My name is not Omar Nasiri—or at least that is not the name my parents gave me. It is the name I am using to write this book, but it is only one of a long line of names I have used over the course of my life. Or perhaps I should say my lives—as a son, a brother, a student, a gun-runner, a mujahid, a secret agent, a civilian, a husband, and now an author…
Between 1994 and 2000, Omar Nasiri worked as a secret agent for Europe’s top foreign intelligence services. From the netherworld of Islamist cells in Belgium to the training camps of Afghanistan to the radical mosques of London,
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Broken Colors follows the life of painter Sophie Marks. Brushed with moments of passion, heartbreak, and longing, Sophie’s journey takes her from World War II England to post-war Paris, to the Italian countryside, the American Southwest, and back to England where she comes face to face with hidden memories.
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“I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret.”
For young Peony, betrothed to a suitor she has never met, these lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, amid the scent of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera, a live spectacle few females have ever seen. Like the heroine in the drama, Peony is the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family, trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage.
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First published in 1933, this is the extraordinary story of a truly remarkable American life, that of James Weldon Johnson—a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance who triumphed over institutionalized racism to become a celebrated educator, lawyer, diplomat, editor, novelist, poet, and reformer. Johnson illustrates through his multiple careers the full contexts of the black struggle and the importance to produce great literature and art, to advance the placement of African-Americans in America.
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Luncheon of the Boating Party, the novel and the painting, depicts the summer of 1880, an exuberant postwar time when social constraints were loosening, Paris was healing, and Parisians were bursting with a desire for pleasure. The fourteen painted figures on the terrace overlooking the Seine enjoying this moment of la vie moderne are Renoir’s very real friends, whose lives unfold and connect during the course of the making of the painting. Seven of the models are viewpoint characters who reveal in their own voices the events of their lives during the weeks in between painting sessions.
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A fire destroys a New York City rare bookstore—and reveals clues to a treasure worth killing for. . . . A disgraced scholar is found tortured to death. . . . And those pursuing the most valuable literary find in history are about to cross from the harmless mundane into inescapable nightmare.
From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Tropic of Night comes a breathtaking thriller that twists, shocks, and surprises at every turn as it crisscrosses centuries, from the glaring violence of today into the dark shadows of truth and lies surrounding the greatest writer the world has ever known.
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