The moufflon, a wild sheep prized for its meat, continues to survive in the remote mountain desert of southern Libya. Only Asouf, a lone bedouin who cherishes the desert and identifies with its creatures, knows exactly where it is to be found. Now he and the moufflon together come under threat from hunters who have already slaughtered the once numerous desert gazelles. The novel combines pertinent ecological issues with a moving portrayal of traditional desert life and of the power of the human spirit to resist.

Seventeen year old Gwynn Dormath likes to keep his head down. He’s been hurt in the past, and he figures if the world doesn’t notice him, he’s less likely to lose anything more. Trouble is, the girl he’s crushed on for the past couple years suddenly decides to ask him out for Halloween. Despite all the alarms going off in his head, he says yes. It sucks when the alarms are right. A prank literally explodes and Gwynn finds himself imbued with powers he doesn’t understand and can’t control. So much for going unnoticed. Gods of old, angels of death, and creatures of myth start arriving in Gwynn’s small suburban town, and they’re all focusing on him. He’s no hero. He has no love for the world. But he just might be the only one who can save it.

“Imagine Cormac McCarthy's savage lyricism in a Paul Bowles desert landscape and you begin to enter the bleakly beautiful world of this mesmerizing, fable-like novel.”—The Independent Gold Dust is a classic story of the brotherhood between man and beast, the thread of companionship that is all the difference between life and death in the desert. It is a story of the fight to endure in a world of limitless and waterless wastes, and a parable of the struggle to survive in the most dangerous landscape of all: human society. Rejected by his tribe and hunted by the kin of the man he killed, Ukhayyad and his thoroughbred camel flee across the desolate Tuareg deserts of the Libyan Sahara. Between bloody wars against the Italians in the north and famine raging in the south, Ukhayyad rides for the remote rock caves of Jebel Hasawna. There, he says farewell to the mount who has been his companion through thirst, disease, lust, and loneliness. Alone in the desert, haunted by the prophetic cave paintings of ancient hunting scenes and the cries of jinn in the night, Ukhayyad awaits the arrival of his pursuers and their insatiable hunger for blood and gold.

A Tuareg by birth, Ibrahim al-Koni is no longer considered to be simply an emerging author. His works have now earned him international repute and prestigious academic recognition. Themed primarily around a desert context, his novels have been categorized as post-modern, polyphonic, magical or socialist realism, and Sufi fabula. This book takes a close look at one of al-Koni's works - The Bleeding of the Stone- and attempts to prise out philosophical reflections concealed in the text. In it the desert provides a landscape rich in allusions while metaphors allow readers to engage in creative interpretation. This is explored to the full by Meinrad Calleja in The Philosophy of Desert Metaphors in Ibrahim al-Koni - The Bleeding of the Stone.

He wanted nothing at all ... Until he found she had everything to give ... Sunder lead singer and guitarist Sebastian Stone has everything--fans, fame, and fortune. He also has a heart full of bitterness and a reputation for a short-fused temper. But an outward reputation rarely reveals the true man inside. Facing assault charges after trying to protect his younger brother, Sebastian is sent to Savannah, Georgia to lie low until the dust settles in L.A. Shea Bentley is beautiful, kind, and hiding from the very lifestyle Sebastian has always embraced. When the mysterious, tattooed stranger begins hanging out at the bar where she works, Shea is quick to recognize he is nothing but trouble, but she's helpless to the way her body lights up every time his intense grey eyes tangle with hers. They both soon find themselves drowning in a sea of desire and passion that won't let them up for air. Sebastian knows firsthand secrets never die, and he's not the only one who's hiding them. Loving someone always comes with a price. But will it be Shea's past that costs them everything? --