Set in Lahore, This House of Clay and Water explores the lives of two women. Nida, intelligent and lonely, has married into an affluent political family and is desperately searching for meaning in her life, while impulsive, lovely Sasha, from the ordinary middle class, willingly consorts with rich men who can satisfy her frantic longing for designer labels and upmarket places. Nida and Sasha meet at the famous Daata Sahib Dargah and connect-their need to understand why their worlds feel so alien and empty bringing them together. On her frequent visits to the dargah, Nida also meets the gentle, flute-playing hijra Bhanggi, who sits under a bargadh tree and yearns for acceptance and affection, but is invariably shunned. A friendship-fragile, tentative and tender-develops between the two, both exiles within their own lives; but it flies in the face of all convention and cannot be allowed. Faiqa Mansab's accomplished and dazzling debut novel explores the themes of love, betrayal and loss in the complex, changing world of today's Pakistan.

The unforgettable, New York Times bestselling family saga from Markus Zusak, the storyteller who gave us the extraordinary bestseller THE BOOK THIEF, lauded by the New York Times as "the kind of book that can be life-changing." NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY • THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "One of those monumental books that can draw you across space and time into another family’s experience in the most profound way." —The Washington Post "Mystical and loaded with heart, it's another gorgeous tearjerker from a rising master of them." —Entertainment Weekly “Devastating, demanding and deeply moving.” —Wall Street Journal The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance. At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge—for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle. The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome? Written in powerfully inventive language and bursting with heart, BRIDGE OF CLAY is signature Zusak.

USA TODAY Bestseller | ECPA Bestseller A riveting story of heroism, heartache, and the power of love to heal all wounds by New York Times bestselling author Charles Martin that combines the intrigue of John Grisham with the heart-wrenching emotion of Nicholas Sparks. Murphy Shepherd is a man with many secrets. He lives alone on an island, tending the grounds of a church with no parishioners, and he's dedicated his life to rescuing those in peril. But as he mourns the loss of his mentor and friend, Murph himself may be more lost than he realizes. When he pulls a beautiful woman named Summer out of Florida's Intracoastal Waterway, Murph's mission to lay his mentor to rest at the end of the world takes a dangerous turn. Drawn to Summer, and desperate to find her missing daughter, Murph is pulled deeper and deeper into the dark and dangerous world of modern-day slavery. With help from some unexpected new friends, including a faithful Labrador he plucks from the ocean and an ex-convict named Clay, Murph must race against the clock to locate the girl before he is consumed by the secrets of his past--and the ghosts who tried to bury them. With Charles Martin's trademark lyricism and poignant prose, The Water Keeper is at once a tender love story, a heartrending search for freedom, an exploration of the terrible cost of human trafficking, and an anthem to the power of love to create change when it show up regardless of the cost. "Martin excels at writing characters who exist in the margins of life . . . Readers who enjoy flawed yet likable characters created by authors such as John Grisham and Nicholas Sparks will want to start reading Martin's fiction." --Library Journal, starred review "The Water Keeper is a wonderfully satisfying book with a plot driven by both action and love, and characters who will stay in readers' heads long after the last page." --Southern Literary Review "Charles Martin fans rejoice, because he's done it again . . . a multilayered story woven together with grace and redemption, and packed tight with tension and achingly real characters." --Lauren Denton The Murphy Shepherd series: Book 1: The Water Keeper, Book 2: The Letter Keeper, Book 3: The Record Keeper, Book 4: The Keeper (coming April 2025!)

In the tradition of Kabul Beauty School and Start Something That Matters comes an inspiring story of social entrepreneurship from the co-founder of Kiva, the first online microlending platform for the working poor. Featuring lessons learned from successful businesses in the world’s poorest countries, Jessica Jackley’s Clay Water Brick will motivate readers to more deeply appreciate the incredible entrepreneurial potential that exists in every human being on this planet—especially themselves. “The heart of entrepreneurship is never about what we have. It’s about what we do.” Meet Patrick, who had next to nothing and started a thriving business using just the ground beneath his feet . . . Blessing, who built her shop right in the middle of the road, refusing to take the chance that her customers might pass her by . . . Constance, who cornered the banana market in her African village with her big personality and sense of mission. Patrick, Blessing, Constance, and many others are among the poorest of the world’s poor. And yet they each had crucial lessons to teach Jessica Jackley—lessons about resilience, creativity, perseverance, and, above all, entrepreneurship. For as long as she could remember, Jackley, the co-founder of the revolutionary microlending site Kiva, had a singular and urgent ambition: to help alleviate global poverty. While in her twenties, she set off for Africa to finally meet the people she had long dreamed of helping. The insights of those she met changed her understanding. Today she believes that many of the most inspiring entrepreneurs in the world are not focused on high-tech ventures or making a lot of money; instead, they wake up every day and build better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities, regardless of the things they lack or the obstacles they encounter. As Jackley puts it, “The greatest entrepreneurs succeed not because of what they possess but because of what they are determined to do.” In Clay Water Brick, Jackley challenges readers to embrace entrepreneurship as a powerful force for change in the world. She shares her own story of founding Kiva with little more than a laptop and a dream, and the stories and the lessons she has learned from those across the globe who are doing the most with the least. Praise for Clay Water Brick “Jessica Jackley didn’t wait for permission to change the world—she just did it. It turns out that you can too.”—Seth Godin, author of What to Do When It’s Your Turn “Fascinating . . . gripping . . . bursting with lessons . . . Jessica Jackley has written a remarkable book . . . so thoroughly well meaning and engagingly put it is too magnetic to put down.”—Financial Times “Clay Water Brick is a tremendously inspiring read. Jessica Jackley, the virtuoso co-founder of the revolutionary microlending platform Kiva, shares uplifting stories and compelling lessons on entrepreneurship, resilience, and character.”—Adam Grant, author of Give and Take “A blueprint for anyone who wants to make the world a better place and find fulfillment in the process, no matter how scarce their resources or how steep the challenge.”—Arianna Huffington “This book is inspirational. And honest and practical. . . . Well written, thoughtful: a selfless account of how to succeed by doing right and following your heart.”—Booklist

This groundbreaking book is the first to provide a critical overview of the relationship between contemporary ceramics and curatorial practice in museum culture. Ceramic objects form a major part of museum collections, with connections to anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines that engage with the cultural and social history of humankind. In recent years museums have provided the impetus for cutting-edge artistic practice, either as a response to particular collections, or as part of exhibitions. But the question of how museums have staged contemporary ceramics and how ceramic artists respond to museum collections has not been the subject of published research to date. This book examines how ceramic artists have, over the last decade, begun to animate museum collections in new ways, and reflects on the impact that these new initiatives have had in the broad context of visual culture. Ceramics in the Expanded Field is the culmination of a three-year AHRC funded project, and reflects its major findings. It brings together leading international voices in the field of ceramics, research undertaken throughout the project and papers delivered at the concluding conference. By examining the benefits and constraints of interventions and the dialogue between ceramics and museological practice, this book will bring focus to an area of museology that has not yet been theorized, and will contribute to policy debates and art practice.

On a bone-chilling New Year's Day, when all the mountain roads are slick with ice, Clay's mother, Anneth, insists on leaving her husband. She packs her things, and with three-year-old Clay in tow, they inch their way toward her hometown along the treacherous mountain roads. That journey ends in the death of Clay's mother. It's a day that comes to haunt her only son, who's left without a family and a history. This is the story of how Clay Sizemore, a coal miner in love with his town but unsure of his place within it, finds a family to call his own. And it's the story of the people who become part of the life he shapes: Aunt Easter, always filled with a sense of foreboding and bound to her faith above all; Uncle Paul, quietly producing quilt after quilt; Dreama, beautiful and flighty; Evangeline, the untameable daughter of a famous gospel singer; and Alma, the fiddler whose song wends its way into Clay's heart. Together, they all help Clay to fashion a quilt of a life from what treasured pieces are around him. Authentic and moving, Clay's Quilt is both the story of a young man's journey and of Appalachian people struggling to hold on to their heritage.

Originally published in 1939, this book contains an assessment of the historical evidence provided by ancient Babylonian cuneiform tablets. The text is accompanied by a number of photographs of the tablets, as well as of important archaeological sites and Babylonian artefacts. Chiera's enthusiasm for his subject is clear, as the text is accessibly written and contains many Babylonian legends and assesses their relationship to biblical texts. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Assyriology and the ancient Middle East.