While eleven-year-old Nazie has long been engaged to her cousin Moussa and anxiously awaits her marriage, fifteen-year-old Flora has been abandoned by her husband in the midst of a difficult pregnancy. In a novel brimming with vitality and sensuality - smells, colours and textures float effortlessly off the page - Rabinyan examines the lives of these young Jewish girls in a Persian village at the beginning of the twentieth century. Persian Brides is a widely-acclaimed, vibrant and award-winning debut of immense emotional power.

By the time Matty is born, Iran and Solly's four older children are longing to fall in love. But the simplicity of their parent's romance seems as distant to them as a fairy tale. Each finds a life rich in unhappiness, filling Iran's home with whispers and wails, none more piercing than her own.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Whiter Than Snow and Prayers for Sale comes a novel about the secrets and passions of three generations of women who have all lived in the same Victorian home called the Bride's House. It's 1880, and for unassuming seventeen-year-old Nealie Bent, the Bride's House is a fairy tale come to life. It seems as if it is being built precisely for her and Will Spaulding, the man she is convinced she will marry. But life doesn't go according to plan, and Nealie finds herself in the Bride's House pregnant---and married to another. For Pearl, growing up in the Bride's House is akin to being raised in a mausoleum. Her father has fashioned the house into a shrine to the woman he loved, resisting all forms of change. When the enterprising young Frank Curry comes along and asks for Pearl's hand in marriage, her father sabotages the union. But he underestimates the lengths to which the women in the Bride's House will go for love. Susan is the latest in the line of strong and willful women in the Bride's House. She's proud of the women who came before her, but the Bride's House hides secrets that will force her to question what she wants and who she loves. Sandra Dallas has once again written a novel rich in storytelling and history, peopled by living, breathing characters that will grab hold of you and not let you go.

Redolent with the scent of lilac and oleander blossoms, and bursting with the flavors of quinces and overripe plums, Strand of a Thousand Pearls is the story of the imagined and actual marriages of the Azizyan girls, their years of yearning, restless and impatient, and the truth of their engagements, miles away from the enchanted realm and imaginary heroes of their dreams. Six years ago, Dorit Rabinyan burst onto the scene with Persian Brides, a novel that established her as a writer of incandescent spirit with a gift for spinning wry, magical tales about the vagaries of love and marriage. In Strand of a Thousand Pearls, she has given us a bitter-sweet fable about desires fulfilled and denied—about married love and carnal love, about mother’s love and the kind of love that vanishes one night without warning, like an evaporated dream.

Everyone dreams of the perfect wedding… And for nearly seven decades, Bride’s magazine has been the leading authority on the subject, with advice that is both practical and sympathetic to the needs of the bride, the groom, their families and friends. Now in a completely revised edition, Bride’s Book of Etiquette offers the most up-to-date information on engagement and wedding planning, and realistic solutions for any problem that couples may encounter. In this trusted classic, you’ll find out: How to draw up—and pare down—the guest list How to word invitations for every circumstance How to get his family to share wedding expenses, and who pays for what Where to seat divorced parents, and how to make sure they’ll get along How to dress the bride, groom, mothers, and bridal party at every hour for every type of wedding Contemporary ideas for a long-weekend wedding, a destination wedding and more How to handle last-minute glitches, include children in a second wedding, and answer the tough question: “Am I invited to the wedding?” Registering on the Internet, the dos and don’ts Updated etiquette for a second wedding The new honeymoon rules—romantic trips in today’s world

A generation ago the Achaemenid Empire was a minor sideshow within long-established disciplines. For Greek historians the Persians were the defeated national enemy, a catalyst of change in the aftermath of the fall of Athens or the victim of Alexander. For Egyptologists and Assyriologists they belonged to an era that received scant attention compared with the glory days of the New Kingdom or the Neo-Assyrian Empire. For most archaeologists they were elusive in a material record that lacked a distinctively Achaemenid imprint. Things have changed now. The empire is an object of study in its own right, and a community of Achaemenid specialists has emerged to carry that study forward. Such communities are, however, apt to talk among themselves and the present volume aims to give a professional but non-specialist audience some taste of the variety of subject-matter and discourse that typifies Achaemenid studies. The broad theme of political and cultural interaction - reflecting the empire's diversity and the nature of our sources for its history - is illustrated in fourteen chapters that move from issues in Greek historiography through a series of regional studies (Egypt, Anatolia, Babylonia and Persia) to Zarathushtra, Alexander the Great and the early modern reception of Persepolis.