NCW Libraries

"Born to an American mother and a late Afghan war hero-turned-magnate, Daniel Sajadi has spent his life navigating a complex identity. After years in Los Angeles, he is returning home to Kabul for the first time as the head of a US foreign aid agency dedicated to staunching the growth of the poppy fields in Fever Valley that feed the world's opiate epidemic. But on the drive back to Kabul from an anniversary trip with his wife, Rebecca, Daniel hits...

The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival....

"Amitav Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family-the climax of a yearslong project"-- Provided by publisher. When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous...

Eighteen-year-old aspiring chemist Elinor Dashwood and her younger sister Marianne, a budding detective, work together to solve the mystery of their father's murder.

"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants -- and the equally powerful taboos Of all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities...

Working for his mother, the sheriff of an idyllic Midwestern resort town, Eli North, when the body of a teenage boy is found in the lake, is drawn into an investigation related to America's opioid epidemic that becomes much more than just a hunt for a killer. "Eli North is not okay. His drinking is getting worse by the day, his emotional wounds after a deployment to Afghanistan are as raw as ever, his marriage and career are over, and the only job...

"In the tradition of Three Women, Bustle editor and writer Samantha Leach traces the lives of a trio of girls who met in the Troubled Teen Industry and went on to share the same tragic fate. Samantha and her best friend Elissa were typical privileged, rebellious, suburban girls. But after Elissa was kicked out of their private school, she soon disappeared. At fifteen years old, her parents quietly flew her from Providence, Rhode Island to a $10,000/month...

In October 1839, a Windsor cabinet meeting votes to begin the first Opium War against China. Bureaucratic fumbling, military missteps, and a healthy dose of political opportunism and collaboration followed. Rich in tragicomedy, The Opium War explores the disastrous British foreign-relations move that became a founding myth of modern Chinese nationalism, and depicts China's heroic struggle against Western conspiracy. Julia Lovell examines the causes...

"Infused with magic and romance, this sweeping fantasy adventure inspired by the legend of Mulan follows a young woman determined to choose her own destiny--even if that means going against everyone she loves. The Three Kingdoms are at war, but Meilin's father refuses to answer the imperial draft. Trapped by his opium addiction, he plans to sell Meilin for her dowry. But when Meilin discovers her husband-to-be is another violent, ill-tempered man,...

"For more than two centuries, from the 18th to the 20th, they were one of the richest families in the world, known as 'the Rothschilds of the East.' Mesopotamian in origin, they descended from 12th century court families of Eurasia, and for more than forty years, were the chief treasurers to the pashas of Baghdad and Iraq. Forced to flee the tyranny of Bagdadhi Moslems to Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, David Sassoon with his fourteen children, started...