DIVDIVThe story of a dying man and a waning empire/divDIVThe Stone Woman has stood on the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul for generations. The ancient pagan icon has become a confessor, allowing people to release their guilt without consequence. Close to the Stone Woman is the family home of Iskander Pasha, a distant descendant of an exiled Ottoman courtier. When the aged Iskander suffers a stroke, his family rushes to his side to hear his last stories./divDIV /divDIVAs the dying man revisits his life, a complex family drama emerges, tracing the labored final breaths of an empire in decline. Through the diverse Pasha clan, Tariq Ali reveals sexual intrigue, political unrest, and domestic tension simmering in the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. In the third book of his acclaimed Islam Quintet, Ali draws a nuanced and powerful portrait of the Muslim world./div /div

Following the death of her mother, an elderly woman begins to undergo a transfiguration. Her body grows flinty, toughens and crystallises. An Icelandic stonemason she meets in a graveyard becomes her sole confidant. As her inexorable metamorphosis continues, the stories he has to tell of his homeland and its legends begin to resonate. Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was originally published in the collection Little Black Book of Stories.

Five nuanced and powerful historical novels depicting the clashes among Muslims, Christians, and Jews from the Crusades to twenty-first-century London. Celebrated British-Pakistani journalist and author Tariq Ali takes a mind-expanding journey through the ages with these five acclaimed works of fiction, available now in one collection. Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree: “Ali captures the humanity and splendor of Muslim Spain” in “an enthralling story, unraveled with thrift and verve” (The Independent). For the doomed Moors, the fall of Granada and the approaching forces of Christendom bring not peace but the sword. The Book of Saladin: After Saladin reclaims the holy city of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, he turns to a Jewish scribe to record his story, which Edward Said calls “a narrative for our time, haunted by distant events and characters who are closer to us than we had dreamed.” The Stone Woman: “Ali paints a vivid picture of a fading world,” proclaims the New York Times Book Review, as a distant descendant of an exiled Ottoman courtier suffers a stroke in Istanbul, and his family rushes to his side to hear his last stories. A Sultan in Palermo: In “a marvelously paced and boisterously told novel of intrigue, love, insurrection and manipulation,” cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi is caught between his friendship with King Roger of Sicily and the resentments of his fellow Muslims (The Guardian). Night of the Golden Butterfly: A Lahore-born writer living in London is called back to his homeland by an old friend who, at seventy-five, has finally fallen in love. “If Pakistan is a land of untold stories,” writes the New Statesman, Ali is “the country’s finest historian and critic.”

Finalist for the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers It is the mid-1800s. Fela, taken from Africa, is working at her second sugar plantation in colonial Puerto Rico, where her mistress is only too happy to benefit from her impressive embroidery skills. But Fela has a secret. Before she and her husband were separated and sold into slavery, they performed a tribal ceremony in which they poured the essence of their unborn child into a very special stone. Fela keeps the stone with her, waiting for the chance to finish what she started. When the plantation owner approaches her, Fela sees a better opportunity for her child, and allows the man to act out his desire. Such is the beginning of a line of daughters connected by their intense love for one another, and the stories of a lost land. Mati, a powerful healer and noted craftswoman, is grounded in a life that is disappearing in a quickly changing world. Concha, unsure of her place, doesn't realize the price she will pay for rejecting her past. Elena, modern and educated, tries to navigate between two cultures, moving to the United States, where she will struggle to keep her family together. Carisa turns to the past for wisdom and strength when her life in New York falls apart. The stone becomes meaningful to each of the women, pulling them through times of crisis and ultimately connecting them to one another. Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa shows great skill and warmth in the telling of this heartbreaking, inspirational story about mothers and daughters, and the ways in which they hurt and save one another.

An unforgettable collection of fairy tales for grownups—from the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession. • “A delight.... provoking and alarming, richly yet tautly rendered.... [She] has the sheer narrative skill to raise the hairs on the back of your neck and make your pulse race.” —The New York Times Book Review Like Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, Isak Dinesen and Angela Carter, A. S. Byatt knows that fairy tales are for adults. And in this ravishing collection she breathes new life into the form. Little Black Book of Stories offers shivers along with magical thrills. Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood: two middle-aged women, childhood friends reunited by chance, venture into a dark forest where once, many years before, they saw–or thought they saw–something unspeakable. Another woman, recently bereaved, finds herself slowly but surely turning into stone. A coolly rational ob-gyn has his world pushed off-axis by a waiflike art student with her own ideas about the uses of the body. Spellbinding, witty, lovely, terrifying, the Little Black Book of Stories is Byatt at the height of her craft.

Here, archaeologically documented,is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Under her, women’s roles were far more prominent than in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Stone describes this ancient system and, with its disintegration, the decline in women’s status.

An inspiration for young people who love to design, build, and work with their hands, Women of Steel and Stone tells the stories of 22 female architects, engineers, and landscape designers from the 1800s to today. Engaging profiles based on historical research and firsthand interviews stress how childhood passions, perseverance, and creativity led these women to overcome challenges and break barriers to achieve great success in their professions. Subjects include Marion Mahony Griffin, who worked alongside Frank Lloyd Wright to establish his distinct architectural-drawing style; Emily Warren Roebling, who, after her husband fell ill, took over the duties of chief engineer on the Brooklyn Bridge project; Marian Cruger Coffin, a landscape architect who designed estates of Gilded Age mansions; Beverly L. Greene, the first African American woman in the country to get her architecture license; Zaha Hadid, one of today's best-known architects and the first woman to receive the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize; and many others. Practical information such as lists of top schools in each field; descriptions of specific areas of study and required degrees; and lists of programs for kids and teens, places to visit, and professional organizations, make this an invaluable resource for students, parents, and teachers alike.