How does a Middle Eastern community create a modern image through its expression of heritage and authenticity? In Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria, Jonathan H. Shannon investigates expressions of authenticity in Syria's musical culture, which is particularly known for embracing and preserving the Arab musical tradition, and which has seldom been researched in depth by Western scholars. Music plays a key role in the process of self-imaging by virtue of its ...

Why do people struggling with poverty often make decisions that seem to perpetuate their situation? The answer lies in the scarcity mindset – the cognitive burden that limits a person's ability to focus on long-term goals when their immediate needs are not being met. This book explores the science of cognitive load and provides insights into the behavior of individuals facing resource scarcity. The author reveals the "hidden mechanics" of how the scarcity mindset depletes our cognitive res...

A superb conspiracy thriller set in Venice, from a Sunday Times bestseller.********They found the woman's body on the steps of a church, washed up by Venice's winter tides. A tattoo on her wrist matched graffiti in an abandoned hospital, not used since the Second World War.It's Captain Kat Tapo's first murder case, and she'll do anything to get to the truth. But as the hunt for the killer intensifies, she discovers secrets from Italy's dark wartime past that...

Wiltshire is one of the best counties in Britain for architectural fancy, for the county’s residents have expressed their passion for building in a plethora of styles including Gothic, Rustic, classical, Monumental, Chinese, Indian, Italianate and Japanese. We can see their ingenuity and eccentricity in an equally wide variety of building types, including shell houses, grottoes, pagodas, towers, temples, summer houses, tea houses, gazebos, belvederes, lodges, gatehouses, pavilions, arches,...

Performing al-Andalus explores three musical cultures that claim a connection to the music of medieval Iberia, the Islamic kingdom of al-Andalus, known for its complex mix of Arab, North African, Christian, and Jewish influences. Jonathan Holt Shannon shows that the idea of a shared Andalusian heritage animates performers and aficionados in modern-day Syria, Morocco, and Spain, but with varying and sometimes contradictory meanings in different social and political contexts. As he traces th...

The substantially revised and updated third edition of Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East focuses on the experiences of ordinary men, women, and children from the region. Readers will gain a grassroots appreciation of Middle East life, culture, and society that recognizes the impact of wars and uprisings as well as changes to Islamic practice due to advances in technology. The book also explores the influence of social media on politics and labor relations and the changing status of w...

A superb conspiracy thriller set in Venice, from a Sunday Times bestseller.********The girl in the feathered mask was just another Carnival reveller, dancing in the streets at midnight, anonymous in the Venice crowds. So nobody noticed when she was bundled into a van and driven high into the hills. It was several hours later that she was finally reported missing.Captain Kat Tapo, of the Venice police, is considered too headstrong to lead a high-profile kidna...

The Abduction has begun…The teenage daughter of a US soldier disappeared in Venice last night. Now clues are appearing on anonymous website Carnivia.com - and the police are always one step behind. Kat Tapo of the Venice Carabinieri and US intelligence analyst Holly Boland are working together to find the girl, but the race to save her will uncover a conspiracy that powerful men will kill to keep hidden.

Already an international hit, a sly, sizzling mystery set in the Italian Alps, the first in a sensational crime series.The dark flanks of the Alps tower over everything. Wind whistles through the fir trees. An expanse of ice and snow with no end in sight. A growing stain. A mess of flesh and blood. A corpse buried six inches under the snow.Enter Rocco Schiavone, Deputy Police Chief and a man who has more beautiful women in his bed than sensible shoes under it. He’s stuck in...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Malice of Waves by Mark Douglas-Home, read by David Monteath.Investigator Cal McGill uses his knowledge of tides, winds and currents to solve mysteries no-one else can.Five years ago, fourteen-year-old Max Wheeler disappeared from a remote Scottish island. None of the six police and private investigations since have shed any light on what happened.Unable to let go, Max's family ...

One wet November in Florence a young widow of an eminent Jewish architect comes to visit Sandro Cellini, a disgraced ex-policeman and budding private detective, to ask him to investigate her husband's suicide. But the case abruptly turns into something grimmer and more urgent than he could have imagined...

David Hewson's The Killing 3 is the novelization of the third series of the hit Danish crime drama, The Killing.Detective Inspector for homicide, Sarah Lund, is contacted by old flame Mathias Borch from National Intelligence. Borch fears that what first appeared to be a random killing at the docks is the beginning of an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Troels Hartmann. The murder draws attention towards the shipping and oil giant, Zeeland, run by billionair...