By Rabih Alameddine
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

An obsessive introvert in Beirut, eschewed by her family and neighbors for her divorced status and lack of religious reverence, quietly translates favorite books into Arabic while struggling with her aging body, until an unthinkable disaster threatens what little life remains to her.

By Khaled Hosseini

Presents a story inspired by human love, how people take care of one another, and how choices resonate through subsequent generations.

By Nadeem Aslam

Secretly entering Afghanistan to help care for wounded civilians, Jeo and Makal, foster brothers from a small Pakistani town, find that their good intentions cannot keep them out of harm's way.

By Orhan Pamuk

A stunning tapestry of Middle Eastern and Islamic culture. Richly atmospheric and Rabelaisian in scope, a labyrinthine novel suffused with sights, sounds, and scents of Istanbul as it plumbs the mystery of identity, fiction, and reality.

By Tariq Ali
Series Islam Quintet

“…Ali's earthy, lusty saga about the fall of Jerusalem to Muslim forces in 1187 rewrites Eurocentric history by focusing on the historical figure Salah al-Din (better known as Saladin), the Kurdish upstart who used his position as sultan of Egypt and Syria to retake the Holy City from Crusaders (Publishers Weekly).”

By Naguib Mahfouz
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

“The novelist's camera pans from the dome of King Fuad University to students streaming out of the campus, focusing on four students in their twenties, each representing a different trend in Egypt in the 1930s (From the Publisher).”

By Yasmine El Rashidi

A woman in Cairo reflects on three pivotal summers of her life, including when she was a six– year– old unable to ask questions, an idealistic college student in the volatile Mubarak period, and an adult in the aftermath of Mubarak's overthrow.

By Zoë Ferraris
Recommended By Pam Martin, Assistant Library Director

“After the body of a brutally beaten woman is found on a beach in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Detective Osama Ibrahim, along with the help of female coroner Katya and her friend Nayir, discovers that the victim was a controversial filmmaker and must discern who wanted her dead (From the Publisher).”

By Leon Uris

People from different backgrounds come to Palestine to help create the Jewish state of Israel after World War II.

By Zoe Ferraris
Series Katya Hijazi Novels
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

When sixteen–year–old Nouf goes missing and is found drowned in the desert outside Jeddah, Nayir––a desert guide hired by her prominent family to search for her––feels compelled to find out what really happened.

By Mark Mustian

Seen by those around him as a virtually senile nonagenarian, Emmet Conn is haunted by vivid memories of a past he and others deliberately worked to forget, a situation that compels him to seek out the love of his life to beg her forgiveness.

By Helene Wecker
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Chava, a golem brought to life by a disgraced rabbi, and Ahmad, a jinni made of fire, form an unlikely friendship on the streets of New York until a fateful choice changes everything.

By Elliot Ackerman

An Afghani orphan loses everything when his village is attacked by militants and he must join a U.S.-funded militia to try to save his injured brother, who fell victim to a marketplace bomb.

By Rabih Alameddine

Returning to Beirut after many years in America, Osama al-Kharrat finds a turbulent, war-torn city far different than that he remembers but takes solace in the entertaining stories of his grandfather.

By Robert Ferrigno
Series Assassin Trilogy
Recommended By Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

“Set in a future American divided into two major regions, Edgar-finalist Ferrigno’s final entry in his Assassin trilogy nicely ties up the wildly diverse plot lines that have motivated his many characters (Publishers Weekly).”

By Nadia Hashimi
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions

Accused by her in–laws and imprisoned for the murder of her husband, Zeba forges bonds with a group of women who have also been locked up for social violations and places her fate in the hands of an Afghan–born, American raised civil rights lawyer.

By Sara Farizan

In Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death, seventeen–year–olds Sahar and Nasrin love each other in secret until Nasrin's parents announce their daughter's arranged marriage and Sahar proposes a drastic solution.

By Daniyal Mueenuddin

A volume of linked stories describes the intertwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani family farm in Pakistan, in a collection that explores such themes as culture, class power, and desire.

By Khaled Hosseini
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.

Became the movie: The Kite Runner.

By Roberta Gately

In the wake of 9/11, ER nurse Elsa travels to war-torn Afghanistan to run a small medical clinic in Bamiyan.

By Mohsin Hamid

“Hamid's tale, played out against the background of Pakistan's recent testing of a nuclear device, creates a powerful image of an insecure society toying with its own dissolution (Publishers Weekly Review).”

By Orhan Pamuk

A kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex and power.

By Aline Ohanesian
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, April 26, 2016. 1:30 PM.

Inheriting the family kilim rug dynasty when his eccentric grandfather is found dead, Orhan struggles with will stipulations that leave the family estate to a stranger who holds secrets from the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

By Nadia Hashimi
With Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, May 23, 2017. 1:30 PM.

Adopting the custom of bacha posh in 2007 Kabul, which allows her to dress and be treated as a boy, attend school and chaperone her sisters until she is of marriageable age, Rahima, the daughter of a drug– addicted father, discovers that she is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom.

By Mohsin Hamid

In the aftermath of 9/11 a young Pakistani man tells his life story to a mysterious American stranger.

Became the movie: The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

By Dalia Sofer

In 1981, Isaac Amin is accosted by Revolutionary Guards in Tehran and imprisoned for being Jewish.

By Orhan Pamuk

A Turkish poet who spent 12 years as a political exile in Germany witnesses firsthand the clash between radical Islam and Western ideals.

By Marjan Kamali
Recommended By Donna Burger, Readers' Services Librarian

A young couple who meet and fall in love at a neighborhood stationery shop in 1953 Tehran are separated by a violent coup d'etat on the eve of their marriage and reunite by chance after more than half a century.

By Khaled Hosseini
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, January 31, 2017.  1:30 PM.

A novel set against three decades of Afghanistan’s history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban tells the story of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen–year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband.

By Jamil Ahmad

Tor Baz, the young boy who becomes the Wandering Falcon, moves between the tribes of Pakistan and Afghanistan and their uncertain worlds full of brutality, humanity, deep love, honor, poverty, and grace. The people who populate this area, their tribes and traditions, and their older, timeless ways are revealed in the face of sometimes ruthless modernity.

By Nadia Hashimi
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services, Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions

When her happy middle–class life in Afghanistan is shattered by the rise of the Taliban and her husband's murder by fundamentalists, former schoolteacher Fereiba embarks on a high-risk effort to escape to England with her three children.