At night, in Huda's fragrant garden, a breeze sweeps in from the desert encircling Baghdad, rustling the leaves of her apricot trees and carrying warning of visitors at her gate. Huda, a secretary at the Australian embassy, lives in fear of the mukhabarat'the secret police who watch and listen for any scrap of information that can be used against America and its allies. They have ordered her to befriend Ally Wilson, the deputy ambassador's wife. Huda...

Flighty but good-hearted Victoria Jone's passion for a glamorous life leads her to Baghdad and unexpected involvement in international espionage. She strikes gold in Edward, a handsome and mysterious traveler whom she's vowed to follow to the ends of the earth. Yet no whirlwind affair can prepare Victoria for what unfolds once she lands in Baghdad. Not a day in Edward's shadow, and she hears whispered warnings of danger and witnesses the murder of...

Helen is a young Yazidi woman, living with her family in a mountain village in Sinjar, northern Iraq. One day she finds a local bird caught in a trap, and frees it, just as the trapper, Elias, returns. At first angry, he soon sees the error of his ways and vows never to keep a bird captive again. Helen and Elias fall deeply in love, marry and start a family in Sinjar. The village has seemed to stand apart from time, protected by the mountains and...

Baghdad, 1991. In the midst of the first Gulf War, a young Iraqi girl huddles with her neighbours in an air raid shelter. There, she meets Nadia. The two girls quickly become best friends and together they imagine a world not torn apart by civil war, sharing their dreams, their hopes and their desires, and their first loves. But as they grow older and the bombs continue to fall, the international sanctions bite and friends begin to flee the country,...

Saddam Hussein develops a plan to steal a part of U.S. history and then destroy that symbol in front of the world's media.

Naples, 1750. Three men with swords burst into the palazzo of a marquis in search of a secret. Accused of being an imposter, the false marquis escapes over the rooftops. Baghdad, 2003. An army unit on a routine mission discovers a state-of-the-art lab where dozens have died in gruesome experiments. The scientist escapes, leaving a puzzling clue behind: a symbol of a snake feeding on its own tail. As the power of the symbol is revealed, one unsuspecting...

"The US military is preparing to withdraw from Iraq, and newly-minted lieutenant Jack Porter struggles to accept how it's happening--through alliances with warlords who have Arab and American blood on their hands. Day after day, Jack tries to assert his leadership in the sweltering, dreary atmosphere of Ashuriyah. But his world is disrupted by the arrival of veteran Sergeant Daniel Chambers, whose aggressive style threatens to undermine the fragile...

Scion Aviation International has been hired by the Pentagon to take over aerial patrols in northern Iraq. As the U.S. military begins to downsize its presence there, Kevin Martindale and Patrick McLanahan take an assignment in northern Iraq. During the withdrawal of U.S. troops they find themselves a solitary force in an unexpected clash between Kurdish nationalists and Turkish invaders. Retired Air Force Lieutenant-General Patrick McLanahan makes...

"In The Children of this Madness, Gemini Wahhaj pens a complex tale of modern Bengalis, one that illuminates the recent histories not only of Bangladesh, but America and Iraq. Told in multiple voices over successive eras, this is the story of Nasir Uddin and his daughter Beena, and the intersection of their distant, vastly different lives. As the US war in Iraq plays out a world away, and Beena struggles to belong to Houston's tony Bengali American...