Author: Gina Wilkinson
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 1496729366
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
“Breathtaking…Riveting and profound! I adored this book!” —Ellen Marie Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Collector “A deeply involving and important novel by a master storyteller.” —Susan Wiggs, # 1 New York Times bestselling author INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER In this moving, suspenseful debut novel, three courageous women confront the complexities of trust, friendship, motherhood, and betrayal under the rule of a ruthless dictator and his brutal secret police. Former foreign correspondent Gina Wilkinson draws on her own experiences to take readers inside a haunting story of Iraq at the turn of the millennium and the impossible choices faced by families under a deadly regime. A BuzzFeed Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Release A Target Book Club Pick A Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books Selection At night, in Huda’s fragrant garden, a breeze sweeps in from the desert encircling Baghdad, rustling the leaves of her apricot trees and carrying warning of visitors at her gate. Huda, a secretary at the Australian embassy, lives in fear of the mukhabarat—the secret police who watch and listen for any scrap of information that can be used against America and its allies. They have ordered her to befriend Ally Wilson, the deputy ambassador’s wife. Huda has no wish to be an informant, but fears for her teenaged son, who may be forced to join a deadly militia. Nor does she know that Ally has dangerous secrets of her own. Huda’s former friend, Rania, enjoyed a privileged upbringing as the daughter of a sheikh. Now her family’s wealth is gone, and Rania too is battling to keep her child safe and a roof over their heads. As the women’s lives intersect, their hidden pasts spill into the present. Facing possible betrayal at every turn, all three must trust in a fragile, newfound loyalty, even as they discover how much they are willing to sacrifice to protect their families. “Vivid…secrets and lies mingle as easily as the scent of apricot blossoms and nargilah smoke. Wilkinson weaves in the miasma of fear and distrust that characterized Hussein’s regime with convincing detail. Richly drawn characters and high-stakes plot.” —Publishers Weekly
Author: Gina Wilkinson
Publisher: Kensington Books
ISBN: 1496734653
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Join three different women as they form friendships, protect their families, and test political allegiances in the country of Iraq in a special sneak peek of this moving and thrilling novel. Inspired by her own experiences in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule, Gina Wilkinson's evocative, suspenseful debut is told through the eyes of three very different women confronting the limits of friendship and forgiveness, and the strength of a mother's love. At night, in Huda's fragrant garden, a breeze sweeps in from the desert encircling Baghdad, rustling the leaves of her apricot trees and carrying warning of visitors at her gate. Huda, a secretary at the Australian embassy, lives in fear of the mukhabarat--the secret police who watch and listen for any scrap of information that can be used against America and its allies. They have ordered her to befriend Ally Wilson, the deputy ambassador's wife. Huda has no wish to be an informant, but fears for her teenage son, who may be forced to join a deadly militia. Nor does she know that Ally has dangerous secrets of her own. Huda's former friend, Rania, enjoyed a privileged upbringing as the daughter of a sheikh. Now her family's wealth is gone, and Rania too is battling to keep her child safe and a roof over their heads. As the women's lives intersect, their hidden pasts spill into the present. Facing possible betrayal at every turn, all three must trust in a fragile, newfound loyalty, even as they discover how much they are willing to sacrifice to protect their families.
Author: Jessica Soffer
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547759266
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
From a debut author already praised by Colum McCann as a "profound and necessary new voice" comes a novel about two women adrift in New York--an Iraqi-Jewish widow and the latchkey daughter of a chef--who find each other and a new kind of family through their shared love of cooking.
Author: Lisa Newman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578630199
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Today the Santa Clara Valley is known as the Silicon Valley. However, not so long ago it was called the "Valley of Heart's Delight". Lisa Prince Newman grew up in that special time and place, among the fruit and nut orchards that surrounded her home town of Saratoga. She discovered her love for baking with the bounty of fruit ripening just outside her family's kitchen door. Lisa's passion for apricots fills this book with recipes that showcase the singular flavor and surprising versatility of the California apricot. Deeply influenced by the Santa Clara Valley's natural beauty and agricultural heritage, Lisa celebrates the apricot, its people, and its history in this very personal cookbook. For the Love of Apricots showcases 68 recipes from Breakfast to Cocktails that show you how to enjoy apricots throughout the year. A unique cookbook/memoir, For the Love of Apricots is a tribute to the orchardists and farmers who continue to grow California's most wonderful fruit.
Author: Reading Group Choices
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780975974476
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
Author: Tess Guinery
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
ISBN: 1524870412
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
What started as a break from Australian artist Tess Guinery’s rapidly growing design business turned into an instinctive, playful experiment with words, colors, and sounds—and eventually into a tangible book, The Apricot Memoirs. This collection of poetry and prose, thoughtfully illustrated and printed on colored paper, is infused with grace and playfulness. It explores love, personal growth, creativity, spirituality, vulnerability, and motherhood in the art medium of words, all the while creating a rich portrait of a deeply empathetic, talented, and whimsical artist. Esoteric, mysterious, and unfailingly beautiful, The Apricot Memoirs is an invitation to dig deep, embrace the uncomfortable, and free your creativity, unbound.
Author: Michael Moss
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812997301
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Salt Sugar Fat comes a “gripping” (The Wall Street Journal) exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts, the emotions we associate with food, and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health. “The processed food industry has managed to avoid being lumped in with Big Tobacco—which is why Michael Moss’s new book is so important.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that food is addictive, like drugs or alcohol? And to what extent does the food industry know, or care, about these vulnerabilities? In Hooked, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Michael Moss sets out to answer these questions—and to find the true peril in our food. Moss uses the latest research on addiction to uncover what the scientific and medical communities—as well as food manufacturers—already know: that food, in some cases, is even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Our bodies are hardwired for sweets, so food giants have developed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products, creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying; we’ve evolved to prefer fast, convenient meals, hence our modern-day preference for ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry—including major companies like Nestlé, Mars, and Kellogg’s—has tried not only to evade this troubling discovery about the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it. For instance, in response to recent dieting trends, food manufacturers have simply turned junk food into junk diets, filling grocery stores with “diet” foods that are hardly distinguishable from the products that got us into trouble in the first place. As obesity rates continue to climb, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits. A gripping account of the legal battles, insidious marketing campaigns, and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis, Hooked lays out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions, and shows us why what we eat has never mattered more.
Author: Dr. Jillian Horton
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1443461652
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
When we need help, we count on doctors to put us back together. But what happens when doctors fall apart? Funny, fresh, and deeply affecting, We Are All Perfectly Fine is the story of a married mother of three on the brink of personal and professional collapse who attends rehab with a twist: a meditation retreat for burned-out doctors. Jillian Horton, a general internist, has no idea what to expect during her five-day retreat at Chapin Mill, a Zen centre in upstate New York. She just knows she desperately needs a break. At first she is deeply uncomfortable with the spartan accommodations, silent meals and scheduled bonding sessions. But as the group struggles through awkward first encounters and guided meditations, something remarkable happens: world-class surgeons, psychiatrists, pediatricians and general practitioners open up and share stories about their secret guilt and grief, as well as their deep-seated fear of falling short of the expectations that define them. Jillian realizes that her struggle with burnout is not so much personal as it is the result of a larger system failure, and that compartmentalizing your most difficult emotions—a coping strategy that is drilled into doctors—is not useful unless you face these emotions too. Jillian Horton throws open a window onto the flawed system that shapes medical professionals, revealing the rarely acknowledged stresses that lead doctors to depression and suicide, and emphasizing the crucial role of compassion not only in treating others, but also in taking care of ourselves.
Author: Gina Wilkinson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780733646409
Category : Baghdad (Iraq)
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
At night, in Huda's fragrant garden, a breeze sweeps in from the desert encircling Baghdad, rustling the leaves of her apricot trees and carrying warning of visitors at her gate. Huda, a secretary at the Australian embassy, lives in fear of the secret police, who have ordered her to befriend Ally, the deputy ambassador's wife. Huda's former friend Rania, an artist, enjoyed a privileged upbringing as the daughter of a sheikh. Now her family's wealth is gone, and Rania is battling to keep her child safe and a roof over their heads. As the women's lives intersect, their hidden pasts spill into the present. Facing possible betrayal at every turn, all three must trust in a fragile, newfound loyalty, even as they discover how much they are willing to sacrifice to protect their families.
Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063092808
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
