WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival 2014
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New and Recently Released!
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| The house on Carnaval Street by Deborah Rodriguez with Ellen KayeAfter spending five years in Afghanistan and writing the bestselling The Kabul Beauty School based on her experiences, American hairdresser/author Deborah Rodriguez learned that her life and that of her 26-year-old son were in imminent danger, so they packed and left Kabul in a matter of hours. First, she stayed in California, where she suffered side effects from PTSD and became a "self-imposed prisoner." A cruise to Mexico helped her find her way, and settling in the seaside village of Mazatlan, she opened a beauty shop and started Project Mariposa to help local girls attend beauty school. In this adopted home, where she hears firecrackers instead of bullets, she creates another loving family from locals and expats but never forgets her friends in Afghanistan. Fans of her first book who'd like a more personal look at Rodriguez's life will relish her inspiring latest work. |
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Eat Istanbul: a journey to the heart of Turkish cuisine
by Andy Harris
In this breathtaking new book, intrepid food and travel writer Andy Harris and photographer David Loftus reveal the wonderful tastes and exotic allure of Istanbul, one of the world's most fascinating cities. Part cookbook, part travelogue, they meet the characters behind the intriguing food of the city.
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Rebels: my life behind enemy lines with warlords, fanatics and not-so-friendly fire
by Aris Roussinos
For the last three years, award-winning journalist Aris Roussinos embedded himself with rebel groups in the Libyan uprising, the brutal conflict in the South Sudan, and the civil war in Syria, among others. Part travelogue from the world's most dangerous hotspots, part eyewitness testimony to recent, bloody history, this is the uncensored, unflinching account of the rebel armies and those who fill their ranks.
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Down and out in Patagonia, Kamchatka, and Timbuktu: Greg Frazier's round and round and round the world motorcycle journey
by Gregory W. Frazier
A little over 40 years ago, a man named Gregory W. Frazier got on his motorcycle, went for a ride, and never returned. He's still out there, circumnavigating the globe: exploring the jungles of Asia in the winter, trout fishing in Alaska in the summer, and covering all points in between during the rest of the year. He's been shot at by rebels, jailed by unfriendly authorities, bitten by snakes, run over by Pamplona bulls, and smitten by a product of Adam's rib. He's circled the globe five times and has covered well over one million miles (and counting).
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Land of the turquoise mountains: journeys across Iran
by Cyrus Massoudi
Land of the Turquoise Mountains reveals a world beyond the propaganda-driven, media-fuelled image of fractious, flag-burning fundamentalism and provides a compelling glimpse both into the heart of a deeply misunderstood nation and into what it is to seek out and discover one's heritage.
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Under an African Sky: a journey to Africa's climate frontline
by Peter Hudson
The Sahel - the 'shore' of the Sahara - is where cultures, customs and climates meet, merge and clash. Through the numerous characters we meet and from the obviously deep and sympathetic nature of the relationship the author has with the local people we learn of the realities of life in one of the harshest, most marginalised, and yet quietly inspiring corners of the world. The author understands not just the culture and complex social dealings but also how economics and geo-political forces can profoundly affect the lives of individuals in a remote community.
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The Emperor far away: travels at the edge of China
by David Eimer
The Beijing correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph describes his trip to the remotest parts of the country far away from the capital, including the Islamic area of Xinjiang province, the forbidden zone of Tibet and Route 219, which borders India.
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Families Moving to a New Country
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"The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped." ~ from Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon
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| Across many mountains: three daughters of Tibet by Yangzom BrauenSometimes when families move from one country to another, it's to save their lives. Part of this multi-generational tale takes place during the winter of 1959, when the Chinese persecution of Tibetans worsened. Kunsang, a Buddhist nun, and her husband, a Buddhist monk, fled Tibet just as the Dalai Lama had, hoping to make it to India. Their six-year-old and four-year-old daughters went with them on the dangerous journey through the snow-covered Himalayan mountains and on to a refugee camp. Kunsang and one daughter, Sonam, survived, and Sonam eventually met and married Martin Brauen, a Swiss student of Buddhism, and moved to Switzerland, where author Yangzom was born. In this "absorbing, multilayered account" (Kirkus Reviews) of her family, Brauen paints a vivid portrait of her family's many journeys and details cross-cultural influences in the modern history of Tibet. |
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| The foremost good fortune: a memoir by Susan ConleyFor years, the only "big C" in the Conley family's life was China -- husband Tony often talked of the country he'd backpacked through and fallen in love with; he'd even learned Mandarin. Eventually, he took a job there, and he and his young American family -- wife Susan, six-year-old Thorne, and four-year-old Aiden -- moved to Beijing. But after being there just long enough to start to feel comfortable in their strange new world, Susan found a lump in her breast. Recounting her navigation of daily life, her two sons' acclimation to a new school, and everyone's adjustment to a life that includes cancer, this memoir is "beautifully written and insightful on many levels" (Booklist). |
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Packing up: further adventures of a trailing spouse
by Brigid Keenan
Brigid Keenan was a successful young London fashion journalist when she fell in love with a diplomat and left behind the gilt chairs of the Paris salons for a large chicken shed in Nepal. She is now in Kazakhstan, where AW, her husband, contracts Lyme disease from a tick, the local delicacy is horse meat sausage and Brigid's visit to a market leads to a full-scale riot from which she requires a police escort. Then, as the prospect of retirement looms, Brigid finds herself on the cusp of a whole new world: shuttling between London, Brussels and their last posting in Azerbaijan, navigating her daughters' weddings while coping with a cancer diagnosis, and getting a crash course in grand-motherhood as she helps organise a literature festival in Palestine. Along the way, dauntless and wildly funny as ever, Brigid learns that packing up doesn't mean packing in as she discovers that retiring and moving back home could just be her biggest challenge yet.
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| Running away to home: our family's journey to Croatia... by Jennifer WilsonUnhappy with what their young family's life had become ("We worked. We drove the kids around. We shopped."), Iowa travel writer Jennifer Wilson and her architect husband consider moving to Mrkopalj, her ancestral Croatian mountain village, for a year. She's looking for home, but what she discovers on a fact-finding trip -- lots of alcohol and wild boars -- doesn't endear the town to her. Still, her family makes the move, and they experience a simpler, more primitive life, living according to local customs while reconnecting with extended family and each other. This lighthearted yet meditative look at one family's life-changing experience provides armchair travellers with a "fun-filled, revealing peek into the Croatian countryside" (Booklist). |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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