Fresh from her heady success at retrieving the Punjat’s ruby for the Prince of Wales, Miss Abigail Patience Danforth and her entourage are speeding toward San Francisco in a private railroad car when their journey is interrupted by train robbers. They murder her new friend, and steal her beloved horse, Crosspatches, along with Marshal Bill Tilghman’s foundation sire—an Arabian, priceless as a monarch’s pearl. Far from the familiar boulevards of London and New York where she had schooled herself in the infant science of detection, Miss Danforth disdains the famous lawman’s old-fashioned, slow methods of tracking fugitives across the vast wilderness that was then the Oklahoma Territory and creates her own – her only clue, the killer’s love of chocolate.

The friend of a foreign prince, Lord Grayson is gifted with a beautiful bedmate for his stay at the exotic palace. He is uncertain how to handle the situation, but he certainly wants to help her and not offend his royal hosts, because if he seems displeased with her then it would not go well for the lovely Lady Celia. Raised in a privileged life of a sprawling mansion, servants, and adulation, Celia Davenport can’t believe she’s been abducted, and is being forced into sexual servitude. Luckily, Robert St. Claire is her salvation in the form of a virile lover who takes her virginity, but also steals her heart, as he negotiates her release and takes her home.

The story of a young boy who goes pearl diving with his father and discovers the treasures and dangers of the sea.

Born in Kuwait in 1926, into a distinguished Kuwaiti family of pearl merchants and seafarers, Saif Marzooq al- Shamlan describes the final generation of the pearling industry from 1900 to the slump of the 1930s, when the development of the Japanese cultured pearl led to economic disaster for the people of the Gulf.

Qatar is a country of spectacular contrasts: from pearl fishing, its main industry until the 1930s, to gas and oil, which generate immense wealth today; to famously being at the center of both triumph and controversy in recent years for hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Almost a lifetime since he grew up in Qatar, Michael Quentin Morton writes about the country’s colorful past and its astonishing present. The book is filled with stories about the people of this land: the tribes and the travelers, the seafarers and slaves—as much a part of Qatar’s history as its rulers and their wealth. The opaque Arabian world guards its secrets well, but Masters of the Pearl penetrates the veil to shed light on a country that until now has defied explanation.

Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula provides a pioneering overview of folk and traditional urban music, along with dance and rituals, of Saudi Arabia and the Upper Gulf States of Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. The nineteen chapters introduce variegated regions and subcultures and their rich and dynamic musical arts, many of which heretofore have been unknown beyond local communities. The book contains insightful descriptions of genres, instruments, poetry, and performance practices of the desert heartland (Najd), the Arabian/Persian Gulf shores, the great western cities including Makkah and Medinah, the southwestern mountains, and the hot Red Sea coast. Musical customs of distinctive groups such as Bedouin, seafarers, and regional women are explored. The book is packaged with downloadable resources and almost 200 images including a full color photo essay, numerous music transcriptions, a glossary with over 400 specialized terms, and original Arabic script alongside key words to assist with further research. This book provides a much-needed introduction and organizational structure for the diverse and complex musical arts of the region.

A collection of 30 traditional Syrian and Lebanese folktales infused with new life by Lebanese women, collected by Najla Khoury. While civil war raged in Lebanon, Najla Khoury traveled with a theater troupe, putting on shows in marginal areas where electricity was a luxury, in air raid shelters, Palestinian refugee camps, and isolated villages. Their plays were largely based on oral tales, and she combed the country in search of stories. Many years later, she chose one hundred stories from among the most popular and published them in Arabic in 2014, exactly as she received them, from the mouths of the storytellers who told them as they had heard them when they were children from their parents and grandparents. Out of the hundred stories published in Arabic, Inea Bushnaq and Najla Khoury chose thirty for this book.