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Through history, research and personal interviews, Cathy Sultan chronicles life in southern Lebanon and northern Israel during the brutal war of the summer of 2006. As in her other critically acclaimed books, Sultan focuses on ordinary people, who are overlooked by politicians and military leaders and become victims of poor decisions made by the governments of Israel, Lebanon and the United States.She vividly portrays the polluting effects of cluster bombs and explains how different factions within the Lebanese government keep it on the brink of further violence. She writes of the tiny Shabba Farms area's importance to Hezbollah and of the refugee camp that holds members of Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni militant group, despite efforts of the Lebanese army. Sultan also addresses media treatment of the war, dispels common myths about the region, and includes a timeline of Lebanese history, and maps depicting violence around the area.

In 1603, a shepherd named Brigu places three strange orphans (Sagar, Faria and Shikha) with a religious congregation traveling to the New World. Among the congregation is a fire-haired young woman named Abigail with powers beyond the ordinary. Abigail's care has been entrusted to Faria and Shikha, while Sagar has been instructed to ensure that the colony survives in this harsh land. Four hundred years later, long after Abigail's death, the three orphans, still young, seek to understand who they are and why they're different from ordinary humans. In their quest to learn their origins, they combine the latest scientific methods with ancient mythology. Part thriller, part mystery, this novel explores humanity's connection to nature and the cycles of death and rebirth that have defined our collective existence.

In the near future, the ravages of a warming planet have worsened, driving a new era of climate refugees. Rohini Haakonsen, a young Indian-American woman, attends a UN conference on the problem when humanoid aliens materialize. Known as the Elders, the aliens present themselves as benign, even offering to help us solve our climate crisis. Can they be trusted? Rohini is chosen to join a group of ambassadors to the aliens' world, but when masked gunmen attempt to kidnap her, it becomes clear not everyone on Earth is willing to go along with the aliens' plans. Eventually, along with Agent Jane Smith, Rohini is forced to flee, accepting the help of a Daoist secret society. Rohini's search for the truth takes her around the globe and into the deepest recesses of her own mind. Before she can make it to the Elders' world, she must survive her own.

In his debut novel, Spencer Manning agrees to look for a little girl's unknown father in exchange for beef stew and chocolate cake. His search quickly crosses paths with an open murder investigation in which Spencer's client is a suspect. Spencer's close relationship with the police give him an open door to information, and his sometimes-creative strategies bring insight the police would not otherwise have. A colorful cast of interesting characters add humor and intrigue and lead Spencer to the racetrack and the mayor's house where all is not as it seems. When Spencer puts the clues together, the race is on to save a little girl's life.Sprinkled with Chicago history, Change of Address will take you through Chicago neighborhoods, where despair and sadness dwell side by side with big money. The list of suspects will keep you guessing and wanting more Spencer Manning.

The extraordinary life of Marilène Phipps began in Haiti-the magical island of African Vodou gods who followed their devotees on the slave ships, and the world's first black republic-the singular cultural context and exotic milieu of the Caribbean, where hell and paradise can transfix us daily. In this powerful memoir, we enter the lives of a family who are both descendants of European aristocrats and African slaves. We meet Phipps's godfather, the rebel leader Guslé Villedrouin, and we relive her experiences with Vodou priests and spirits, a cold-eyed pope, a charismatic Muslim astrologer, Catholic monks and exorcists, American Mormon bishops, scholars and missionaries. Through it all, we are stirred by the antithetical feel of entitlement and destitution, barbarism and lyricism, infinity and insanity. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti brings a collapse to Phipps's world, but is also the start for her to find modern answers to the ancient questions, "Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?"

Joey Winston, a woman of science, working as a researcher doing DNA testing and preparing for grad school, suddenly becomes a werewolf. At first, she doesn't believe it. These must just be dreams of being a wolf. However, she soon realizes that the dreams are real and that she has become the victim of some ancient mystical curse. People are dying. But is the wolf evil, or is it an agent of God? Only when the wolf begins killing people she knows does she realize the full extent of the horror that possesses her. As she struggles to rid herself of the demon, the wolf grows in power, threatening her family. Can she stop the wolf before it kills everyone she loves, or is its power too great for modern technology to control?

As a young woman Cathy Sultan dreamed of living in a foreign land. She realized that dream in 1969 when she moved with her Lebanese husband and two infants from the United States to Beirut--a city known for its welcoming residents, breathtaking landscape and cosmopolitan culture. Sultan quickly grew to adore Beirut despite its seedy side and came to think of it as her dysfunctional lover. Even after the onset of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 her feelings were slow to change. Using cooking as a tranquilizer, Sultan worked tirelessly to provide a home environment that was comforting to her family and inviting to friends. Even as bullets pierced her own kitchen and bombs destroyed the ancient city and the lives of loved ones, she and her family refused to be driven from their home and their humanity. A Beirut Heart: One Woman's War is the riveting story of how a wife and mother struggled to maintain order and normality amid the unspeakable cruelty of civil war.

If it's a frame, it's a good one. Justice is a strange animal-sometimes it comes late, sometimes it never comes at all, and sometimes it comes for the wrong crime. Spencer is offered the highest profile case of his career but is conflicted about helping the person making the offer. And he can't help but wonder if, this time, justice has caught up... but for the wrong crime. And maybe that's okay. Two murders leave Spencer trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle and remembering a time when Chicago streets were ruled by Al Capone and Bugs Moran, and tommy guns left Chicago streets bathed in blood.

The Syrian is a powerful contemporary novel of passion and betrayal, set against the brutal and bewildering outbreak of the Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, 2006.Nadia, a woman who has waited 13 years for a husband who was "disappeared," finally decides to declare him dead so she can marry an American physician, Andrew Sullivan. On the eve of her engagement party, her best friend Sonia, a well-connected war correspondent, rings to tell her that her husband may still be alive in a Syrian prison. Out to get Andrew for herself, Sonia draws in the powerful head of the Syrian secret police to help her in her Byzantine manipulations. Thus begins a series of dangerous plot twists that become increasingly bloody as Nadia attempts to rescue her husband, and the border conflict with Israel escalates.

This fourth installment of the Spencer Manning Mystery series focuses on the famous Riverview Amusement Park in Chicago. In this tale, a sixteen-year-old amusement park worker fails to come home from work one day, and Spencer sets out to track him down. Spencer makes numerous enemies as he attempts to solve a seemingly impossible mystery that seems to grow in complexity by the minute. When he starts to ask questions, missing turns to murder and Spencer is pulled into a sinister plot that goes far beyond a missing boy and promises to be a rollercoaster ride of surprises for fans of great mysteries and a worthy addition to this fine series.

Martin McDonough is a private detective whose investigations are usually successful because he knows how to get the low-down from his copper friends-a formula that works for a long time, but not forever. This noir mystery novel follows him from 1930s St. Paul, where a corrupt police force creates a haven for trigger-happy gangsters, to post-World War II San Francisco, where the jazz scene and the local mob uneasily coexist. In McDonough's world people are getting shot all time, but not by him... if he can help it. Trouble is, it's hard to be nice to the kind of rats he keeps running into.

In this masterly sequel to THE SYRIAN, author and Middle East expert Cathy Sultan once again uses her unique knowledge of the region to spin a suspenseful web of intrigue and deceit, mirroring the complexities of this ancient place where nothing is as it seems. In DAMASCUS STREET, a story set in a Lebanon still struggling to cope with the political repercussions of a bloody fifteen-year civil war, Andrew Sullivan, an idealistic American physician, becomes the unknowing pawn in a deadly spy game where an intricate cast of characters lures him into a maze of deception and illusion. As he attempts to find and rescue his fiancée Nadia Khoury, who has been kidnapped by Syria's former Intelligence chief, this riveting political thriller takes surprising turns in a tale of lost innocence, passion and survival.

The Shekinah Legacy is on one hand a touching human drama about a star international news journalist, Charlotte Ansari, and her difficult relationship with her brilliant but challenging thirteen-year-old Asperger's son. The story becomes a riveting thriller as the two become involved in a dangerous attempt to solve the disappearance of Charlotte's mother thirty years earlier, and to save the woman's life after she resurfaces in a cryptic email begging for help. The coded message catapults Charlotte and her son on a dangerous mission to India and Kashmir to find the only secrets that can save the old woman's life. Their search uncovers the astonishing truth about Charlotte's mother and disrupts the plans of powerful, unseen forces.Is The Shekinah Legacy simply another tall tale of terrorism, adventure, and espionage? "Thoughtful readers will see more than that in this story I hope," author Lindberg says. "Thrillers don't have to be devoid of meaning. The secrets that are at the heart of this thriller are heartfelt elements of faith for Christians around the world-so heartfelt that many people will risk their lives to protect the 'truth' of the secrets as they see it."In this provocative book, two religious relics reveal their true power to influence the world as forces on every side-the CIA, Mossad, Vatican intelligence, Evangelicals, Islamic terrorists, and hired assassins-all struggle for possession of the objects for very different purposes. The author traveled around the world investigating locations for this novel and spent two years researching the facts contained in the story. "Readers will be surprised to find how much of this story is true, particularly the most sensational parts" Lindberg says.

In 1922, Hazel and Theda are young and in love, but that love is savagely interrupted by a police raid at a Savannah speakeasy. Pressured by Theda's wealthy family, Hazel avoids prosecution by moving as far away from Theda as possible, eventually finding peace on a remote island on the Minnesota-Canadian border, where she is captivated by the wild shores of Lake of the Woods. In 1937, Hazel is running a fishing resort with Minnie, her new love, when Theda suddenly appears with her twelve-year-old son. An angry husband and a posse of detectives are furiously tracking her, and Hazel must make a potentially dangerous and life-changing choice.

The Black Attaché is an irresistible blend of history, travelogue, and reflection that takes you on a journey from the childhood in India, where Cheema lived through the partition of India and Pakistan, nearly dying on the last train out of Pakistan during the riots, to her career as an American diplomat stationed in hardship posts around the world.With honesty and warmth, Cheema describes her childhood memories and events from places like Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Burkina Faso, amongst others where she has lived and worked. This is a remarkable memoir by a remarkable woman, and nothing like anything you've read before.

In 1993, arriving in Moscow the day after Mitchell's first novel The Hidden One ended in Paris, Ashley Cooper and his daughter, Annie, continue their quest to become 'Of the Iskandarov'. The setting for the second book in The People of the Blood Trilogy is the newly formed Russian Federation and ends in the wild, magical arctic region, a place scarred and corrupted by Stalinism. Accompanied by the love of his life, Ashley faces dangerous Iskandarov tests in the realm of the demons while searching for his father's gulag diary. The diary contains proof of the so-called 'Iron Cage' and is likely to get Ashley killed. The mystical Iskandarovs are not truly Russian but a once powerful clan from the Caucasus, just now emerging from the shadows of communism.

A secretive and influential foundation based in Washington, DC, led by a charismatic charlatan, seeks to bring to fruition an apocalyptic vision of the future based on its extreme religious views. To this end they have placed a "Manchurian candidate" into the political system, one who unbeknownst to them was involved in the rape culture of the Abu Ghraib prison controversy. An emotionally damaged small town lawyer stands in the way of national disaster.

In this unique novel, Tommy Birk evokes the anguish of combat veterans who leave their wars but whose wars don't leave them. He explores their helplessness to stop the strange osmotic process by which their pain passes on to their families. In this passionate and powerful story, Ernie and Gunny Balbach, who had fought on opposite sides during WW2, are now joined by Ernie's son, Timmy-an equally damaged veteran of the still-in-progress Vietnam War-and live as outcasts at Piankashaw Rock, where they feel safe in the company of other misfits. Ernie and Gunny, sustained by the women who love them, and Timmy, in love with the beautiful but conflicted Maria, all prodded by a mystic priest with his own dark secrets, come to realize they and their families will escape the vicious circles of history and find redemption only when they take on and defeat the evil that haunts them.

Once in a while a novel comes along that is very different. House of Large Sizes is such a novel. A dysfunctional, sexually addicted and inauthentic little family finds its failings coming to a head when one member decides to deal with his pain directly and heads to New Orleans for an unsanctioned sex change. They all end up in The French Quarter-in "The sump of America"-and a great mythic Jambalaya of horrors are visited upon them as a venomous and self-professed witch threatens to run amok. House of Large Sizes is a rare but extraordinarily "readable" literary work, which draws from multiple genres to produce its sometimes shocking and laser-like effect on the imagination.

Green Goes Forth, the prequel to Robert Gilbert's first novel Mintwood Place, is a coming-of-age story set in the 1970s. It features the young Joe Green, who we already know as a divorced father of three, involved in the political skullduggery of Washington, DC. Now we meet young Joe, a senior at American University, who gets himself in trouble and flees the city two steps ahead of the law. His escape takes him to Sonoma County, California, where he goes into hiding. During his lonesome months of exile, he expands his imagination with the study of such books as Homer's The Odyssey, and the I Ching of Confucius. He also becomes a successful marijuana grower. After two years, he returns to DC with money and a gnostic sense that stands in opposition to the emerging politics of the Reagan era. Green Goes Forth is Robert Gilbert's third novel.

Mintwood Place is a delightfully fresh version of the noir tradition, offering the reader a contemporary "Casablanca" in Washington, DC. The book's narrator, Renaissance man Joe Green, has plenty to say about love, politics and the male psyche in this page-turning romantic suspense. Joe runs a bookstore and a bistro and painfully navigates a modern divorce while the Senate Intelligence Committee investigates his relationship with Cosmo, a protégé who has recently been paroled after serving five years in prison for the ambiguous killing of a local black youth. Green, a proud Jersey boy, can all at once relax by watching his tortoises, hand out liberal advice to his three teenagers, and pack serious heat. He is a twenty-first-century American male, if ever there was one.

It Was an Age of ExpectationIn the years leading up to 1844, the entire globe, it seemed, was experiencing religious fervor. Both the Bible and the Qu'ran hinted at the coming of a Promised One who would cure the ails of the world.During these years, two twelve-year-old best friends in a desert village in Persia, dream of becoming great mullas and being first to recognize the Qa'im, the Promised One of Islam. But for Ali, son of the local mayor, it is not to be. One night his mother, an English girl enslaved after her missionary parents were killed, packs up Ali and after a breathtaking escape returns to London.Suddenly wealthy, Ali becomes "Ollie" and is Christianized, educated, and brought into the family business, the London Times. Unfortunately, a series of heartbreaking tragedies befall the young man in England and America. As he bitterly rages against God and sets out to persecute those who carry out "His cruel purpose," the best friend he left behind becomes a trailblazer of a new religion that threatens Islam and is savagely persecuted by a brutal Persian regime.The startlingly different paths of these two best friends finally converge, with each on opposite sides of a climactic battle that will alter the lives and beliefs of millions forever.

After he died, Jamie just wasn't himself.While pursuing gangbangers, Jamie Giles' squad car veered off the road, killing him. But then something odd happened. He came back to life. Now he has a relationship problem-with a sinister presence that is inhabiting his body.Hidden deep inside his consciousness are secrets that are taking over his life and attracting the wrong kind of company. He has only a few days left to get to the bottom of it. He'll have to go deeper and deeper to figure it out. Trouble is, the only solution may be for him to die again.

The Shady Elders of Zion is a Minnesota ghost story. Ivan Kalinsky, the book's narrator, is the last surviving Bolshevik from the class of 1917. When Stalin started purging Jews from the Communist Party ranks in the 1930's, Kalinsky escaped to northern Minnesota, where he lived out a long life as a union organizer. Now dead, he's just about to happily ascend to heaven and reunite with his Bolshevik clan, when two pesky Hassidic ghosts, Singer and Himmelman, blackmail him into helping heal and redirect Joshua Bronstein. Bronstein is a damaged soul, and a candidate for the Lamed Vav, one of the thirty-six hidden righteous men from whom the Messiah will be chosen when God decides it's time. And it becomes Kalinsky's charge to lead stubborn Bronstein out of his wilderness.

Turn on, tune in, and ride along in the front car of the rollercoaster life of Ted Myers, as he chases his dreams of rock stardom through the '60s, '70s and '80s. Although he never quite makes it, he has many wonderful-and not-so-wonderful-adventures and rubs shoulders with some of the true icons of folk, rock, and pop culture, including Bob Dylan, James Taylor, The Who, Procol Harum, Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Van Morrison, Steely Dan, Chevy Chase, Timothy Leary and even Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

Sam Zandros is a major-league poker player-part of a large Greek-American family that runs a bookmaking business. And he's fallen in love with Clare Russell, a beautiful photographer who has no one to look out for her. Sam decides to be that one.Clare's fiercely guarded secrets have made her emotion­ ally vulnerable. While Sam tries to unravel the truth of her life, he becomes vulnerable, too, as Clare's life is threatened by devious men who want a big cut of his family's poker winnings.Love or money? Family or lover? How far will Sam go to protect Clare?

With convincing and disarming honesty, these quiet and soulful poems observe the natural world and our presence in it, exploring with startling clarity, humility, and kindness the small moments of life and the mysteries of daily experience. The book explores presence, wonder, and grief as a path to spiritual growth. In three sections entitled "The World," "Grief," and "Spirit," this remarkable collection celebrates beauty in the everyday and in the interconnectedness of all life.

Charlotte Ansari, international correspondent for CCN, has a problem. Her investigation into a clandestine society of assassins has made them very angry. And that's not the most frightening part. Her Asperger's son, who is now the leader of this global, murder-for-hire organization, has assigned its top-ranked assassin to take care of the problem.

Love should be easy. Clare seems to have everything going for her with a man who loves her and has the money to let her live without worry and pursue her art. But her hope for a future is tied to a past that haunts her dreams and the present reality of marrying into a family business that is not exactly legal. Can she trust a gambler who is constantly looking over his shoulder to keep her safe from his present and her past? Amid the joy and tension of a romance, will Clare find a way to make it work?

Advance Man is an evergreen political adventure. Set in the hard-fought early days of the 2008 Democratic primary season, it is an insider's look behind the scenes at seventy-two hours in the most challenging and secretive, yet most public part of American presidential politics-the Advance operation that creates and controls the media image of a presidential candidate, as well as everything that happens within a quarter-mile radius. Although this book is explicated in the tradition of autobiographical fiction it is a must for anyone eager to understand the guts of an American political campaign.