A riveting, real-life equivalent of The Kite Runner—an astonishingly powerful and profoundly moving story of a young couple willing to risk everything for love that puts a human face on the ongoing debate about women’s rights in the Muslim world.

Zakia and Ali were from different tribes, but they grew up on neighboring farms in the hinterlands of Afghanistan. By the time they were young teenagers, Zakia, strikingly beautiful

...

Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas," Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long...

Profiles four women making their way through life in Iraq after America's invasion of the country, from Zia, who is in a relationship with an American; to Manal, a Palestinian-American activist who founds a women's center.

"A sweeping, propulsive novel about the families we are born into and the families we make for ourselves, in which two brothers struggle to find their place in an Iran on the brink of combusting Amid the alleyways of the Zamzam neighborhood of Tehran, a woman lights herself on fire in a desperate act of defiance, setting off a chain reaction of violence and protest. Haunted by the woman's death, Issa is forced to confront the contradictions within...

High-spirited heroine Charlotte Heywood returns to the picturesque coastal resort of Sanditon and the companionship of her friend Georgiana Lambe. What adventures, scandals, intrigue and above all else, romance, await Miss Heywood this season?

Examines the cultural war in America between those who embrace traditional values and those who want to transform America into a "secular-progressive" nation, discussing such topics as the media, the War on Terror, religion, and self-interest.