Middle East Fiction

A crossed telephone wire causes a call from the president of the United States to his ambassador in London to be overheard by geologist Tom Bartlett. Tom, preoccupied with thoughts of the conference he is to attend in Israel, puts the incident from his mind, unaware that he might not have been the only person listening in. He has not been in Tel Aviv a day, however, before the first attempt is made on his life. As Arab, Israeli, Russian and American agents begin to converge on him, it’s clear that someone wants Tom’s briefcase—and will stop at nothing to obtain it.

Saleh Abdoh, the narrator of Out of Mesopotamia, is a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran's most popular TV shows, but cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. There, the fight against the Islamic State is a proxy war, an existential battle, a declaration of faith, and, for some, a passing weekend affair. After weeks spent dodging RPGs and witnessing acts of savagery and stupidity, he returns to his civilian life of Tehran bookstore readings and trendy art openings, finding it to be unbearably dislocating.

There is something of both the absolutely spectacular and positively disgraceful about Tehran. But most writers around the world are inclined to think that their own sprawling metropolis is the capital of every imaginable vice and crime, of impossible love and tenderness and cruelty and malice in measures that seldom exist anywhere else. For me, Tehran's case is no different - except that there really is a difference here. The city may be a hothouse of decadence, a den of inequity, all that. But it still exists under the watchful eye of a very unique entity, the Islamic Republic.

The summer of 1990 started out fine. Reem was about to enter his Junior year, and the architectural degree would put him on track to achieve his 5-year plan. Life in California was different from his childhood as the second son of a Kuwaiti millionaire. He loved USC. August 2, 1990, everything changed. Reem had worked hard to hide his wealth. He just wanted to be a regular college kid. Finding a girlfriend wasn't part of the plan, but he adored Sarah. She wasn't what his mother would have wanted for him, but then in an instant, none of that mattered.

ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - has taken on the mantle of being the single most dangerous terrorist threat to global security since al-Qaeda. In Defeating ISIS, internationally renowned intelligence veteran, author, and counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance gives an insider's view to explain the origins of this occult group, its violent propaganda, and how it spreads its ideology throughout the Middle East and to disaffected youth deep in the heart of the Western world.

The best-selling author who made mincemeat of political correctness in Thank You for Smoking, conspiracy theories in Little Green Men, and presidential indiscretions No Way to Treat a First Lady now takes on the hottest topic in the entire world, Arab-American relations, in a blistering comic novel sure to offend the few it doesn't delight.

Two women. Two revolutions. A lifetime of exile and longing. In 1978, seventeen-year-old Omid is forced to flee Iran on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, leaving behind a mother whose defiance against the regime has made her a marked woman. Arriving in America, Omid believes her stay will be temporary. But when her mother is declared a fugitive, her dreams of return collapse, and she is left to build a life in exile—one shaped by loss, resilience, and the echoes of a past she cannot escape. Three decades later, Omid is a mother raising her daughters in Connecticut, trying to bury the ...

When her family moves from Pakistan to Peachtree City, all Nurah wants is to blend in, yet she stands out for all the wrong reasons. Nurah’s accent, floral-print kurtas, and tea-colored skin make her feel excluded, until she meets Stahr at swimming tryouts. And in the water, Nurah doesn’t want to blend in. She wants to win medals like her star athlete brother, Owais — who is going through struggles of his own in the US.

Shif has a happy life, unfamiliar with the horrors of his country's regime. He is one of the smartest boys in school, and feels safe and loved in the home he shares with his mother and little sister, right next door to his best friend. But the day that soldiers arrive at his door, Shif knows that he will never be safe again - his only choice is to run. Facing both unthinkable cruelty and boundless kindness, Shif bravely makes his way towards a future he can barely imagine. Refugee 87 is a story of friendship, kindness, hardship, survival, and - above all - hope.

What is it like to walk away from your home? To leave behind everything and everyone you’ve ever known? Poetic, sensitive, and based on a true family history, Lost Words follows a young Armenian boy who sets out to find refuge to the day he finally finds the courage to share his story.

It is the year 1915, and the British and Ottoman Empires clash in a deadly struggle in the Middle East. Tasked with keeping the Ottomans out of Suez Canal, Major Andrew Selkirk discovers that his real assignment is to retrieve a Bengali spy working for those who vow to see British rule out of India. After landing on the west coast of Palestine, Selkirk discovers the Ottomans have taken the spy captive. Even more troubling are the plans by Ottomans and Germans to draw Afghanistan and Persia into the war against Great Britain.

In Two Nations Under God, Tom Doyle presents reasons why the U.S. should show concern for Israel. In three parts, Doyle explains the history of Israel, why it affects us, and how to help through prayer. Best of all, readers will learn throughout that, despite the headlines, there is plenty of good news coming from the Middle East. Doyle reports on the increasing number of Muslims converting to Christianity, profiles local disciples and church planters, and provides helpful timelines, comparison charts, photographs, and more to keep every detail concerning Israel in perspective.

Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17 for speaking out against injustice even when it was terrifying to do so. She was an ordinary Muslim girl who wanted to attend school, and she refused to stop protesting for her rights even after being attacked by a powerful group in Pakistan who wanted women to remain in the shadows. She continues to fight for women’s rights and free education for children all over the world.

The No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling modern classic: A Bravo Two Zero for the Second Gulf War. They were branded as cowards and accused of being the British Special Forces Squadron that ran away from the Iraqis. But nothing could be further from the truth. Ten years on, the story of these sixty men can finally be told. In March 2003 M Squadron - an SBS unit with SAS embeds - was sent 1,000 kilometres behind enemy lines on a true mission impossible, to take the surrender of the 100,000-strong Iraqi Army 5th Corps.

From award-winning journalist Jack Shenker, The Egyptians is the essential book about Egypt and radical politics. In early 2011 Cairo's Tahrir Square briefly commanded the attention of the world. Half a decade later, the international media has largely moved on from Egypt's explosive cycles of revolution and counter-revolution - but the Arab world's most populous nation remains as volatile as ever, its turmoil intimately bound up with forms of authoritarian power and grassroots resistance that stretch right across the globe.

In 1958 a young Bible scholar stumbles upon a version of the Gospel of Mark far older than that recorded in the New Testament. Unfortunately, his discovery brings him nothing but vilification and accusations of forgery. Eventually, the secret gospel simply disappears. Fifty-one years later, the scholar is dead, the victim of an apparent heart attack. However, evidence found in his room, coupled with a letter to Cairo-based journalist Alex Fisher, suggests murder.

I Love Russia takes us to places that non-Russians have never seen and brings us voices we have never heard. It is Elena Kostyuchenko’s courageous attempt to document Russia as experienced by those whom it systematically and brutally erases: village girls recruited into sex work, queer people in the outer provinces, patients and doc­tors at a Ukrainian maternity ward, and reporters like herself. At once uncompromising and deeply humane, it stitches reportage and personal essays into a kaleidoscopic, often other-worldly journey. Here is Russia as it is, not as we imagine it.

At the dawn of the 20th century, a young Lebanese adventurer leaves the Levant to explore the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace in Tripoli and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan.

Egyptian-born and London-raised, Alya Mooro grew up between two cultures and felt a pull from both. Where could she turn for advice and inspiration when it seemed there was nobody else like her? Today, Mooro is determined to explore and explode the myth that she must identify either as ‘Western’ or as one of almost 400 million other ‘Arabs’ across the Middle East.

An American pilot crash-lands in the desert and finds himself on the outskirts of the very camp he was supposed to bomb. After days spent wandering and hallucinating from dehydration, Major Ellie is rescued by one of the camp's residents, a teenager named Momo, whose entrepreneurial money-making schemes are failing as his family is falling apart: his older brother, Ali, left for his first day of work at an American base and never returned; his parents are at each other’s throats; his dog, Mutt, is having a very bad day; and an earthy-crunchy aid worker has shown up....