In 859, Fatima Al-Fihri, the daughter of a rich merchant, decided to build a mosque and school. “I began as a small corner for books, where Fatima spent hours reading, thinking, and dreaming.” Over time, the library explains that it “grew into a grand building.” The library, which served both Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and Al-Qarawiyyin University, was a tranquil space within bustling Fez. Visitors were greeted by a quiet courtyard filled with fountains and lanterns. A special room secured by copper doors with four locks protected its treasures: “an ancient Quran written on camel-leather pages, a p ..read more

This book of quotations includes chapters on topics such as “War & Peace,” “Science & Technology,” and “Education.” Each chapter includes musings by a wide range of famous figures, from Oprah Winfrey to Socrates to Joseph Conrad. The topic of “Government, Politics & Social Justice” includes such varied sources as Benjamin Franklin (“Pardoning the bad is injuring the good”) and Margaret Thatcher (“When people are free to choose, they choose freedom”). “Creativity, Innovation & Curiosity” quotes filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille (“Creativity is a drug I cannot live without”) and noveli ..read more

“The question of whether God exists” is as old as humanity itself, and has been the driving query asked by philosophers for more than two millennia. A self-described philosophical “hobbyist” who’s read and studied the canon of philosophy’s greatest minds for nearly 30 years, Payne approaches the question of God’s existence in a “logical, rational way.” The book begins with an epistemological survey of “What Can Be Known,” ultimately concluding that “we cannot prove God by experience (direct awareness) or science (a form of empiricism).” Subsequent chapters examine what the author calls the “B ..read more

Norie Lynch has a passion for art and feels a close bond with Johanna, her maternal grandmother. After Gram’s death, Norie’s controlling father is killed in a car accident that also destroys a precious artist’s box that belonged to Gram and was brought to Canada when the family left Ireland generations ago. Now, Norie can’t face doing art. She and her mother, Alice, go stay with Alice’s friend Dahlia and her family in rural Burren Bay on Manitoulin Island. There, Norie slowly connects with emotionally distant Alice. She also gradually forms bonds with Dahlia’s family—daughter Wil (also 15) an ..read more

Stewart opens with a traumatic childhood story of witnessing his father fall from a balcony in an alcohol-fueled stupor. Upon later reflection, the author, who is Black, realized that his father’s anger and substance abuse stemmed not from fundamental flaws in his character but were, instead, “a reflection of the social outcomes resulting from the constraints, conditions, and inequities” imposed on Black and other marginalized people, including poor white men. During service in the military, his father had been passed over for a promotion by a white man whom he had trained, and when he questi ..read more

The author, who established himself as a maker of intricate puzzles with his first novel, The Quincunx (1989), provides another in this wartime tale of a family’s efforts to protect a young girl from a vicious enemy. This is not a portrait of World War II Europe or a fictionalized account of Anne Frank’s life. Palliser is interested less in external details than in the situation’s psychological aspect, exploring the pressures building inside an ordinary family plunged into an extraordinary situation. The narrator, an unnamed bookkeeper in an unnamed European city, describes the invasion of hi ..read more

In her candid memoir, Rodden vividly recalls a harrowing monthlong hostage situation in Kyrgyzstan in 2000, when she was just 20. The author effectively interweaves the details of the kidnapping into her descriptions of her early life and the post-ordeal aftermath years. A professional at 18, Rodden writes proudly of embracing her youthful obsession with climbing, chronicling her vigorous training and achievement of accolades for her ever-challenging rock climbing exploits. Early in her career, she attracted the attention of pioneer climbers who introduced her to more demanding free-climbing ..read more

Born in the Russian-controlled Pale of Settlement to prosperous religious Jews, Weizmann (1874-1952) studied chemistry in Berlin and styled himself a thoroughly Westernized Russian Jewish intellectual, and he was swept up in the nationalist Jewish movement galvanized by Theodor Herzl at the turn of the century. In 1904, he moved to Manchester to work in a chemistry laboratory. Immersed in English Zionist circles, he befriended Conservative Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour, and Weizmann persuaded him about the passion Jews felt for settling in Palestine, as well as founding the Hebrew Unive ..read more

The story opens with “Dear Jaan,” the first line of a letter from 1972 that’s a beckoning to romance—a romance that rumor says ended in flames in Hartceller University’s Davidson Tower. Cut to the present day: Jessie Ahuja is at Hartceller, studying hard to become an engineer. She refuses to be distracted by the extremely rich and attractive Ravi Kumar, who insists on walking her home and battling over study room reservations. Jessie’s worked hard to get good grades and stay steadfastly committed to her career track; to her, tech industry heir Ravi is the ultimate nepo baby. Fate, however, ha ..read more

This latest entry in the author’s Madison Knight series characteristically begins with a crime—in this case, it’s the horrific rape and murder of teenage Emily Kane at a high school senior-class beach party by someone she knew (“As her brain screamed for oxygen, the spinning in her head began to slow. This is how I die!”). Fast-forward 24 years to the newly discovered corpse of Kane’s former classmate, 41-year-old Dylan Graham, found in his home next to a handwritten suicide note, computer printouts about Kane’s murder, and an accusatory diary entry pointing to classmate Troy Matthews as ..read more