The hand of friendship can span a thousand miles...

A brilliant, fearless journalist who knows huge areas of the Islamic world intimately, Burke now turns to the wider question of how we are to get to grips with radical Islam and what it really means. Burke has travelled all over the great arc of Islamic land, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, and he uses this in his new book to great effect to show how various and completely unmonolithic Islam really is and how the sort of standard Western generalizations about it are both stupid and dangerous.

October 6, 1879. The roar of guns and the shout of men reached a heightened pitch as the Highlanders and Gurkhas crested the ridgeline and attacked the Afghani trenches. Khaki and green uniforms mixed with the scarlet of the Afghans as the battle sea-sawed for a few minutes. Then the line of scarlet-clad Afghani troops wavered and broke. British Army lieutenant Robert Burton watched as thousands of Afghani troops fled in headlong retreat. The British had seized the first line. The Road to Kandahar is an historical fiction novel about a forgotten period of history when Britain and Russia fought the very first Cold War in the heart of Asia. In this book, a British political officer, Robert Burton, and his friends, Richard Leary and Ali Masheed, fight a battle of wits against a cunning Russian political officer, Count Nikolai Kuragin. Against a backdrop of the high passes and deserts of Afghanistan, Burton, Leary and Ali must stop a potential Russian invasion during the Second Afghan War (1878-80) and fight against treachery and injustice within their own ranks.

“I wish with all my heart that you were in school. I love my country, Daughter, but here we have been robbed of our most precious gifts: thought and imagination. Only in an atmosphere of peace and security can artists, poets, and writers flourish. Without our artists and storytellers, we have no history, and without history our future is unmoored—we drift. It is art, never war, that carries culture forward.”

One of the most critical battles of the Afghan War is now revealed as never before. Lions of Kandahar is an inside account from the unique perspective of an active-duty U.S. Army Special Forces commander. As then-Captain Rusty Bradley he began his third tour of duty in southern Afghanistan in 2006, the Taliban were poised to reclaim Kandahar Province, their strategically vital onetime capital. To stop them, the NATO coalition launched Operation Medusa, the largest offensive in its history. This is the story of a two-week battle that raged in scorching heat over a territory the size of Rhode Island.--From publisher description.

A daring reporter's quest through the "living history" of Islam amid the War on Terrorism. In 1991, a British university student spent his summer break fighting alongside Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq. Now a prize-winning reporter and author of a book on al Qaeda, Jason Burke travels from the Sahara to the Himalayas and meets with refugees, mujahideen, and government ministers in a probing search to understand Islam, and Islamic radicalism, in the context of the "War on Terrorism." Praised by London's Daily Mail as "intensely personal and accessible," On the Road to Kandahar is the gripping story of a search for answers to some of the most urgent questions of our time: What drives Islamic fundamentalism, and how should the West respond? Are we so fundamentally different that we can't coexist? Although much of his book concerns war and violence, Burke reaches the optimistic conclusion that extremist violence alienates its populations and so is doomed to fail and wither away.

A haunting story of family ties and wartime secrets. Three generations of the Tremain family have occupied the idyllic cliffside cottage on the Cornish coast. There's Fred, the country doctor who built this house for his wife, Martha; their daughter Anna, an esteemed lawyer, and son Barnaby, a vicar to the local parish; and beloved granddaughter Lucy, who, on the cusp of adulthood, is faced with the prospect of leaving home—and her family history—forever. But the past is never far behind, and before long Lucy discovers that the Tremain estate also harbors tragic lies and dangerous truths. When she finds a cache of long-hidden documents, the family will be forced to confront upheavals caused by wartime secrets and domestic disputes—and unlock the door to new beginnings, and new loves. Set in Cornwall, London, and Warsaw, Sea Music is a sonorous, transcendent journey that no reader will soon forget.