Works
Birth Pangs
Peter Kovacs teaches part-time at a community college and tends bar to make ends meet. When a newborn baby is found (alive) in a trash can in an alley next to the school, no one knows who left her in the garbage or why. Reaching out to a detective from the police department's Family Services Division and aided by his colleague Zoë Parker, who teaches photography at the school, Peter tries to find out. The incident seems to have struck a chord with other people as well, since they have festooned the trash can with flowers, ribbons, and personal notes as if it were a kind of shrine.
A parallel narrative recounts a Japanese high school student's growing alienation from his life of pointless striving. Akira becomes a hikikomori, ceasing to attend school. But eventually he manages to make it to the United States, where he takes a photography class from Peter's colleague and crosses paths with Peter himself.
As Peter, Zoë, and the detective try to track down the missing mother, Peter develops a closer relationship with Zoë and learns that Akira has a key connection to the incident in the alley.
The Third Man
Two families whose lives intersect, two refugees who travel far-flung paths: from Vienna in the 1930s to England in the 1940s—and back—The Third Man is a novel about dispossession, refuge, and the morally complex search for justice and humanity.
The Ramadan Drummer
a literary mystery about clashing values and the search for connection in a multicultural world