Zoe Ferraris – författare

Ibrahim Al-Brehm is a respectable husband a police inspector on Jeddah's murder squad. But for the past year, he has been having an affair with a woman named Maria. One day though, she disappears.Terrified and with nowhere else to turn, Ibrahim goes to Katya, one of the few women on the force. As she ventures into Saudi Arabia's underworld, she uncovers a murder which connects Maria to a human trafficking ring. Soon Ibrahim realises that the killer is closer to home than he had ever imagined.Kingdom of Strangers is a suspenseful story of murder and deception among Saudi Arabia's shaded alleys, gleaming compounds and vast lonely deserts.

When Nouf ash-Shrawi, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a wealthy Saudi dynasty, disappears from her home in Jeddah just days before her arranged marriage, desert guide Nayir is asked to bring her home.But when her battered body is found, Nayir feels compelled to uncover the disturbing truth, travelling away from the endless desert to the vast city of Jeddah, where, most troubling of all, Nayir finds himself having to work closely with Katya Hijazi, a forensic scientist. The further into the investigation he goes, the more Nayir finds himself questioning his loyalties: to his friends, faith and culture.

The crime: one scalding afternoon, the mutilated body of a young woman, half naked beneath her burqa, is discovered on a Saudi beach; soon afterwards a Western woman's husband vanishes without trace.The place: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the City of Veils. A city of narrow streets and closed shutters, where nothing is what it seems ;and the Empty Quarter - one of the most beautiful, yet unforgiving deserts on earth.The people: Miriam Walker, alone in an alien culture, desperate to find her missing husband. Katya, a forensic scientist battling the prejudices of a society full of sexual, religious and moral contradictions; and Nayir, devout Muslim, desert guide, amateur sleuth - the man she loves.