The inspiring account of one man’s campaign to build schools in the most dangerous, remote, and anti-American reaches of Asia. N.B. – In April 2011, the CBS documentary “60 Minutes” called into question Greg Mortenson’s work. The program alleged several inaccuracies in Three Cups of Tea, and its sequel, Stones into Schools. Author Greg Mortenson…
The first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling author who was deported to Auschwitz and died before her work could be completed. Author Irène Némirovsky (born February 11, 1903, Kiev, died August 17, 1942, Auschwitz, German Occupied Poland) was a Jewish novelist and biographer born in the Ukraine,…
Scholar A. Roger Ekirch illuminates the aspects of life most often overlooked by other historiansthose that unfold at night. Author A. Roger Ekirch (1950) is University Distinguished Professor of history at Virginia Tech in the United States. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1998. He is internationally known for his pioneering research into pre-industrial sleeping…
The Yacoubian Building, a once-elegant temple of Art Deco splendor in downtown Cairo, Egypt. Disparate lives converge, careening toward an explosive conclusion. Tragicomic, passionate, frank in its sexuality, and brimming with human compassion. Author Alaa Al-Aswany (1957) is an Egyptian writer, and a founding member of the political movement Kefaya. Aswany attended Le Lycée Français…
Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders. Author Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante’s books, originally published…
A warm, vivid portrait of the harsh West Virginia mining town of his youth, evoking a time of innocence and promise, when anything was possible, even in a company town that swallowed its men alive. Author Homer Hickam is the best-selling author of the “Coalwood” series of memoirs, the “Josh Thurlow” series of World War…
Deception—the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others—is the subject of this, Tove Jansson’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Author Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was born in Helsinki, and was an illustrator and political cartoonist for the left-leaning, anti-Fascist magazine Garm. She created a long-running comic strip and a series of children’s books…
Haunting, harrowing, moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. Author Rick Bragg (1959) is an American journalist and…
The bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war. Author Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of SAY NOTHING, THE SNAKEHEAD, and CHATTER. He lives…
Winter, January 1945. It is cold and dark, and the German army is retreating from the Russian advance. Germans are fleeing the occupied territories in their thousands, in cars and carts and on foot. But in a rural East Prussian manor house, the wealthy von Globig family tries to seal itself off from the world….
