, and a flamboyant neo-Jacobean Town Hall.

In such a place, suggested W.B. Yeats, “one almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking.” Nevertheless, Oxford has become a busy modern city. For much of the twentieth century the car industry, established in Cowley by William Morris (Lord Nuffield), dominated local life. Today there are cinemas, theaters, innumerable restaurants, shopping centers, an ice-rink, business and technology centers, close links to London by bus and train. Amidst the expanding city Oxford University retains its academic excellence, its student exuberance and its physical beauty. And it has been joined by a notably successful second university, Oxford Brookes.

Martin Garrett discusses the literature Oxford has generated: from Chaucer to Lewis Carroll, Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Barbara Pym, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Iris Murdoch. There are also chapters on architecture, on religion, on theater, film and art- including Oxford’s great museum of art and history the Ashmolean- and on leisure pursuits (punting and rowing, gardens, student pranks, city fairs and carnival). A chapter on commerce focuses on Victorian shops, Cornmarket and the Morris Motor Works, while a brief social history includes the former Oxford Castle and a gallery of dons as rulers- visionary or ignorant, charismatic or dull.

Garrett looks at social change, especially the transformation in the position of Oxford women, and considers the city’s darker side of crime. A final chapter explores its rich surroundings: the countryside where Matthew Arnold’s “black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames,” the baroque grandeur of Blenheim Palace, the ancient windswept Ridgeway and White Horse.

Brittany

A Cultural History

By Wendy Mewes

A cultural guide to a region on the edge of Europe that has been visited by the Romans, Franks, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons and Germans.

Brittany’s richly layered landscape has contributed depth and character to the region’s traditional oral culture, from stories of the sea and shore to tales of misty moors, sacred hill-tops and secretive forests. Evangelizing Dark Age saints from Britain laid the foundations of Breton language and society, imposing Christianity on the landscape and in the minds of the people. Their legacy rests visually in the prolific spread of chapels, churches and cathedrals, and the Celtic language still preserved with pride.

Right on the edge of Europe, the region has been vulnerable to assault and exploitation. Franks, Vikings, English, Germans have all made their mark, resisted at every turn with resilience. The problematic relationship with neighboring France before and after Union in 1532 has left wounds to this day. The rapacity of the ancien regime was followed by deprivation of privileges during the Revolution, attacks on religion and subsequent suppression of the Breton language which struck at the very heart of Brittany.

The nineteenth century combined economic stagnation with growing interest in Celtic roots, fuelling the search for that ultimate chimera- Breton identity. Historians and poets began to assert the distinct character of the region, while foreign travelers also left accounts of a people speaking an unfathomable language and appearing a race apart. This “primitivism”å coupled with the lure of the mysterious megaliths created an image of wild exoticism, and made Brittany a prime target for tourists and artists. Today the past is perpetuated and the future welcomed in a packed festival calendar of Celtic music and Breton culture. Yet for all its modernity, Brittany remains as intensely complex and challenging to preconceived notions as ever.

– Landscape and legends: Marches of Brittany; Druids and megaliths; St-Malo and sea adventures; mysteries of the Monts d’Arre;Merlin in the Forêt de Brocéliande.

– Complexity and ambiguity: part of France yet a separate world; nationalism, regionalism, resistance, unity and division of language; four departments or five?

– Writers and artists: Chaucer, Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, Ernest Renan, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, Arthur de la Borderie, Mathurin Meheut, Max Jacob, Yves Tanguy.

Soup for Syria

Recipes to Celebrate Our Shared Humanity

By Barbara Abdeni Massaad

Photography by: Barbara Abdeni Massaad

A beautiful cookbook to be cherished for its look, its content, and the cause it supports.

The world has failed Syria’s refugees and some of the world’s wealthiest countries have turned their backs on this humanitarian disaster. Syria’s neighbors- Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq- have together absorbed more that 3.8 million refugees. The need for food relief is great and growing. Acclaimed chefs and cookbook authors the world over have come together to help food relief efforts to alleviate the suffering of Syrian refugees. Each has contributed a recipe to this beautifully illustrated cookbook of delicious soups from around the world.

Contributors include: Alice Waters, Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden, Chef Greg Maalouf, Chef Alexis Coquelet, Chef Chris Borunda, Chef Alexandra Stratou, Necibe Dogru, Aglaia Kremenzi, and many others.

– Celebrity chefs contribute favorite recipes to help feed Syrian refugees

– Fabulous soups from around the world- from hearty winter warmers to chilled summer soups

– Easy-to-follow instructions with stunning color photos throughout

– Recipes made with no-fuss ingredients found in your local supermarket.

All profits from the sales of the cookbook will be donated to help fund food relief efforts through various nonprofit organizations. Most Syrians hope that one day they will be able to return to their country and rebuild their lives. For now, though, what we can do is listen to their pleas. Be part of this vital work of saving lives and help us deliver essential food items to the displaced refugees.

Papa Gatto

An Italian Fairy Tale

By Ruth Sanderson

Illustrated by: Ruth Sanderson

You can order signed copies of all Ruth Sanderson titles! Write ‘signed copy’ in the note section at checkout. 

Children will love this retelling of a classic Italian fairy tale.

Papa Gatto, trusted adviser to the prince, learns that judgment can be clouded by appearances when he hires the lovely Sophia to care for his eight tiny kittens. When Papa Gatto realizes his mistake, his home is in shambles, his kittens are neglected, and a priceless heirloom is in Sophia’s hands. Fortunately, the next helper he hires is Beatrice, whose affection for his kittens assures him that this time he has found someone he can trust. The crafty Sophia, however, has other ideas…

With its surprising twist to the happily-ever-after ending and its exquisitely detailed illustrations, this charming Italian fairy tale is sure to become a favorite of cat lovers, caretakers, and hopeless romantics everywhere.

Dreams of Maryam Tair

Blue Boots and Orange Blossoms

By Mhani Alaoui

An exciting debut and a wonderful work of magical realism.

Outside of time, the legendary storyteller and queen Sheherazade tells a little girl a story that has happened and is yet to happen, the rebirth of a story ancient and forgotten. Dreams of Maryam Tair: Blue Boots and Orange Blossoms brings readers to a Casablanca of myth and metaphor; curses and student revolts; and of witches, demons, djinns, and bureaucrats. Long after Biblical Adam set aside forgotten first-wife Lilith for Eve, star-crossed highborn Leila and scholar Adam catch the attention of the demons during Casablanca’s 1981 Bread Riots, and are disappeared. Months later- after centuries in the demons’ lair- Adam and Leila reunite at her parents’ once grand and now cursed house as shadows of themselves. But Leila returns from her ordeal pregnant with a special, singular child, one who draws out magical beings and has the power to change everything. A daughter she named Maryam, born with the scent of orange blossoms and a body filled with pain.

Seamlessly interweaving a sprawling, multi-generational family tale with ancient creation stories, Mhani Alaoui’s cyclical half-myth half-reality story celebrates the radical power of disobedience.

Ali and His Russian Mother

By Alexandra Chreiteh

A fresh, daring voice in arabic literature today.

Alexandra Chreiteh’s Ali and his Russian Mother is at once an ordinary and extraordinary story of two young people in Lebanon. At the outbreak of the July War in 2006, the novel’s unnamed young protagonist reconnects with her childhood friend and develops a little crush on him, as they flee the bombs unleashed upon their country by Israel. Displaced, along with a million others across the country, she and her Russian mother have joined an evacuation for Russian citizens, when she again meets up with Ali, her former schoolmate from the South, who also has a Russian (Ukrainian) mother.

As the two friends reunite, chat, and bond during a harrowing bus caravan across the Syrian border to Lattakia, en route to Moscow, Chreiteh’s unique, comic sense of the absurd speaks to contradictions faced by a young generation in Lebanon now, sounding out taboos surrounding gender, sexual, religious, and national identities. Carrying Russian passports like their mothers- both of whom married Lebanese men and settled there- they are forced to reflect upon their choices, and lack of them, in a country that is yet again being torn apart by violent conflict.

Like Chreiteh’s acclaimed first novel, Always Coca-Cola, this story employs deceptively simple language and style to push the boundaries of what can be talked about in Arabic fiction. Again focused on the preoccupations of young people and their hopes for the future, Ali and his Russian Mother represents a fresh, daring voice in Arabic literature today.

Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror

A Primer

By Phyllis Bennis

Clear explanations of recent events in the new global War on Terror.

The US is back at war. A new version of what was once known as George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” has become the central component of American foreign policy. The US/NATO assault on Libya in 2011, thousands of troops on the ground in Iraq, plans to keep combat troops in Afghanistan, drone wars rising in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere- and now new air wars are underway against ISIS and others in Iraq, Syria and perhaps beyond.

In this newest addition to Interlink’s wide-ranging Understanding Global Issues series, Phyllis Bennis asks and answers the basic questions facing so many Americans: What is ISIS? Why are they so violent? Should Obama have kept troops in Iraq? Is ISIS the same as al-Qaeda? Can you really go to war against terror? How should the US respond to ISIS violence? What dangers lie ahead? Without jargon, in an easy-to-use Frequently Asked Questions format, Bennis sorts through the hype to get to the root of this newest edition of the continuing global war on terror.

The Best of Irish Country Cooking

Classic and Contemporary Recipes

By Nuala Cullen

Photography by: Tony Briscoe & Michael Diggin

100 traditional recipes with historical information and beautiful landscape photography.

Ireland’s rich culinary heritage is being rediscovered. Irish food has always been thought of as rustic and filling- hearty comfort food to get you through a cold winter- but a new strand of cooking is emerging, still based on Ireland’s rural heritage and favorite ingredients, but with a modern twist. A new wave of artisanal producers is bringing a variety of high-quality ingredients to a wider market- from the freshest wild salmon and oysters to award-winning marsh-fed lamb, farmhouse cheeses, and whiskey. Delis, supermarkets, and gourmet food stores around the world are stocking and celebrating Irish fare for the first time, and the movement for seasonal Irish home cooking is gaining momentum.

Written by accomplished Irish food writer Nuala Cullen, The Best of Irish Country Cooking takes a new look at traditional Irish fare. It is filled with mouthwatering, user-friendly recipes, seasonal cooking suggestions, festive Irish traditions, and gorgeous scenes of Ireland’s unspoiled landscapes. Seafood and vegetables feature heavily alongside time-honored favorites like Irish Stew, Pork and Apple Pie, and Christmas Pudding in the book’s six chapters (Appetizers, Soups, Mains, Sides and Salads, Desserts, Baking, and Preserves). There’s even an Irish cocktail recipe dating back to the 18th century!

With lush photography and over 100 traditional, contemporary, and seasonal recipes, The Best of Irish Country Cooking is an essential guide to classic Irish cooking today. Written by accomplished Irish food writer Nuala Cullen, The Best of Irish Country Cooking takes a new look at Ireland’s culinary heritage, with over 100 traditional recipes and historical and seasonal information. The rustic classics are all here, but you will also find plenty of elegant dishes suitable for light meals or entertaining.

More than a fabulous cookbook, it is also a photographic record of the beautiful landscapes of Ireland, highlighting especially her wild west coast.

On Entering the Sea

The Erotic and Other Poetry of Nizar Qabbani

By Nizar Qabbani

A unique collection by the Arab world’s most renowned poet.

In a political age, in which the struggle against external and internal oppression has become central in Arabic poetry, Nizar Qabbani has succeeded in re-establishing the vitality and perennial force of the erotic in human life. Picking up a tradition of Arabic love poetry sixteen centuries old, he has enriched it with the experience of a modern man deeply aware of the changing status of women in contemporary times, and given the most eloquent poetic expression to the imperative of woman’s freedom and her right to assume control over her body and emotions.

An accomplished master of the erotic, standing among the best love poets of the world, Qabbani has asserted life and joy in the face of chaos and tragedy, paying fervent homage, sustained over five decades, to woman’s grace and loveliness. As such he has been able to bring equilibrium and decorum to poetry in crisis, reviving faith in the possibility of happiness and emotional fulfillment. Yet he is also moved to anger by the forces of evil around him, and the opposing poles of exaltation and rage, of agony and ecstasy, describe his unique experiment. A man of his times and of all times, he is by far the most popular poet in the Arab world.

Wild Thorns

By Sahar Khalifeh

Wild Thorns is a chronicle of life in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Written in Arabic and first published in Jerusalem in 1976, Wild Thorns, with its panorama of characters and unsentimental portrayals of everyday life, is the first Arab novel to give a true picture of social and personal relations under occupation. Its convincing sincerity, uncompromising honesty, and rich emotional texture plead elegantly for the cause of survival in the face of oppression.

A Traveller’s History of China

By Stephen G. Haw

A Traveller’s History of China provides a concise but fascinating journey from the country’s earliest beginnings right up to the creation of the economic powerhouse that is today’s China.

Stephen Haw carries the reader back in time to the prehistoric civilizations of 4,000 years ago, and from there to the centuries of China’s silk trade with the less-developed countries of Europe. Some of the most significant inventions of the pre-modern world, including paper, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass originated in China and were then transmitted to the West.

The author describes the glories of the Tang and Song Dynasties, which saw the creation of the great Chinese cities to the period of its decline and the efforts of Europe to conquer and subdue this giant land. It covers the tumult and triumphs of the Chinese revolution and the dramatic changes in political policies since the late 1970s, which have now made it one of the world’s fastest-developing countries.

A Traveller’s History of Turkey

By Richard Stoneman

Throughout the millennia Turkey formed the core of several Empires- Persia, Rome, Byzantium- before becoming the center of the Ottoman Empire. All these civilizations have left their marks on the landscape, architecture and art of Turkey- a place of fascinating overlapping cultures.

A Traveller’s History of Turkey offers a concise and readable account of the region from prehistory right up to the present day. It covers everything from the legendary Flood of Noah, the early civilization of Catal Huyuk seven thousand years before Christ, through the treasures of Troy, Alexander the Great, the Romans, Seljuks, Byzantines and the Golden Age of the Sultans, to the twentieth century’s great changes wrought by Kemal Ataturk and the strong position Turkey now holds in the world community.

Buenos Aires

A Cultural Guide

By Nick Caistor

The architect Le Corbusier once called Buenos Aires “the capital of an imaginary empire.”

From its foundation in the sixteenth century, Argentina’s main city has been a place of the imagination as well as the scene of many striking historical events. From foreign invasions to more modern-day coups d’etat and dictatorships, the city’s turbulent history has been paralleled by a vibrant popular culture born out of the hardships of immigration and longing for a lost homeland.

This cultural guide looks at the impact of history and the efforts of men and women to build a city that would fulfill their dreams, as well as bringing today’s Buenos Aires vividly to life for the visitor. From the new skyscrapers along the front of the huge “river of silver” to the picturesque portside La Boca where hundreds of thousands of immigrants first faced a new continent, Buenos Aires has created its own legend, lived out today in tango bars, on football pitches, in cafes where intense debates take place, or where people simply watch the ever-changing parade of passers-by.

Nick Caistor takes the reader to the insider’s Buenos Aires. He shows how the past has shaped its streets, how Argentine politics has left its mark on almost every corner, how each wave of new inhabitants has added to the city’s cultural mix. He explores the complex legacy of Spanish colonialism and Peronism as well as considering the city’s representation by writers from Darwin and Humboldt to Borges andCortázar. Analyzing the foundations of Porteño culture, he reveals a city obsessed by nostalgia yet rich in music, dance and spectacle.

– Compact cultural guide to Buenos Aires with color illustrations

– Author is a long-term resident of Buenos Aires and has reported for the BBC/WGBH from there

– Looks at the city’s rich literary and musical heritage

The Scottish Highlands

A Cultural History

By Andrew Beattie

The Scottish Highlands form the highest mountains in the British Isles, a broad arc of rocky peaks and deep glens stretching from the outskirts of Glasgow, Perth and Aberdeen to the remote and storm-lashed Cape Wrath in Scotland’s far northwest.

The Romans never conquered the region, and in the Dark Ages the island of Iona became home to a Celtic Church that was able to pose a serious challenge to the Church of Rome. Few travelers ever ventured there, however, disturbed by the tales of wild beasts, harsh geography and the bloody conflicts of warring families known as the clans. But after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden the influence of the clans was curbed and the Scottish Highlands became celebrated by poets, writers and artists for their beauty rather than their savagery. In the nineteenth century, inspired by the travel reportage of Samuel Johnson, the novels of Walter Scott, the poems of William Wordsworth and the very public love of the Highlands espoused by Queen Victoria, tourists began flocking to the mountains- even as Highlanders were being removed from their land by the brutal agricultural reforms known as the Clearances. With the popularity of hiking and the construction of railways, the fate of the Highlands as one of the great tourist playgrounds of the world was sealed.

Andrew Beattie explores the turbulent past and vibrant present of this landscape, where the legacy of events from the first Celtic settlements to the Second World War and from the construction of military roads to mining for lead, slate and gold have all left their mark.

– Disputed Land: From Rob Roy, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce to Bonnie Prince Charlie and the clansmen who participated in the notorious massacre at Glencoe, the Highlands have provided the arena for centuries of conflict.

– Folklore and Tradition: The wildness of the mountains has inspired a unique popular culture, from legendary tales of water-beasts and people with “second sight” to popular gatherings such as ceilidhs and the Highland Games.

– Scenic Inspiration: From visiting English poets such as Wordsworth and Byron to native Scots writers such as Neil Gunn and Hugh MacDiarmid; from Turner to Mendelssohn; the scenery of the Highlands has inspired novelists, composers, poets, filmmakers and artists through the centuries.

Hamburg

A Cultural History

By Matthew Jefferies

As Germany’s “gateway to the world,” Hamburg is a cosmopolitan city, whose culture has been shaped by those passing through as much as by those who stayed.

Matthew Jefferies explores a city-state boasting the highest per capita GDP in Germany, but where ostentatious displays of wealth are shunned; a place synonymous with fast food and beer, in which fine dining and luxury shopping abound; a city without palaces, castles or cathedrals, yet bursting with monuments and memorials.

With nearly eight million visitors each year, Hamburg is fast becoming one of Europe’s most popular city-break destinations: it is a city well worth getting to know.

Sultans of Rome

The Turkish World Expansion

By Warwick Ball

It has become conventional to think of the Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 as an Asiatic conquest. The Turks originated in Asia- it is true- but Constantinople was conquered from the west not the east: the Ottomans became a European power before they became a Middle Eastern one and remained a primarily European power. Indeed, the Middle East and even most of Anatolia itself was conquered from Europe. This demonstrates that it was no sudden rush of semi-civilized horse-riding nomads from the steppe, but the culmination of complex movements that had seen Turkish dynasties establish glittering monuments and cities throughout Asia. And when Turks first entered Anatolia in the 11th century, it was a Byzantine Emperor who made a relatively minor Turkish prince the first Sultan in the land that would come to be known as Turkey- a prince, furthermore, who called himself not Sultan of Turkey, but Sultan of Rome! Few people, therefore, combine so thoroughly the legacies of Europe and Asia, East and West, the civilizations of Greece and Rome with that of Islam, the Near East and beyond. Few have bridged so many civilizations; have brought so many cultural strands together. Their story is as much our history as well as theirs and others

Granada, Seville and Cordoba

Cadogan Guides

By Dana Facaros & Michael Pauls

The 5th edition of a highly-praised guidebook that captures the individual character of each of these remarkable Andalucían jewels.

Cadogan’s expert authors explore Granada, Seville and Cordoba, the three great cities of al-Andalus. Discover the unique monuments, vibrant culture and secret gardens of delight bequeathed by the brilliant golden age of an extraordinary civilization. Gaze in wonder at Granada’s Alhambra and the Mezquita in Cordoba; explore the whitewashed warrens and hidden patios at the heart of each city; and escape to wild sierras or Mediterranean beaches.

So Good in Black

By Sunetra Gupta

Photography by: Ruth Sanderson

After years of absence, American travel writer Max Gate returns to Bengal, to the beach home of his longtime friend, the businessman Byron Mallick. The occasion is a funeral: for Damini, fervent investigative journalist and founder of a women’s shelter, with whom Max once collaborated, until ultimately she scorned the book he wrote on their work together. It is irrefutable that Byron Mallick donated not milk, but milk adulterated with chalk, to the women and children at Damini’s shelter- but did he also, to save his reputation, have her killed? The weight of this question burdens each character in this intricate, superbly crafted novel- Max; his former brother-in-law Piers O’Reilly, convinced of Byron’s guilt; and Damini’s cousin and Byron’s former ward Ela, whose affair with Max has haunted both their lives, ending his marriage and setting him unaccountably adrift.

Sunetra Gupta’s consummate prose recreates the ache and complication of memory, as Max considers the tantalizing ambiguities of each of their pasts, the exquisite layers of emotion and action out of which, perhaps, the truth about Byron may be revealed.

Afghanistan

A Cultural History

By St. John Simpson

While the modern nation can trace its origins back to 1747, the history of Afghanistan is far more ancient.

It has long been a focal point of the Silk Road and human migration and many native peoples such as the Kushans, Samanids, Saffarids, and Mughals have founded their empires here. Afghanistan has also been the target of numerous invasions and is therefore one of the most critically diverse places on earth. Essential reading for anyone seeking a thorough understanding of the current situation in the region, this lively book places this rich and ancient seam of creativity in its broad historical context and offers the reader a full appreciation of a most remarkable country.

The Mouse Who Saved Egypt

By Karim Alrawi

Illustrated by: Bee Willey

See how a small kindness can be repaid a thousand times over in this retelling of an ancient Middle Eastern folk tale.

The Ancient Egypt Guide

By William J. Murnane

Originally published as the Penguin Guide to Ancient Egypt, William Murnane’s highly-acclaimed book has been fully revised and updated by Professor Aidan Dodson.

This new edition will bring Murnane’s engaging yet rigorous learning to a new audience, complete with up-to-date guidebook information as well as a compact yet wide-ranging cultural history.

We Are All Equally Far From Love

By Adania Shibli

Photography by: Steve Woolman

A new award-winning novel from the acclaimed author of Touch.

A young woman, asked at work to write a letter to an older man, does as she is told. So begins an enigmatic but passionate love affair conducted entirely in letters. A love affair? Maybe. Until his letters stop coming. Or… maybe the letters do not reach their intended recipient? Only the teenage Afaf, who works at the local post office, would know. Her favorite duty is to open the mail and inform her collaborator father of the contents- until she finds a mysterious set of love letters, apparently returned to their sender. In the hands of Adania Shibli, the discovery of these letters makes for a wrenching meditation on lives lived ensnared within the dictates of others.