The Trouble with Islam...

Islam is “on very thin ice” with one follower, Canadian broadcaster Manji. Her book will be an unsettling read for most of her fellow Muslims, although they may find themselves agreeing with many points. She describes how childhood days spent at her local mosque left her perplexed and irritated; she complains that the Middle East conflict has consumed Muslim minds. She highlights several grievances many Muslims probably share: what she casts as Saudi Arabia’s disproportional and destructive influence on Islam, how the hijab, or veil, has become a litmus test for a Muslim woman’s faithfulness, and the need to question the accuracy of hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad). The exclusion of women from Muslim leadership is criticized as well.

The Zahir: A Novel of Love...

The Zahir, Paulo Coelho’s new novel, is a perfect follow-on to The Alchemist. Paulo picks up the theme of the pilgrimage to Santiago but tells a very different, gripping story of love, loss and passionate obsession. The protagonist of this new novel is a renowned author who writes about spirituality and once went on pilgrimage along the road to Santiago. On a return visit, he is suddenly abandoned by his wife, who leaves no trace of herself behind. As the story unfolds the author becomes obsessed with understanding the reason for her desertion. The title comes from a tale by Jorge Luis Borges, published in his book The Aleph. In Arabic Zahir means ‘visible, present and unable to go unnoticed.’ It refers to something or someone that ends up being the only thing we can think of. This state of ‘possession’ can be understood as saintliness or insanity, with a fine line between the two. The novel is also full of comments on what it is to be rich and famous, on the meaning of money, on what motivates a writer and on the nature of marriage.

The Third Translation

Walter Rothschild, a middle-aged Egyptologist at the British Museum, has abandoned his wife and child to spend his time obsessively poring over the dusty inscriptions of a dead civilization.

He is forced to reconnect with life when he is seduced by a mysterious woman who then steals an ancient papyrus containing the key to the enigmatic hieroglyphics of the Stela of Paser. The conspiracy trail leads Walter to a modern-day cult of the Egyptian sun god, Aten, protected by a menacing team of pro wrestlers. In Bondurant’s ambitious debut, a sprawling picaresque is infused with mythic resonance by linking it to ancient Egyptian literature and mythology and to concepts in avant-garde physics, including black holes, general relativity and string theory.

4th of July...

A young man is found dead in a seedy hotel room; electrocuted in his bath with a toaster. This is the second electrocution murder Lindsay Boxer has come across and the message left in graffiti on the wall at the scene of the crime is the same: NOBODY CARES ANYMORE. What does it refer to? The one clue Lindsay and her partner Jacobi have is that a black Mercedes was spotted at the scene of both murders. But when they follow a car they think is connected,

they get more than they bargained for. Full of the high suspense and fast-moving plotlines for which James Patterson is best known, this promises to be the most exciting Women’s Murder Club case yet.

Whiteout

Human betrayal, medical terror and a race against time... Jealousies, distrust, and hidden rivalries uncover dark secrets, then a dozen vials of a deadly virus go missing. As a blizzard whips out of the north on Christmas Eve, several people converge on a remote family house. Stanley Oxenford, director of a pharmaceutical research company, has everything riding on a drug he is developing to fight a lethal virus. Several others are interested in his success too: his children, at home for Christmas with their offspring, have their eyes on the money he will make; Toni Gallo, head of his security team and recently forced to resign from the police, is betting her career on keeping it safe; an ambitious local television reporter sniffs a story, even if he has to bend the facts to tell it; and a violent trio of thugs are on their way to steal it, with a client already waiting.