Around the World in 80 Days Mini Reading Challenge: Middle East

A “provocative and seductive debut” of desire and doubleness that follows the life of a young Palestinian American woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities as she endeavors to lead an authentic life

On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12–year–old Palestinian–American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter.

A moving YA debut about a girl who grapples with questions of her Jewish identity, mental health struggles, and sexuality while on a temple exchange trip through Israel.

When a new relationship gets complicated in the face of her own anxiety-about her future, her sexual and romantic identity, and her place within the Jewish diaspora-Tally must grapple not only with the past, but also with what life will be like when they get back home.

What Makes An Ice Queen?

Neve Blackthorne, heads the most successful Studio in Hollywood. Powerful and aloof, she’s ruthless, yet irresistible. Above all, is her unquenchable survival instinct.

There’s no chink in her untouchable armor, but when the lights go out and the cameras stop rolling, what becomes of an Ice Queen whose heart is ruled by love and fear?

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Love battles duty as two hearts collide in a world of sacrifice.

Jo fights for her country every day, but will she fight the battle for Toni’s heart?

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When a rescue mission goes bad, can they survive against the odds?

Flick Colonna finds herself back on active duty, but what should be a simple rescue mission goes terribly wrong. Flick must call on all her instincts and skills to save them all.

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An Indiana Jones style adventure that takes Lilith, the first woman, across the globe hunting for a mysterious relic.

Lilith’s been around since the dawn of man and has seen it all. She searches for a relic that will finally end her immortal existence and escape humanity’s cruelty. Diana Reed agrees to help, even though the result will break her heart.

Will Claire and Nic's love survive another deployment?

Sometimes the battlefield follows you home and Nic discovers that her battle is just beginning. Claire has watched her wife be deployed, but has never experienced the violence herself until one fateful day when it follows Nic home.

THEY is a groundbreaking work that will prove to be lifesaving for those in the LGBT community and enlightening and liberating to others.

Mason reimagines the life of Tamar from the book of Genesis as she takes readers on a stunning journey, vividly evoking the world of Old Testament women and intersex individuals. Content and happily barren, Tamar lives as a hermit in the desert with her pet camel.

How far would you go to protect the one you love?

After ten months in their cozy bomb shelter, Em and Lise emerge to a world where the vegetation is surprisingly unaffected. Should they band together with other survivors or try to make it on their own? There are others in this unknown world, but are they friend or foe?

Funny, charming, and heartbreaking, A Map of Home is the kind of book Tristram Shandy or Huck Finn would have narrated had they been born Egyptian-Palestinian and female in the 1970s.

Nidali, the rebellious daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, narrates the story of her childhood in Kuwait, her teenage years in Egypt (to where she and her family fled the 1990 Iraqi invasion), and her family’s last flight to Texas. Nidali mixes humor with a sharp, loving portrait of an eccentric middle-class family, and this perspective keeps her buoyant through the hardships she encounters: the humiliation of going through a checkpoint on a visit to her father’s home in the West Bank; the fights with her father, who wants her to become a famous professor and stay away from boys; the end of her childhood as Iraq invades Kuwait on her thirteenth birthday; and the scare she gives her family when she runs away from home.

This sweeping novel follows childhood sweethearts Rona and Shelli as they come of age and face impossible choices.

Passion and heartbreak come alive in this lyrical exploration of love, friendship, and family in Israel.

A Small Country about to Vanish is Rona and Shelli’s love-hate relationship with an ancient piano, each other and their difficult homeland – a country physically too small and politically too volatile to maintain its own existence.

Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate and goes deeper than friendship.

Moving between Middle Eastern high society and London’s West End, this story explores the clashes between East and West, love and marriage, and convention and individuality creating a humorous and tender tale of unexpected love.

Valerie Foret—archeologist and heir to a terrifying task —returns in a powerful desert adventure set in Egypt and Jerusalem, in both modern and medieval times.

On the eve of the release of Valerie Foret’s great chronicle, Valerie learns that hers is not the 100th generation of the prophecy at all. In grappling with a mysterious and lethal opponent, Valerie witnesses the horrors of the first Crusade in which her ancestors, both innocent and malevolent, have carried out a drama identical to her own. The weapon that succeeded then and now threatens once again is the terrible power of faith. Will the outcome be the same? In the course of fleeing the forces of violent fundamentalism, Valerie, a westerner, and Najya Khoury, an AraIsraeli, fall in love and find out just how dangerous it is to challenge accepted ‘truth.

It should have been simple, but life has a way of getting complicated.

When correspondent Tate McKenna broke her own rules and took navy pilot Lieutenant Commander Evan Kane home from an embassy dinner in Bahrain, she knew all the reasons why it wouldn’t work. Long, unpredictable work hours. Extended absences. The dangers inherent in their jobs. Yet after being with Evan once, it was inconceivable she wouldn’t be with her again.

When they finally have a chance to get things right, danger follows them home from Afghanistan. Now, Tate and Evan must stand together in a show of force or risk losing everything—including their lives.