Arabian Sands is Wilfred Thesiger's record of his extraordinary journey through the parched "Empty Quarter" of Arabia. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Thesiger was repulsed by the softness and rigidity of Western life-"the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets." In the spirit of T. E. Lawrence, he set out to explore the deserts of Arabia, traveling among peoples who had never seen a European and considered it their duty to kill Christian infidels. His now-classic account is invaluable to understanding the modern Middle East.
Seth Borders has one of the world's highest IQs. Now he's suddenly struck by an incredible power, the ability to see multiple potential futures. Then Seth stumbles upon Miriam, a beautiful Saudi Arabian princess who has fled her veiled existence to escape a forced marriage. Cultures collide as Seth and Miriam are thrown together and forced to run from forces determined to kidnap or kill Miriam. An intoxicating tale set amidst the shifting sands of the Middle East and the back roads of America, Blink engages issues as ancient as the earth itself . . . and as current as today's headlines.
A prequel of sorts to Sands's paranormal comedy, Single White Vampire, this lightweight romantic romp shoots for the easy laugh and often misses. The allure of vampires lies in their strength and seeming invulnerability, but Etienne Argeneau, this book's bloodsucking hero, is curiously incompetent when it comes to dispatching a crazed mortal named Pudge who's intent on lopping his head off. Twice, Pudge manages to injure Etienne to the point where he ends up in the morgue under coroner Rachel Garrett's care.
No white man would have noticed the small detail in the background of a police photograph of an bandoned car, but the message he read there told Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte plainly that the mysterious disappearance of Luke Marks near Windee Station was anything but accidental. To the infallible Bony, small, almost unimportant things were a tremendous help in this case: the ants out in the scrub country moving stones to warm the eggs in their nest showed him a cut sapphire buried in the earth; in a place where silver would not occur naturally he found a small disc of silver plate; and then a boot nail came to light where he had hoped it would be.
