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  Yara

  Tamara Faith Berger

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  FEATURED IN QUILL & QUIRE'S 2023 FALL PREVIEW 
  THE GLOBE AND MAIL: BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2023 
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  THE GLOBE AND MAIL BEST 100 BOOKS OF 2023 
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  From the author of Maidenhead, a reverse cautionary tale about a young woman exploring the boundaries of sex and belonging in the early 2000s 
   
  Distraught that her teenage daughter is in love with a woman a decade older, Yara’s mother sends her away from their home in Brazil to Israel, on a Birthright trip for Jewish youth. Freed from her increasingly controlling and jealous girlfriend, Yara is determined to forge her own path and follow her desires.  
  But Birthright takes a debaucherous turn, and Yara flees Israel for Toronto and then California. As she wanders, Yara is forced to reframe her relationship and her ideas around consent. Set in the sex-tape-panicked early 2000s, Yara is a reverse cautionary tale about what the body can teach us. 
   
  "Tamara Faith Berger is one of our best writers of the body, capturing in sharp, red-hot prose its raw animal urges, its often confused and contradictory desires, and the way our search for pleasure can be both liberatory and self-annihilating. Like Israel, bodies are contested territories, and in Berger's revelatory new novel, Yara seeks to wrest control and meaning from the forces that seek to instrumentalize hers: nationalism, capitalism, pornography, and lovers." – Jordan Tannahill, author of The Listeners 
   
  "Yara is a complicated novel about the confusions of consent and kinship, the way love makes victims of us all, told with cool, epigrammatic verve. As raw, destabilizing and searching as its titular protagonist, it's Berger's best book yet." – Jason McBride, author of Eat Your Mind 
  "Canada’s finest and boldest writer. Tamara Faith Berger is my favourite ball buster." – Anakana Schofield, author of Bina: A Novel in Warnings

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  The Afterlife of Byzantium

  Santiago Machain

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  The Afterlife of Byzantium traces the final centuries of the Byzantine Empire from the Palaiologan restoration to the fall of Constantinople—and follows its astonishing afterlife far beyond 1453. Through nine richly detailed chapters culminating in a study of legacy and memory, this volume reveals how an empire under pressure reinvented itself through faith, diplomacy, art, scholarship, and everyday resilience. Readers encounter the return to Constantinople in 1261, the fraying frontiers of the Balkans and Anatolia, the mystical power of Hesychasm, the resourceful brilliance of Palaiologan art, the hard math of a late economy, and the fine-edged craft of survival diplomacy. The ascent of the Ottomans and the last defense of 1453 are narrated alongside the intimate human experiences of merchants, monks, mothers, and envoys. 
  Beyond the walls, the book follows Byzantium’s legacy into Ottoman institutions, Orthodox worship, Venetian print shops, Cretan ateliers, Muscovite courts, and the domestic rituals that carried memory forward. It shows how Byzantine law, liturgy, education, iconography, and political imagination shaped communities for centuries, from the Phanar’s salons to Athonite scriptoria, from market stalls to imperial chancelleries. Written in an informative, humanized, and professional voice, this is a story of continuity through change—a portrait of how an empire’s culture outlived its sovereignty and continued to teach the world how to endure with dignity.

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  The Rise of the Ottoman Empire -...

  Harris Ropes

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  The story of the Ottoman Empire begins not with grandeur and empire-building, but with the survival and adaptation of a small Turkic tribe navigating the collapse of greater powers. In the late 13th century, the Anatolian region was a mosaic of fragmented states, weakened by internal conflict and external invasions. Among these groups were the Turks, originally Central Asian nomads, who had migrated westward in waves over centuries. Their destiny would shift dramatically with the decline of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and the vacuum left by the Mongol invasions, creating space for new leadership to emerge. 
  The Seljuks had once dominated much of Anatolia, but their weakening rule after the Mongol defeat at the Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243 left the region divided among various beyliks, or small principalities. One such principality was led by a chieftain named Ertuğrul, who had settled near the Byzantine frontier. Upon his death, leadership passed to his son, Osman, a bold and ambitious leader who would become the namesake of the Ottoman dynasty. Osman’s emergence marked a turning point, as his military successes and political acumen allowed him to consolidate power and expand his territory, laying the foundation for what would become the Ottoman Empire. 
  Osman I’s rise coincided with a period of instability within the Byzantine Empire, which was plagued by civil wars and weakened borders. Taking advantage of this, Osman led raids into Byzantine lands, gradually carving out a small but growing domain. More than just a warrior, Osman capitalized on the frontier spirit, attracting ghazis—Muslim warriors motivated by the idea of fighting non-Muslims. These fighters brought not only military strength but also religious legitimacy to Osman’s rule, enabling him to establish a principality that combined spiritual purpose with political ambition.

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  The Civil Wars Book 3

  Julius Caesar

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  The Civil Wars is a firsthand account of the pivotal conflict between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, written by Caesar himself. Covering the events leading to the war, his strategic campaigns in Italy, Spain, and Greece, and culminating in Pompey’s defeat at Pharsalus, the narrative showcases Caesar’s military genius, political resolve, and justification for seizing power. Written in a clear, detached tone, the work presents Caesar’s perspective as a commander fighting for legitimacy against a corrupt Senate. Though unfinished—ending before his ultimate victory—it remains a crucial historical document offering insight into Roman politics, loyalty, and the fall of the Republic. A foundational text of military and political history.

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  From Red Terror to Terrorist...

  Yuri Felshtinsky, Vladimir Popov

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  'Detail worthy of a John le Carre novel.' Telegraph The history of modern Russia traditionally has Communism at its centre: Lenin defines its rise, Gorbachev its fall, and Putin its aftermath. In this radical new history, Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Popov, however, introduce a new historical axis: the Cheka―the Bolsheviks' nebulous revolutionary intelligence service. Wrapped around the Party in a fight to the death from 1918 under its first head Felix Dzerzhinsky, only Stalin was able to resist its stranglehold at the cost of enormous bloodshed. Luring Russia into submission over less than a century, its murder-plots and unrivalled scheming culminated in the capture of the Kremlin in 2000. Drawing on Popov's secret documents of over two decades as a senior officer in one of the KGB's key covert sections, and on Felshtinsky's encyclopedic knowledge of Russian state archives open in the 1990s, little-known sources, and access to leading oligarchs, a new Russian history emerges. The story they tell is often unexpected while introducing a new cast of characters still of great influence―potentially surpassing Lenin's role―on our world today. From Red Terror to Terrorist State is the first complete history of the Cheka. Written from the inside, it fundamentally transforms our understanding of Russia and rethinks the way today's Kremlin views itself and the rest of the world. Animated by lifelong study, this authoritative narrative by two exceptional Russian-intelligence experts presents ground-breaking new insights based on an unrivalled wealth of new factual details.

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  Atlantis and Lemuria

  M. Doreal

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  I have a subject to discuss that has aroused almost as much controversy as any other subject under the sun except religion; nothing can compare to that; That is, "Atlantis and Lemuria."

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