The Best Foreign Fiction & Non-fiction We Published in April

The Girl from Kathmandu: Twelve Dead Men and a Woman’s Quest for Justice | Cam Simpson

In August of 2004, twelve men left their village in Nepal for jobs at a five-star luxury hotel in Amman, Jordan. They had no idea that they had actually been hired for sub-contract work on an American military base in Iraq. But fate took an even darker turn when these men were kidnapped and murdered by Islamic extremists. Their gruesome deaths were captured in one of the first graphic execution videos disseminated on the web—the largest massacre of contractors during the war. Compounding the tragedy, their deaths received little notice.

Why were these men, from a remote country far removed from the war, in Iraq? How had they gotten there? Who were they working for? Consumed by these questions, award-winning investigative journalist Cam Simpson embarked on a journey to find answers, a decade-long odyssey that would uncover a web of evil spanning the globe—and trigger a chain of events involving one brave young widow, three indefatigable human rights lawyers, and a formidable multinational corporation with deep governmental ties.

A heart-rending, page-turning narrative that moves from the Himalayas to the Middle East to Houston and culminates in an epic court battle, The Girl from Kathmandu is a story of death and life—of the war in Iraq, the killings of the twelve Nepalese, a journalist determined to uncover the truth, and a trio of human rights lawyers dedicated to finding justice. At its heart is one unforgettable young woman, Kamala Magar, who found the courage to face the influential men who sent her husband to his death—a model of strength hope, bravery, and an unbreakable spirit who reminds us of the power we all have to make a difference.

Hunting El Chapo: Taking Down The World’s Most-wanted Drug-Lord | Andrew Hogan and Douglas Century

The incredible, untold story of the American agent who captured El Chapo, the world’s most-wanted drug-lord.

Every generation has its larger-than-life criminal legend living beyond the reach of the law: Billy the Kid, Al Capone, Ronnie Biggs, Pablo Escobar. But for every one of these criminals, there’s a Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett or Slipper of the Yard. For Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán-Loera a.k.a. ‘El Chapo’—the 21st century’s most notorious criminal—that man is D.E.A. Special Agent Cole Merrell. This is the incredible story of Merrell’s seven-year-long chase to capture El Chapo, a multi-billionaire drug-lord and escape-artist posing as a Mexican Robin Hood, who in reality was a brutal sociopath responsible for the murders of thousands. His greedy campaign to take over his rivals’ territories resulted in an unprecedented war with a body count of over 100,000. We follow Merrell on his quest to achieve the seemingly impossible: to cross the border into Mexico and arrest El Chapo, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a billionaire and Public Enemy No. 1, who had been evading capture for more than a decade and had earned a reputation for being utterly untouchable.

Hunting El Chapo tells how Merrell single-mindedly and methodically climbed the ladder within the hierarchy of the Sinaloa Cartel – the world’s wealthiest and most powerful drug-trafficking organization—by creating one of the most sophisticated undercover operations in the history of the D.E.A.

From infiltrating Chapo’s inner circle to leading a white-knuckle manhunt with an elite brigade of Mexican Marines, Merrell left no stone unturned in his hunt for the world’s most powerful drug kingpin.

Love Rules: How to Find a Real Relationship in a Digital World | Joanna Coles

A diet book for finding love from a driving force in the world of women’s magazines—a no-nonsense guide that offers much-needed advice for finding meaningful relationships in today’s complicated romantic landscape.

Just as there is junk food, there is junk love. And like junk food, junk love is fast, convenient, attractively packaged, widely available, superficially tasty—and leaves you hungering for more. And both junk food and junk love require enormous amounts of willpower to resist. Social media and online dating sites have become the supermarkets of our relationship lives. You have to wade through rows of cupcakes and potato chips to find the produce aisle, where those relationships grounded in intimacy and trust live—the ones worth your investment. A diet book for romantic relationships, Love Rules first asks women to reassess the way they think about their relationships, and then helps them use that newfound awareness to navigate their love lives more successfully in this very modern, fast-paced—and often lonely—digital age. In these pages leading media exec and former Editor in Chief of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire Joanna Coles provides a series of simple guidelines for finding worthwhile love: fifteen rules—love ‘hacks’. She also explains how to use dating apps effectively to expand real-world connections and how to avoid DADD—dating attention-deficit disorder, where the tantalizing promise of someone better appears to be only the next swipe away.

Love Rules will enable you to identify what you want in a relationship, when you should pursue it, and how to find it.

The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho

A special 30th-anniversary edition of the extraordinary international bestseller, with a new foreword

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book—a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life’s path and, above all, follow your dreams.

Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanized by the knowledge that he is following the right path: his own. The people he meets along the way, the things he sees and the wisdom he learns are life-changing.

Fascism: A Warning | Madeleine Albright

A personal and urgent examination of Fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today’s world, written by one of America’s most admired public servants, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state.

A Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, ‘is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.’

The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions of innocent people dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. In Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright draws on her own experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that very assumption.

The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health | Emeran Mayer

Chances are, at some point in your life you’ve noticed the connection between your brain and your gut. If you’ve ever felt queasy as you walked into an uncomfortable situation or based a life decision based on a ‘gut feeling’, then you know that sometimes our bodies react faster than our minds. Most of us have also experienced the same phenomenon in reverse, where our mental state has affected our digestive system—like the butterflies in our stomach before an important meeting or a first date. But while the dialogue between the mind and the gut has been recognized by ancient healing traditions for centuries, scientists today are just starting to understand how powerful and far-reaching that connection is.

The Fates Divide | Veronica Roth

In the second book of the Carve the Mark duology, globally bestselling Divergent author Veronica Roth reveals how Cyra and Akos fulfill their fates. The Fates Divide is a richly imagined tale of hope and resilience told in four stunning perspectives.

The lives of Cyra Noavek and Akos Kereseth are ruled by their fates, spoken by the oracles at their births. The fates, once determined, are inescapable. Akos is in love with Cyra, in spite of his fate: he will die in service to Cyra’s family. And when Cyra’s father, Lazmet Noavek—a soulless tyrant, thought to be dead—reclaims the Shotet throne, Akos believes his end is closer than ever.

As Lazmet ignites a barbaric war, Cyra and Akos are desperate to stop him at any cost. For Cyra, that could mean taking the life of the man who may – or may not – be her father. For Akos, it could mean giving his own. In a stunning twist, the two will discover how fate defines their lives in ways most unexpected.

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