Free Ebook Download: Guapa by Saleem Haddad

A debut novel that tells the story of Rasa, a young gay man coming of age in the Middle East
 
Set over the course of twenty-four hours, Guapa follows Rasa, a gay man living in an unnamed Arab country, as he tries to carve out a life for himself in the midst of political and social upheaval. Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother — the woman who raised him — catches them in bed together. 

The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar, Guapa, who has been arrested by the police. Ashamed to go home and face his grandmother, and reeling from the potential loss of the three most important people in his life, Rasa roams the city’s slums and prisons, the lavish weddings of the country’s elite, and the bars where outcasts and intellectuals drink to a long-lost revolution. Each new encounter leads him closer to confronting his own identity, as he revisits his childhood and probes the secrets that haunt his family. As Rasa confronts the simultaneous collapse of political hope and his closest personal relationships, he is forced to discover the roots of his alienation and try to re-emerge into a society that may never accept him. Read Online Book Guapa by Saleem Haddad Full Free

Review :

"Those looking for a nuanced portrait of gay life in the modern Middle East will find plenty to admire in this ... promising debut." —Kirkus Reviews

"Haddad presents a striking look at gay life, the psychological cost of conformity, and what it means to be true to yourself from a Middle Eastern perspective." —Booklist
"Warmly recommended to all readers who are interested in issues of diversity and the Middle East."—Library Journal

"A remarkable debut." —The Huffington Post
“Haddad’s unwavering dedication to detail, narrative arc, and consequence make Guapa necessarily poignant, uncomfortable, and meaningful. Like all good art, it moves beyond itself to shine a light on the world it bears.” —PopMatters

“The deeply personal and effortlessly readable narrative explores the negotiations that a queer, Muslim, American-educated man in love is forced to make in spaces where his identity is constantly called into question.” —The Huffington Post

“Set in an unnamed Middle Eastern country across the course of one day, Guapa follows the story of Rasa, a young gay man who has been caught in bed with a boyfriend by his overbearing grandmother…Rasa exists against a backdrop of civil unrest, heavy-handed police and homophobia. Faced with the prospect of never seeing his lover again, the novel gives us an insight into how it feels to be in love in a society where that love remains strongly forbidden. ‘I dreamt of kissing his cheek, because it struck me that to kiss your lover’s cheek in public was quite ordinary,’ Rasa writes, sharing his painful desire and longing in a story that is equal parts romance and thriller. Through flashbacks, we learn of Rasa’s younger life; his parents deaths, his awakening sexuality, and his time studying in the U.S., where he is distrusted in the wake of terror attacks in the west. Saleem Haddad is London based, but in this novel he draws on his Middle Eastern heritage to paint a truthful image of the manifestations and perceptions of homosexuality within Arab culture. His background as an aid worker, and in assisting refugees from the region, only further enhances his understanding of the wider problems he discusses; notably the fallout from the Arab Spring, and the rise of Islamic extremism. Guapa sets Haddad up as a literary voice capable of narrating untold stories of the modern gay experience, from one of the most complicated parts of the world.”—Attitude Magazine
“Guapa shines beautifully in its moments of sweetness and satire.” —Full Stop
“A provocative and emotional coming of age story, Guapa is an excellent debut novel.” —Bustle

Tags:
Saleem Haddad Books
Guapa from Saleem Haddad
Saleem Haddad Ebook: Guapa
Download Guapa
Guapa

Free Download The 14th Colony: A Novel (Cotton Malone) from Steve Berry

What happens if both the president and vice-president-elect die before taking the oath of office? The answer is far from certain―in fact, what follows would be nothing short of total political chaos.

Shot down over Siberia, ex-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is forced into a fight for survival against Aleksandr Zorin, a man whose loyalty to the former Soviet Union has festered for decades into an intense hatred of the United States.

Before escaping, Malone learns that Zorin and another ex-KGB officer, this one a sleeper still embedded in the West, are headed overseas to Washington D.C. Noon on January 20th―Inauguration Day―is only hours away. A flaw in the Constitution, and an even more flawed presidential succession act, have opened the door to disaster and Zorin intends to exploit both weaknesses to their fullest.

Armed with a weapon leftover from the Cold War, one long thought to be just a myth, Zorin plans to attack. He’s aided by a shocking secret hidden in the archives of America’s oldest fraternal organization―the Society of Cincinnati―a group that once lent out its military savvy to presidents, including helping to formulate three invasion plans of what was intended to be America’s 14th colony―Canada.

In a race against the clock that starts in the frozen extremes of Russia and ultimately ends at the White House itself, Malone must not only battle Zorin, he must also confront a crippling fear that he’s long denied, but which now jeopardizes everything. Steve Berry’s trademark mix of history and speculation is all here in this provocative new thriller. Read Online Book The 14th Colony: A Novel (Cotton Malone) from Steve Berry Full Free

Review :

"Berry raises this genre's stakes."―The New York Times

"I love this guy."―Lee Child

“One of Berry's best books to date.”―Associated Press on The Patriot Threat

“My kind of thriller.” ― Dan Brown on The Amber Room

“Steve Berry is a master at weaving together historical details with fiction to create a spellbinding thriller…The Patriot Threat is suspenseful, entertaining and thought provoking. As usual, Berry’s writing is smooth, the plot well thought out, and the characters realistic. Another winner from Steve Berry.”―Examiner.com

"As always with Steve Berry, you're educated about significant things while your knuckles are turning white and the pages are flying by."―David Baldacci

“Every American should read [The Lincoln Myth].”―Florida Times Union

“Steve Berry’s sizzling, scintillating and aptly titled The Patriot Threat…provides an extraordinarily well researched, prescient and beautifully structured tale that whisks us off across the globe and through history in search of an elusive truth dating to FDR. [Berry] remains a master of form and function, a stylist as well as a storyteller...Blistering reading entertainment at its level best.”―Providence Journal

“The 10th installment in Mr. Berry’s Cotton Malone series, The Patriot Threat is a fast-paced and entertaining traditional thriller along the lines of The Da Vinci Code. It’s loaded with action, character sketches, fascinating history and Mr. Berry’s liberal use of poetic license.”―Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Another page-turning thriller blending history, speculation and face-paced action."―Kirkus Reviews on The Patriot Threat

Tags:

The 14th Colony: A Novel (Cotton Malone)
Steve Berry Ebook: The 14th Colony: A Novel (Cotton Malone)
Steve Berry Books
Read Online The 14th Colony: A Novel (Cotton Malone)
The 14th Colony: A Novel (Cotton Malone) from Steve Berry

Read Book Online Heat and Light: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh

Acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh returns to the Pennsylvania town at the center of her iconic novel Baker Towers in this ambitious, achingly human story of modern America and the conflicting forces at its heart—a bold, moving drama of hope and desperation, greed and power, big business and small-town families.

Forty years ago, Bakerton coal fueled the country. Then the mines closed, and the town wore away like a bar of soap. Now Bakerton has been granted a surprise third act: it sits squarely atop the Marcellus Shale, a massive deposit of natural gas.

To drill or not to drill? Prison guard Rich Devlin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn’t count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brother’s skepticism or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby, who insists the water smells strange and is poisoning their frail daughter. Meanwhile his neighbors, organic dairy farmers Mack and Rena, hold out against the drilling—until a passionate environmental activist disrupts their lives.

Told through a cast of characters whose lives are increasingly bound by the opposing interests that underpin the national debate, Heat and Light depicts a community blessed and cursed by its natural resources. Soaring and ambitious, it zooms from drill rig to shareholders’ meeting to the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to the ruined landscape of the “strippins,” haunting reminders of Pennsylvania’s past energy booms. This is a dispatch from a forgotten America—a work of searing moral clarity from one of the finest writers of her generation, a courageous and necessary book. Read Book Online Heat and Light: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh Full Free

Review :

“Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention. Her work is gripping, real and totally immersive, akin to that of writers as different as Richard Price, Richard Ford and Richard Russo...With this book, she moves one big step closer to being in their league.” (Janet Maslin, New York Times)

“We finally have a novel - and a novelist - whose ambitions match the scale of this subject…a tour-de-force of multiple point-of-view narration…DeLillo-esque…Haigh’s achievement in this expansive, gripping novel is to delineate the ways in which we are all connected, for better and worse. (The Washington Post)

The novel is not an environmental treatise masked as fiction; rather, it’s a perfectly paced rendering of the intertwined characters’ personal stories. Haigh smoothly switches between past and present, fully exposing that, indeed, the past is not even past. This is a must-read... (Booklist (starred review))

“Each page glimmers…Sweeping yet intimate, Heat and Light is an exemplar of fiction’s capacity to awaken us to truth.” (O, the Oprah Magazine)

“Paragraph by paragraph, the prose is full of marvelous texture and material sensation. Heat and Light is an intricate and ambitious novel, firmly grounded in history and our time. The narrator’s encyclopedic knowledge and keen insights about the physical world and social life make the novel a thrilling page turner.” (Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author of WAITING)

“...a stunning book, a grand book, a book of old-fashioned power and scale...it takes aim at power and greed, plunder and the profit motive, the rapacity inherent in the American Dream and the complicity of its victims..This is an unsparing book, and one that sings.” (Joshua Ferris, author of THEN WE CAME TO THE END)

Tags:

#Heat and Light: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh

#Free Online Reading Heat and Light: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh

#Read Online Heat and Light: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh Full Free

#Free Ebook Heat and Light: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh

#Download Book Heat and Light: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh

Read Online Book Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa

Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year in Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, Huffington Post, The Chicago Tribune, BuzzFeed, Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Orlando Sentinel, Ploughshares, Bustle, TheMillions, BookRiot, The Oregonian, The San Diego Union-Tribune, River City Reading, Indigo

The Flamethrowers meets Let the Great World Spin in this electrifying debut novel set amid the heated conflict of Seattle's 1999 WTO protests.

On a rainy, cold day in November, young Victor--a nomadic, scrappy teenager who's run away from home--sets out to join the throng of WTO demonstrators determined to shut down the city. With the proceeds, he plans to buy a plane ticket and leave Seattle forever, but it quickly becomes clear that the history-making 50,000 anti-globalization protestors--from anarchists to environmentalists to teamsters--are testing the patience of the police, and what started out as a peaceful protest is threatening to erupt into violence.

Over the course of one life-altering afternoon, the fates of seven people will change forever: foremost among them police Chief Bishop, the estranged father Victor hasn't seen in three years, two protesters struggling to stay true to their non-violent principles as the day descends into chaos, two police officers in the street, and the coolly elegant financial minister from Sri Lanka whose life, as well as his country's fate, hinges on getting through the angry crowd, out of jail, and to his meeting with the President of the United States. When Chief Bishop reluctantly unleashes tear gas on the unsuspecting crowd, it seems his hopes for reconciliation with his son, as well as the future of his city, are in serious peril.

In this raw and breathtaking novel, Yapa marries a deep rage with a deep humanity. In doing so he casts an unflinching eye on the nature and limits of compassion, and the heartbreaking difference between what is right and what is possible. Read Online Book Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa Full Free

Review :

"A fantastic debut novel.... What is so enthralling about this novel is its syncopated riff of empathy as the perspective jumps around these participants--some peaceful, some violent, some determined, some incredulous... Yapa creates a fluid sense of the riot as it washes over the city. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist ultimately does for WTO protests what Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night did for the 1967 March on the Pentagon, gathering that confrontation in competing visions of what happened and what it meant."--Ron Charles, Washington Post

"A symphony of a novel. Sunil Yapa inhabits the skins of characters vastly different to himself: a riot cop in Seattle, a punk activist, a disillusioned world traveler and a high-level diplomat, among others. Through it all Yapa showcases a raw and rare talent. This is a protest novel which finds, at its core, a deep and abiding regard for the music of what happens. In the contemporary tradition of Aleksandar Hemon and Phillipp Meyer, with echoes of Michael Ondaatje and Arundhati Roy, Yapa strives forward with a literary molotov cocktail to light up the dark."--Colum McCann, author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin


"Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is visceral, horrifying, and often heroic. But above all, this book is a full-throated chorus of voices on all sides--protestors, cops, delegates, politicians, and ramblers--as democracy runs headlong into the machinery of global power. Sunil Yapa has achieved something special, a story that is as tragic as it is relevant, as unflinching as it is humane."
―Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek

"Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is a stunningly orchestrated, symphonic work of narrative power. This novel marshals all the vital forces of our existence--from the domestic to the political--and offers them to the reader with equal doses of compassion and beauty."―Dinaw Mengestu, author of All Our Names

"There is nothing to say about Sunil Yapa's debut novel that its wonderful title doesn't already promise--its heart beats and bleeds on every page, in prose so raw it feels built of muscle and tissue and sinew and sweat. This book is delightfully, forcefully alive, and I feel more alive for having read it."―Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints

"An open-armed love letter to humanity, this glorious novel loops around a burning center encompassing the warmth of parents and the coolness of patriarchy. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist will compel you to look and then to witness. 'We are mad with hope' the narrator says early on, and by the end the reader is too."―Tiphanie Yanique, author of Land of Love and Drowning


Tags:
#Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa
#Read Online Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa Full Free
#Free Online Reading Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa
#Free Ebook Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa
#Download Book Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa