Idgie Says:This is a series that I have been following since 2012 and have waited eagerly for each new book. The premise of the first one grabbed me from the start. A cocky American decides to woo an Afghan woman, who finally finds the attraction mutual just as she is sold to a ruthless Prince who is helping to fund Osama. It may sound like just a love story, but it's much more - the amount of detailed description regarding life in that environment really opens your eyes to the struggle these refugees endure.
These are not gentle books. There is rape, torture, murder, public hangings, floggings and bombings. There is government espionage. There is Osama. There is life in a Saudi prison. There is constant fear.
Yet with all of the sadness and horror going on, there is love and determination. Nick's writing keeps you very involved in Noor and Charlie.
The third book takes place in America, after 9/11. It picks up eight years after Charlie was sent to prison for life. Charlie is released due to the Saudi government wanting to show peace to America, so he has freedom..... but Noor now looks like the enemy to many Americans and once again comes face to face with fear. Noor and Charlie also fear that eventually the Prince's minions will find them as she escaped him while pregnant - and he wants his child back.
These are not stand alone books. If you have not read any of them, I highly suggest you grab all three and read them in order.
I can honestly say I enjoyed the series and hope that Nick starts a new novel shortly. He has the talent for good writing with a story that grabs.
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Release:
Book 3
It is December 2001. Eight years on, Charlie remains imprisoned in a Saudi Arabian jail while Noor has made a life for herself and her child in a North Carolina mountain town.
After the recent 9/11 attacks the world is a very different place. Yet Charlie and Noor are faced with the same issue. Will they reunite? And if they do, will they ever be allowed to live in peace? It seems unlikely. After all Charlie is serving a life sentence and the Prince still has men searching for Noor and his child. Yet one thing that can never be extinguished is Charlie and Noor’s love for each other nor Noor’s love for her child. It means they are prepared to take risks that others would flee from.
In Release, the third and final novel in the Refuge Trilogy, N. G. Osborne concludes Noor and Charlie’s epic story. It takes us on a thrilling and emotional journey from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and all the way across the United States, with one burning question ever present. Will Noor and Charlie finally be released from the forces that are so intent on tearing them apart?
Resilience:
Book 2
Noor has been flown to Saudi Arabia to begin her life as a Princess. Charlie has been deported from Pakistan and sent home bruised and battered to the United States.
For each of them there is a temptation - however dire it may seem. For Noor, who believes Charlie's dead, it is accepting her new situation and assimilating into the Prince's family as best she can. For Charlie, it is coming to terms with the massive improbability of ever seeing Noor again and moving on.
But neither can do that. Noor yearns to be free, while Charlie yearns to free her. And so despite incredible odds, each sets a plan in a motion to achieve their goal, and in turn, they will test their love's very resilience.
Refuge:
Book 1
On a dusty, sweltering night, Noor Khan, a beautiful, headstrong Afghan refugee, comes face-to-face with Charlie Matthews, a brash, young American aid worker. To Noor's fury, Charlie breaks every cultural norm and pursues her. She wants nothing to do with him: her sole aim in life is to earn an overseas scholarship so she can escape the miseries of the refugee camps.
However when Noor's brother threatens to marry her off, she is forced to seek refuge in Charlie's home, of all places, and suddenly everything Noor believes in is put into question.
Set in the mystical and seething city of Peshawar, where no one is without an agenda and few can be trusted, Refuge is a timeless and unforgettable love story about the struggle for love and purpose in a cruel and cynical world.
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Author Bio:
I grew up in Angus, a beautiful, farming county in north east Scotland, and from there went south to England for my schooling at Winchester College. At eighteen I took a detour to Peshawar, Pakistan where I taught both Pakistani school children and Afghan refugees and and then a year later went onto Oxford University where I studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
After Oxford, I had a burning desire to be in the film industry, and so I applied and received a place at the Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Two years - that's what I told myself. I will study there for two years, get some interning experience in Hollywood, and then take my skills back to the UK. Oh, how one's plans so easily change.
Now 17 years later I am still in Los Angeles. I've been a film executive and a producer and worked on many wonderful movies, the last being Remember Me starring Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin, Lena Olin, Pierce Brosnan and Chris Cooper.
Then 5 years ago three things began to coincide. First, I increasingly wanted to write - I loved producing but it also frustrated me. Isn't the cliche that inside every producer is a frustrated writer? Well that was me. But bizarrely because I wasn't confident in my writing ability, I thought I would write a novel not a screenplay. I know, talk about putting the cart before the horse. This is how Refuge was born.
In 2011, I sold my share of Underground FIlms, my production / management company, and committed fully to being a writer. I am currently developing Conquistadors a limited series at FX about the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire, and a legal show at CBS called Damascus. It's my hope and dream that I can continue writing for a living as long as I have stories I want to tell.