A mysterious tale-within-a-tale of family secrets by the most prominent Syrian author working today The world is so strange, The strangest things are the stories you overhear. When a hapless bureaucrat finds himself stranded in the countryside during a raging storm, he seeks refuge in a grand yet isolated mansion, inhabited by only an elderly gentleman and his unwelcoming servant. The tale of family secrets he encounters while sheltering there begins with a faded photograph in yellowed newspaper, of a beautiful woman stepping off a train at Aleppo station many years ago. It transports him to Syria's golden age, to the heart of the mysterious, unconventional banat al-ishreh – the infamous women who live, dance and play music together – and into a tangled web of forbidden love. Nihad Sirees was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1950. After working as an engineer, he became an acclaimed novelist, playwright and screenwriter, but found himself under increasing surveillance and pressure from the Syrian government. In 2012, he left for Egypt and now lives and works in exile. Pushkin Press also publish The Silence and the Roar, banned in Syria, and his first novel to be published in English. He now lives in Berlin, Germany.

"A gripping and unsettling new novel by the award-winning author of The Loney that asks how much we owe to tradition, and how far we will go to preserve it"--

Exploring the role of legal discourse in shaping sexual experience, sexual expression, and sexual identity this book focuses on three topics: anti-gay hate crime laws, same-sex sexual harassment, and same-sex marriage.

"For all who want to make sense of fundamentalism as a long-term consequence of the modern world, Pious Passion will be required reading. It is also enjoyable, abounding in cogent arguments set forth in lucid prose and supported by compelling examples."—Bruce B. Lawrence, author of Defenders of God "Riesebrodt's trenchant analysis brings the comparative study of religious activism to a new level of sophistication, exploring not only the ideological development of fundamentalist movements but also the changes in social structure that produced them. Pious Passion is a signal event in the modern social sciences, for it helps to establish a new academic field—the comparative study of fundamentalism."—Mark Juergensmeyer, author of The New Cold War?

Kate is only eighteen when she meets Tom Harper, one of America's biggest pro-football stars. They share an idyllic and glamorous first love. But the bullet that suddenly ends Tom's career also ends their life together. A failed suicide attempt will leave him mentally and physically disabled forever. Kate will be left alone, heartbroken, and pregnant with their son. Soon she will have another chance at love, but it will mean learning to let go of the past and learning to trust again.

The second of three volumes by Alan Wald that track the political and personal lives of several generations of U.S. left-wing writers, Trinity of Passion carries forward the chronicle launched in Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left. In this volume Wald delves into literary, emotional, and ideological trajectories of radical cultural workers in the era when the International Brigades fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the United States battled in World War II (1941-45). Probing in rich and haunting detail the controversial impact of the Popular Front on literary culture, he explores the ethical and aesthetic challenges that pro-Communist writers faced. Wald presents a cross section of literary talent, from the famous to the forgotten, the major to the minor. The writers examined include Len Zinberg (a.k.a. Ed Lacy), John Oliver Killens, Irwin Shaw, Albert Maltz, Ann Petry, Chester Himes, Henry Roth, Lauren Gilfillan, Ruth McKenney, Morris U. Schappes, and Jo Sinclair. He also uncovers dramatic new information about Arthur Miller's complex commitment to the Left. Confronting heartfelt questions about Jewish masculinity, racism at the core of liberal democracy, the corrosion of utopian dreams, and the thorny interaction between antifascism and Communism, Wald re-creates the intellectual and cultural landscape of a remarkable era.