Excerpt: "Off the bridge, we are “on island” as the officers call it, immersed in this destination’s own ecology of fencing and trucks and men in identical jumpsuits sweeping or picking up trash. The officer smooths our way through two more checkpoints with little asides and insides, other officers peer at our badges as they shoot back their practiced one-liners. It’s surprisingly difficult to get into a jail."

Excerpt: "I'd known about Tom's family business but, before arriving at Moveen, his ancestral home in the remote west of Ireland, it was nothing more to me than a quirky tidbit from his book's dust-jacket. Now though, the connection between what he does and this land of his ancestors gives me pause. What is it like to prepare bodies for earth, for final rest, and then come home to this brutally restless place? Peopled by generations of ghosts."

Excerpt: "Ahmad and I had just stumbled past our first anniversary, each still learning the other’s habits and tics, when he was taken. I remember the morning’s banalities: the ring of just-shaved hairs around the bathroom sink, the pieces of caked mud from his boots, swept into a pan. Maybe things would’ve turned out differently if the white men had come to our home for Ahmad. If they’d glimpsed the smallness of our lives."

Excerpt: "Army rangers patrolled the school’s perimeter, Kalashnikovs tight against chests. Nadeem had to fight his way through an assault of argument and barricades to the commotion within: parents jostling, wailing, demanding answers. But no one appeared in charge. Soldiers merely shook their heads. Journalists, their backs to the chaos, told cameras: today, this school belongs to all of us. These extremists have taken Karachi’s children hostage."