The Night Counter: A Novel by Alia Yunis
Fatima is the 80-some year old matriarch of an extensive Arab American family.  After divorcing her husband of 30 years, she moves in with her struggling actor grandson who lives in L.A. Every night the legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of "One Thousand and One Nights", Scheherazade visits her and asks her to tell her one story of her past. We meet Fatima on the 992 day, with only 9 days left. As time is running out she struggles to tie the loose ends of her life: find a wife for her openly gay grandson, teach her pregnant great granddaughter Arabic, decide who’s going to inherit her house in Lebanon. Fatima’s stories shift between the U.S and Lebanon weaving four generations of family secrets into a tapestry of modern Arab American life.

The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story by Hanan Al-Shaykh
One can only imagine how difficult and courageous it is to write the story of your mother’s life when you were abandoned by her. Kamila, the author’s mother is sent to Beirut when she is 7, to live with her older siblings. Drawn to the thrills of the city and the power of Cinema, Kamila falls in love with 17 year old Muhammed. After one of her sisters dies from Rabies, Kamila is forced to marry her brother in law Abu Hussein, 18 years her senior, but continues to see her lover despite the scandal it causes both their families. She bears her husband two children (one of them the author) and after ten years finally manages to get him to give her a divorce and marries her long time love, leaving her children behind. She will give him 5 children. After she is left widowed at age 34, illiterate Kamila will have to steal, lie and cheat to maintain her family.
Ultimately the story of an independent, courageous and often controversial woman, this memoire is an extraordinarily brave act on behalf of Ms Al Shaykh.

A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman by Wadad Makdisi Cortas
Written with fierce intelligence and compassion, A World I Loved takes us into a guided tour of Twentieth century Lebanon through the eye of one woman. Born in 1917, the author tells us about the French mandate and trying to create an identity based on religious tolerance and of struggling as an educator of women, and principal of a school in Lebanon. We watch as she goes from hope to despair, and as her Lebanon goes undone.

A lost summer: postcards from lebanon by Maureen Ali
An Israeli arrives at London's Heathrow airport. As he fills out a form, the customs officer asks him, 'Occupation?' The Israeli replies, 'No, thanks, just visiting!'
A lost summer takes quotes from emails, blogs, letters, jokes, and anecdotes and pairs them with a heady mix of photographs, drawings and images to create postcards of anger, confusion, hope in reaction to the lost summer of 2006.