Showing results by narrator "Fajer Al-Kaisi" in All Categories

In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg named August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called the Bismarck Archipelago. His destination: the island Kabakon. His goal: to found a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he was 43 years old. Christian Kracht's Imperium uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt's life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness.

The year is 2008. Reza Malek’s life is modest but manageable - he lives in a small apartment in Harlem, teaches at a local university, and is relieved to be far from the blood and turmoil of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he worked as a reporter, interpreter, and sometimes lover for a superstar journalist who has long since moved on to more remarkable men.

Le rôle de l'alcool dans la vie en société, que ce soit sous forme de vin, de bière ou de spiritueux, fut constant et souvent controversé. Rod Phillips jette dans cet ouvrage un regard original sur les mœurs et les mentalités en matière de consommation d'alcool. Il embrasse neuf mille ans d'histoire économique et culturelle et lève le voile sur les tensions qui existèrent entre les produits sains des régimes alimentaires quotidiens et les objets d'inquiétude sociale, politique et religieuse que sont les boissons alcooliques.

A strange final message from a ghost ship, comes alive with the voices of the past. Listen or die. "The Song of The Lady Rose" by Gabino Iglesias is one of nine short horror stories in Nightfire's audio anthology.

Guardian spirits. Divine presences. Demonic powers. Ghosts. The concept of "genius loci" is indeed an ancient one, found in nearly every human mythology. Genius Loci is a huge anthology of 31 all-new fantasy and science fiction stories drawing on the rich tradition of place-as-person. Within this audiobook, the authors present stories of sentient deserts, beneficent forests, lonely shrubs, and protective planetary spirits, as edited by Jaym Gates.

In today's world, there is a lot that can stress us out. We live in a time when talking about climate change is a hot button issue leading to political movements, youth led protests, and lots of anxiety. From green living to figuring out how you (and your family) can make a difference in your community, this mindful approach is the key to being stress-free as you make a positive impact on the environment.

Ruskin Bond not only brings to life a town in northern India capturing the scenery, the people, the atmosphere - but also shows that children are the same the world over. Included are such classics as 'Ranji's Wonderful Bat', 'The Boy Who Broke the Bank' and 'Koki's Song'.

How did Muslims across time and place define the line between themselves and their neighbors? Youshaa Patel explores why the Prophet Muhammad first advised his followers to emulate Christians and Jews, but then allegedly reversed course, urging them to "be different!" He details how subsequent generations of Muslim scholars canonized the Prophet's admonition into an influential doctrine against imitation that enjoined ordinary believers to embody and display their religious difference in public life.

While all Iraqis will readily agree that their life has always been noir, the majority of the stories in Baghdad Noir are set in the years following the American invasion of 2003, though one story is set in 1950 and three are set in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet it is this recent history of Iraq—over the last few decades—that serves to inform its present....

Thomas Friesen has three goals in life: get a job, make friends, and find a good book to curl up with. After landing a job at READ, the newest hypermegabookstore, he feels he may have accomplished all three. All is not peaceable within the stacks, however, as discontent steadily rises, aimed squarely at talk show host Munroe Purvis, whose wildly popular book club is progressively lowering the IQ of North America. But the bookworms have a plan - plots are being hatched and the destruction of Munroe is all but assured.

By turns essay, memoir and cultural study, Finding the Raga is Amit Chaudhuri's singular account of his discovery of, and enduring passion for, North Indian music: an ancient, evolving tradition whose principles and practices will alter the listener's notion of what music might - and can - be.

After four and a half years in a third world prison, all Kyle wants is to be a normal, law-abiding citizen again but when his coked out ex-girlfriend tells him that her son, who has been kidnapped until she pays her drug debt, is his, Kyle must enlist the help of his chop-shop owning, gun toting, mobbed up, psychotic friends to get him back.

DCP Rita Ferreira is called into the investigation after a third corpse is discovered in Mumbai, which confirms it is the work of the same killer who paints his victims’s lips with dark red lipstick. The Lipstick Killer, like all serial killers, is fast decompensating—the time interval between the murders shortening, the victims shifting from street-side hookers to high-heeled wives … and he watches everything and everyone—the news of his exploits, Rita, the investigation—and talks.

Paris, the City of Light, was once the scene of a brilliant magnesium flare, host to the belle epoque from 1900 to 1914. Tempting poets, painters, writers, and composers from across Europe, the city relied on one man to move among them all - Guillaume Apollinaire. His contemporaries called him brilliant, mad, whimsical. He was the bastard son of an Italian cavalry officer and a Polish woman addicted to gambling, but nevertheless let it be rumored around Paris that he was the son of the pope.

An aging Andrew Woodman stumbles through a snowstorm, slowly losing his strength, his language, and his memories of the once-familiar island landscape around him. When Jerome, a young artist on a remote island retreat, discovers Andrew’s body frozen in the ice later that winter, the rich narrative tapestry of A Map of Glass begins. One year after Andrew’s body is found, Sylvia Bradley - a withdrawn, sheltered woman whose secret affair with Andrew opened her eyes to the world outside her small home town - decides to learn more about her lover’s mysterious disappearance.

Bill Gaston's characteristic keen insight and wit dazzle in this new collection. Here, we see the world through the prism of unfamiliar perspectives: a bank executive whose excellent sex life might in fact be killing her, an amorous tree surgeon better attuned to the values of his "patients" than to other people, a vacationing schizophrenic wary of his housemates, a pizza-delivery boy convinced he's witnessed magic - all struggling with the world as they see it.

Yunus Turabi, a bus driver in Tehran, leads an unremarkable life. A solitary man, he is decidedly apolitical - even during the driver’s strike and its bloody end. But everyone has their breaking point, and Yunus has reached his. Handcuffed and blindfolded, he is taken to the infamous Evin prison for political dissidents. Inside this stark, strangely ordered world, his fate becomes entwined with Hajj Saeed, his personal interrogator. The two develop a disturbing yet interdependent relationship, with each playing his assigned role in a high stakes psychological game of cat and mouse.

With the urgency and passion of Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me), the seductive storytelling of JD Vance (Hillbilly Elegy) and the historical rigor of Carol Anderson (White Rage), Kamal Al-Solaylee explores the in-between space that brown people occupy in today's world: on the cusp of whiteness and the edge of blackness.

Leo McKay Jr.'s best-selling novel is set in a small Nova Scotia town, where a family is changed forever after a devastating mining accident claims the lives of 26 men. As the story shifts back and forth in time and between characters, we meet the men and women of the Burrows family: brothers Ziv and Arvel, drawn to the mine for different reasons; their father, a former union organizer; Ziv's ex-girlfriend, now living in Japan; and Arvel's wife, who hopes for a better life for herself in the city.

Singleton is a truck driver. Traveling the highways of the '50s, he lives a life of truck stops, lonely waitresses, and endless cups of coffee. His is the story of a man, his truck, and the open road.