A Love Triangle in Turkey

Inci Atrek ’10
Holiday Country
Flatiron Books
272 pages, $28.99

In this debut novel set in a Turkish seaside town, 19-year-old Californian Ada has spent every summer with her mother and grandmother at the family villa. When a mysterious man from her mother’s past comes to town, Ada can’t help but imagine a different future for her mother—one that promises a return to home, to love, to happiness. But while playing matchmaker, Ada has to come to terms with her own intensifying attraction to the stranger.

Rescue Mission

Pashtana Durrani and Tamara Bralo
Last to Eat, Last to Learn: My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women
Kensington Publishing
212 pages, $28.00

Pashtana Durrani, international scholar in residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women, has led global efforts to bring education to the women and girls of Afghanistan. Raised in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan, Durrani returned to her homeland to found the nonprofit LEARN Afghanistan, a grassroots organization established to safely and securely provide education to girls through a distributed network of tablet computers using an offline platform. This book tells the story of that effort, which is ongoing despite the Taliban takeover.

Identity Poetics

Sebastian Merrill ’11
GHOST :: SEEDS
TRP: The University Press of SHSU
78 pages, $21.95

Winner of the prestigious X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize from Texas Review Press, this volume reimagines the story of Persephone in the Underworld. Set on a remote island off the Maine coast, GHOST :: SEEDS incorporates elements of magical realism and myth. The central tension of the work is a dialogue between a transmasculine speaker and a figure that he conceptualizes as his ghost—the “girl-ghost” —of the self that he left behind to become the person he is today.

Journey Into the Deep

Jordan Namerow ’05
Like the Sea and the Sky: A Mysterious Mollusk and Its Magical Blue Ink
Brandylane
32 pages, $24.95

This children’s book is a story of sea creatures, Jewish tradition, and the importance of staying curious about the mysteries of the Earth. Zinni, age 7, loves learning about the ocean and its myriad creatures. Of all the fascinating sea creatures, her favorites are mollusks, like squids and sea snails. When Zinni’s mother, a rabbi, tells her the story of a mysterious ancient mollusk whose vivid blue ink is sacred to the Jewish people, Zinni is determined to find it.