Talley & O’Connor’s clinical examination

From the no. 1 bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, the book that readers everywhere have been waiting for: his first novel in six years. So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one… Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pad live with their father and step-mother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Adbullah, Pad, as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named, is everything. More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her, even trading his only pair of shoes for a feather for her treasured collection. Each night they sleep together in their cot, their skulls touching, their limbs tangled. One day the siblings journey across the desert to Kabul with their father. Pad and Abdullah have no sense of the fate that awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart; sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand. Crossing generations and continents, moving from Kabul, to Paris, to San Francisco, to the Greek island of Tinos, with profound wisdom, depth, insight and compassion, Khaled Hosseini writes about the bonds that define us and shape our lives, the ways that we help our loved ones in need, how the choices we make resonate through history, and how we are often surprised by the people closest to us.

In this latest collection of adventures, P. J. O’Rourke casts his mordant eye on America’s recent foreign policy forays. He first travels to Kosovo where he meets KLA veterans, Albanian refugees and peacekeepers, and confronts the paradox of ‘the war that war-haters love to love’. He visits Egypt, Israel and Kuwait, where he witnesses citizens enjoying their newfound freedoms – namely, to shop, to eat and to sit around a lot. Following 11 September, O’Rourke examines the far-reaching changes in the US, from the absurd hassles of airport security to the dangers of anthrax. In Iraq, he witnesses both the beginning and the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom and takes a tour of a presidential palace, concluding that the war was justified for at least one reason: criminal interior decorating.

Peace Kills is an eye-opening look at a world much changed since O’Rourke wrote his bestselling Give War A Chance – a book in which he presciently declared that the most troubling aspect of war is sometimes peace itself.

In 2000, Daniel Suelo left his life savings-all thirty dollars of it-in a phone booth. He has lived without money-and with a newfound sense of freedom and security-ever since. The Man Who Quit Money is an account of how one man learned to live, sanely and happily, without earning, receiving, or spending a single cent. Suelo doesn’t pay taxes, or accept food stamps or welfare. He lives in caves in the Utah canyonlands, forages wild foods and gourmet discards. He no longer even carries an I.D. Yet he manages to amply fulfill not only the basic human needs-for shelter, food, and warmth-but, to an enviable degree, the universal desires for companionship, purpose, and spiritual engagement. In retracing the surprising path and guiding philosophy that led Suelo into this way of life, Sundeen raises provocative and riveting questions about the decisions we all make, by default or by design, about how we live-and how we might live better.