Showing results by narrator "Fajer Al Kaisi" in All Categories

Founded centuries ago by the enigmatic genius Moses Moses, the planet Reverie can either be heaven or hell, depending on whether you live on or above it. The superrich orbit the world in luxury abodes, keeping their sometimes-lethal ennui at bay by watching homemade sex and violence videos created by the peons dwelling on the coral continents miles beneath them. The most popular entertainer of all is the Artificial Kid, an unbeatable combat artist whose bloody, self-produced martial arts videos have made him beloved both above and below.

Mark has a wife and two kids, a sense of purpose, financial security, and a fragile contentment. However wistful his visions of the future, Mark knows who he is. But a summer trip with his abrasive brother-in-law and unhappy sister-in-law leave Mark questioning everything he thinks he knows about his family—and himself.

Growing up together in the Surra section of central Kuwait, Katkout, Fahd, and Sadiq share neither ethnic origin nor religious denomination - only friendship and a rage against the unconscionable sectarian divide turning their lives into war-zone rubble. To lay bare the ugly truths, they form the protest group Fuada’s Kids. Their righteous transgressions have made them targets of both Sunni and Shi’a extremists. They’ve also elicited the concern of Fahd’s grandmother, Mama Hissa, who cautions them that should they anger God, the sky will surely fall.

PEN/Hemingway finalist Jamil Jan Kochai breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In these arresting stories verging on both comedy and tragedy, often starring young characters whose bravado is matched by their tenderness.

A Different Mirror for Young People brings ethnic history alive through the words of people, including teenagers, who recorded their experiences in letters, diaries, and poems. Like Howard Zinn's A People's History, Takaki's A Different Mirror offers a rich and rewarding "people's view" perspective on the American story.

Whether as wine, beer, or spirits, alcohol has had a constant and often controversial role in social life. In his innovative book on the attitudes toward and consumption of alcohol, Rod Phillips surveys a 9,000-year cultural and economic history, uncovering the tensions between alcoholic drinks as healthy staples of daily diets and as objects of social, political, and religious anxiety.

Paris, the City of Light, was once the scene of a brilliant magnesium flare, host to the belle epoque from 1900 to 1914. Tempting poets, painters, writers, and composers from across Europe, the city relied on one man to move among them all - Guillaume Apollinaire. His contemporaries called him brilliant, mad, whimsical. He was the bastard son of an Italian cavalry officer and a Polish woman addicted to gambling, but nevertheless let it be rumored around Paris that he was the son of the pope.

When Siel unearths the bones of villagers massacred on his fiance's orders, his heart breaks. His fiance: the king. A monster and the man who saved Siel from the depth of melancholia. The man Siel loves. But some loves have to die, and Siel will kill this one. With no army, his only weapon is his secret ability to change into a fox—he's a familiar.

Julian Ladd and Rye Adler cross paths as photography students in the exclusive Brodsky Workshop. When Rye needs a roommate, Julian moves in, and a quiet, compulsive envy takes root, assuring, at least in his own mind, that he will never achieve Rye’s certain success. Both men are fascinated with their beautiful and talented classmate, Magda, whose captivating images of her Polish neighborhood set her apart, and each will come to know her intimately - a woman neither can possess and only one can love.

In 2015, when Mohammad Alardhi became the executive chairman of Investcorp, a leading global manager of alternative investments, he arrived with a transformative mindset that would set the company on a path to unprecedented growth. Within three years of Alardhi taking control of the company, their wealth management grew from $10B to $25B, and three years after that, it had grown to a remarkable $42B. After seven years under Alardhi’s leadership, Investcorp was managing an astounding $50B in wealth. Alardhi speaks candidly about the big thinking needed to succeed at such a large scale.

Thirty diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators - including Renee Watson (Piecing Me Together), Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon), Meg Medina (Merci Suarez Changes Gears), and Adam Gidwitz (The Inquisitor's Tale) - engage young people in frank discussions about racism, identity, and self-esteem. Featuring stories filled with love, acceptance, truth, peace, and an assurance that there can be hope for a better tomorrow, The Talk is an inspiring anthology and must-have resource published in partnership with Just Us Books.

Part philosophy, part business, and part history, this book is a kaleidoscopic view of the way humans have been able to achieve greatness for themselves, their organizations, and the world at large. You'll learn from the wisdom of Eastern philosophies that are over 2,500 years old and the interconnected insights of Leonardo da Vinci. Couple that with Fortune 100 corporate cross pollination for creativity and startup thinking for how to adapt with ease, and you have Everything Connects. This isn't just a quick fix for your next quarter; this is how you succeed in the long run.

In a world of explosive change and transformation, leaders at all levels—from heads of state and global corporations to entrepreneurs and gig economists—will offer the best opportunity for leveraging change and transforming our lives for the better. This includes how we work, play, govern ourselves, and consider and plan for our collective futures.

A timely primer on the conflict between the United States and Iran by scholars of Middle Eastern politics who advocate diplomacy and de-escalation.

A few years after Eva Joyce and Frankie Addison discovered the existence of portals to other worlds, Frankie’s younger siblings, together with some new friends, make discoveries that will change their lives, and at least two worlds, forever. Jack, Tilly, and Elspeth Addison just want to stay out of trouble (well, mostly, at least), but trouble keeps finding them.

Thomas Friesen has three goals in life: get a job, make friends, and find a good book to curl up with. After landing a job at READ, the newest hypermegabookstore, he feels he may have accomplished all three. All is not peaceable within the stacks, however, as discontent steadily rises, aimed squarely at talk show host Munroe Purvis, whose wildly popular book club is progressively lowering the IQ of North America. But the bookworms have a plan - plots are being hatched and the destruction of Munroe is all but assured.

The Patriot Jihadi: A Child Soldier's Transformation to A Patriot Guardian is a compelling memoir that traces the remarkable journey of Shawn Pardazi from a child soldier to a dedicated guardian of peace and security. Born into a tumultuous world, Shawn's early years were marked by the brutal realities of war and violence. As a child soldier, he experienced firsthand the horrors and complexities of armed conflict. But in the midst of chaos, Shawn found a spark of hope that would change the course of his life forever.

DCP Rita Ferreira is called into the investigation after a third corpse is discovered in Mumbai, which confirms it is the work of the same killer who paints his victims’s lips with dark red lipstick. The Lipstick Killer, like all serial killers, is fast decompensating—the time interval between the murders shortening, the victims shifting from street-side hookers to high-heeled wives … and he watches everything and everyone—the news of his exploits, Rita, the investigation—and talks.

In The Song of Our Scars, physician Haider Warraich offers a bold reexamination of the nature of pain, not as a simple physical sensation, but as a cultural experience. Warraich, himself a sufferer of chronic pain, considers the ways our notions of pain have been shaped not just by science but by politics and power, by whose suffering mattered and whose didn’t.

Told through the voice of a canine narrator, Wûf is a surrealist wartime love story set in Turkey in the 1990s. The novel follows Mikasa, a street dog who recounts a tale of tragic wartime love at a kennel where he finds solace in storytelling and cigarettes. A book that took the Turkish literary world by storm, Kemal Varol’s Wûf tackles universal themes of love and loss with both humor and pathos.