Zahara's Quest


Book Description

The last thing Zahara expects to hear when she's summoned home is that her family has been cursed. As the truth behind the family legend becomes apparent, things become even more bizarre. Vowing to return a mysterious emerald necklace sent by an aunt she's never met, she'll have to rely on the help of friends to face the past and defeat an ancient foe. It’s a good thing she’s got the stubbornness and cunning of a fox to see her through because if she doesn't succeed, her future will vanish forever.




The Quest for Kismet


Book Description

The Quest for Kismet is a fascinating epic novel about individuals, each of whom is destined to fulfill a specific mission, who all end up sharing the same adventure that has imprisoned them within a compelling shared fate. An unknown enemy holds many threads in his hand, trying to lure them to an inescapable doom. But the members of this quest seek every missing piece of kismet—that which links each living creature to one another, to stand against a common enemy. Will laws control free will, or will rules be transcended by the free will of those who seek a greater good? This inventive, thought-provoking novel will enchant and enlighten you as you journey with a courageous cast of characters on the greatest quest of all.




The Lost Soul


Book Description

"I could feel our chance slipping away. If we didn't find him soon, it would be too late for Paul, and I wouldn't be able to forgive myself." Mark wakes in the middle of the night knowing his best friend has been kidnapped before anyone else does. Despite wondering if he's going crazy, he follows his intuition and in the process, discovers more than he bargained for. It's up to him to find his friend before it's too late. If he succeeds, he'll have to come to terms with his entire life being a lie. If he doesn't, his friend won't have a future.




Summoned


Book Description

The wrong jinn at the right time, Zahara's a force to be reckless with Zahara, party girl of the paranormal, floats up out of a lamp in Daniel Goldstein's apartment ready to trick a sorcerer into giving up his soul. But Daniel, whose Moroccan grandmother has reached out from beyond the grave to command him to raise a jinn, wants to do good—by stopping a vengeful fallen angel. The nymphomaniacal, shopping-obsessed Zahara isn’t the otherworldly ally Daniel had in mind. A do-gooder with a dangerous quest isn't what Zahara's looking for, either. Stuck in a magical contract with each other, the two travel to Morocco, where Zahara’s handsome friend Zaid, a jinn who's converted to Islam, reluctantly joins their quest. As Daniel and Zaid struggle against jinn-hunting mercenaries and their attraction to one other, Zahara is forced to join forces with the fallen angel's gorgeous but infuriating brother to stop a cataclysmic war between the human and jinn worlds.




A Man and His Ship


Book Description

“A fascinating historical account…A snapshot of the American Dream culminating with this country’s mid-century greatness” (The Wall Street Journal) as a man endeavors to build the finest, fastest, most beautiful ocean liner in history. The story of a great American Builder at the peak of his power, in the 1940s and 1950s, William Francis Gibbs was considered America’s best naval architect. His quest to build the finest, fastest, most beautiful ocean liner of his time, the SS United States, was a topic of national fascination. When completed in 1952, the ship was hailed as a technological masterpiece at a time when “made in America” meant the best. Gibbs was an American original, on par with John Roebling of the Brooklyn Bridge and Frank Lloyd Wright of Fallingwater. Forced to drop out of Harvard following his family’s sudden financial ruin, he overcame debilitating shyness and lack of formal training to become the visionary creator of some of the finest ships in history. He spent forty years dreaming of the ship that became the SS United States. William Francis Gibbs was driven, relentless, and committed to excellence. He loved his ship, the idea of it, and the realization of it, and he devoted himself to making it the epitome of luxury travel during the triumphant post-World War II era. Biographer Steven Ujifusa brilliantly describes the way Gibbs worked and how his vision transformed an industry. A Man and His Ship is a tale of ingenuity and enterprise, a truly remarkable journey on land and sea.




Finding List


Book Description




The Last Refugee


Book Description

It would not be the first or last orphan to have ended up on the shore. If there was one universal truth it was that mothers, who only had one life jacket would always put in on the child... Elijah rarely gives thought to the events that led to his family fleeing the Holocaust or the ways it changed his life. Well into old age he is content with his garden and house by the sea in Calais. All of that changes when his garden starts being pillaged each night. Eager to stop the supposed culprit, a rabbit, he stays awake one night only to find out that it's not a rabbit at all. The truth sends his mind back to fleeing the Nazis, back to when he was a hungry dirty child and the remarkable determination and strength it took to survive. Meanwhile, Safia and Ahmed Bahar are doctors living in a Syria they no longer recognize. They are forced to make impossible choices to save themselves and their three young children. Finding borders closed and options limited, the family sets out on a tenuous path with terror and destruction at every turn in their quest for a safe and peaceful life. Set during two of the largest refugee crises in history, The Last Refugee, intertwines Elijah's story with that of the Bahar family. Set across multiple decades and continents, it tells a compelling tale of two souls who couldn't be any more different but who understand each other better than anyone else could. A story of resilience and unwavering hope.




The Storied City


Book Description

“Timbuktu is a real place, and Charlie English will fuel your wanderlust with true descriptions of the fabled city’s past, present, and future.” –Fodor’s Two tales of a city: The historical race to “discover” one of the world’s most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend. To Westerners, the name “Timbuktu” long conjured a tantalizing paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for “discovery” tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval center of learning, it was home to tens of thousands—according to some, hundreds of thousands—of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaeda–linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these precious documents, a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding. Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines these two suspenseful strands into a fraught and fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it has become inseparable.




Zahra's Paradise


Book Description

Set in the aftermath of Iran's fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra's Paradise is the fictional graphic novel of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has vanished into an extrajudicial twilight zone.




Skeletons on the Zahara


Book Description

b.A masterpiece of historical adventure, ISkeletons on the Zahara The western Sahara is a baking hot and desolate place, home only to nomads and their camels, and to locusts, snails and thorny scrub -- and its barren and ever-changing coastline has baffled sailors for centuries. In August 1815, the US brig Commerce was dashed against Cape Bojador and lost, although through bravery and quick thinking the ship's captain, James Riley, managed to lead all of his crew to safety. What followed was an extraordinary and desperate battle for survival in the face of human hostility, starvation, dehydration, death and despair. Captured, robbed and enslaved, the sailors were dragged and driven through the desert by their new owners, who neither spoke their language nor cared for their plight. Reduced to drinking urine, flayed by the sun, crippled by walking miles across burning stones and sand and losing over half of their body weights, the sailors struggled to hold onto both their humanity and their sanity. To reach safety, they would have to overcome not only the desert but also the greed and anger of those who would keep them in captivity. From the cold waters of the Atlantic to the searing Saharan sands, from the heart of the desert to the heart of man, Skeletons on the Zahara is a spectacular odyssey through the extremes and a gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.




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