Book of the Month - January

Book of the Month - January

The Map of Salt & Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar. 

This rich, moving, and lyrical debut novel is to Syria what The Kite Runner was to Afghanistan. The story of two girls living eight hundred years apart—a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and a medieval adventurer apprenticed to a legendary mapmaker.

It is the summer of 2011, and Nour has just lost her father to cancer. Her mother, a cartographer who creates unusual, hand-painted maps, decides to move Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. But the country Nour’s mother once knew is changing, and it isn’t long before protests and shelling threaten their quiet Homs neighborhood. When a shell destroys Nour’s house and almost takes her life, she and her family are forced to choose: stay and risk more violence or flee as refugees across seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa in search of safety. As their journey becomes more and more challenging, Nour’s idea of home becomes a dream she struggles to remember and a hope she cannot live without.

More than eight hundred years earlier, Rawiya, sixteen and a widow’s daughter, knows she must do something to help her impoverished mother. Restless and longing to see the world, she leaves home to seek her fortune. Disguising herself as a boy named Rami, she becomes an apprentice to al-Idrisi, who has been commissioned by King Roger II of Sicily to create a map of the world. In his employ, Rawiya embarks on an epic journey across the Middle East and the north of Africa where she encounters ferocious mythical beasts, epic battles, and real historical figures.

Book of the Month - September 2018

Book of the Month - September 2018

Read Aisham's review of  Queen of the Night, September's book of the month!
Author Of The Month

Author Of The Month

Is an American novelist and essayist known for her lucid prose style and incisive depictions of social unrest. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. Didion was and remains famous in a way that writers seldom are anymore. 
Book of the Month - August 2018

Book of the Month - August 2018

Read Waleed's review of The Immortalists, August's book of the month!
Author of the Month - August 2018

Author of the Month - August 2018

Read about August's author of the month, Brandon Sanderson!
Author of the Month - July 2018

Author of the Month - July 2018

Read about July's author of the month, Milan Kundera!