A cinematic debut of a promising young novelist from Lebanon.

A captivating thriller that reveals a family's intergenerational secrets, a nation's deepest fears, and an underground world of politics, religion, and society. Beirut at dawn. A bus leaves the Charles Helou station en route to Damascus. Seven passengers are on board, one of whom is a prominent Lebanese politician. Before crossing the border, the bus is accosted and derailed. All seven passengers are gunned down. A botanist studying a rare occurrence of acacias nearby witnesses the horror. While the nation around him plunges into conspiracy theories and chaos, the botanist realizes he holds the only clue to the mystery: his injured Acacia. This sends him on a quest for answers, through a minefield of national fears and family secrets, deep into a private underworld.

Sarah is on the brink of adulthood in her village in the mountains of Lebanon in the 1930s, a world itself hesitating on the verge of change.

Her father the shaykh is uninterested in anything but the silkworms he's always raised, no matter that each year they're worth less. Her conservative aunt worries only about the family's reputation, fearing that Sarah will take after her mother, who ran away twelve years ago and has been unheard of since. Sarah's brother dreams of going abroad, but each year finds himself still trapped in the family business. Around her the village--Druze and Christian, Lebanese and English--grows poorer, its traditions no longer able to sustain it. Sarah's hopes for the future have come to rely either on marriage, or finding the mother she can't remember.

In Younes's textured, lyrical prose, the story of one young woman's coming of age becomes a meditation on a nation's hardship, on home and freedom, hope and loss. Younes brings to intense life this lost world and the women at its center, whose lives have disappeared from history, from their own grasp.

A love letter to a city of his childhood, Jabbour Douaihy's The American Quarter is set in a small neighborhood in Tripoli, the ancient port on the northern coast of Lebanon.

Unfolding at the height of the US-led invasion of Iraq, it revolves around the radicalization of an ordinary youth named Ismail. But Ismail's story is part of a larger portrait of those nearest to him: the young disabled brother he looks out for; his father Bilal, a massacre survivor; Intisar, his spirited, indulgent mother, a maid like her mother before her in the wealthy, powerful Azzam household; Abdelkarim, the Azzam family's only son, addicted to poetry and opera, and pining for his lost Polish ballerina-all sharply depicted by Douaihy with irony and affection. As well, Ismail's fate is entwined with the disappointments and meager prospects of those around him in the deteriorating American Quarter, and others forced to crisscross the surrounding conflict-scarred lands.

Somehow Ismail's reckoning with his assigned mission comes to reflect our own struggles- for redemption, for faith in life in the face of destructive forces that can erase in an instant what is dear to us. A classic tale for our time, in a lucid translation by Paula Haydar, The American Quarter is a compassionate work of great beauty. Paying homage to the persistent presence of a beloved old city and her people, it bolsters us with a gifted writer's long view of the threats to trust and tolerance we now face.

This practical and comprehensive cookbook opens up a world of delightful dishes and provides numerous, inspiring ideas for healthy eating.

Monique Bassila Zaarour brings three great gifts to her Lebanese Kitchen: from her Lebanese heritage, an intimate knowledge of one of the world's great cuisines; from her training as a nutritionist, scientific understanding of the health benefits of food; and from her life as a working mother, eminently practical tips. She will whip your cupboards into shape with her advice about plastic bags and advance preparation and her arsenal of tips on how to defend your kitchen from fast-food culture.

She organizes; she inspires. With packets of minced lamb and grilled pine-nuts on hand in your freezer, you too can make healthy, delicious meals such as fortifying eggplant lamb stew, lentil soup, falafel sandwiches, stuffed zucchini, rice pilaf- in just a half hour.

- Beautiful photography and design

- Detailed, easy-to-follow recipes

- Comprehensive nutritional information

- Useful tips and variations