Is it possible for a book to feel both timely and like a relic from a different era? In the case of The Islamic Moses, by the Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol, the answer is yes. The book was completed ...

What struck me as I saw “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” which is set in modern Tehran, is how 15 years after the Green Movement, the fire of the uprising is still burning.

Learning from Silence,” a memoir about losing his family's Santa Barbara home and everything he owned in a 1990 wildfire.