Norah Saud is a modern Saudi woman with hidden skills – she’s a master of the fighting arts, a weapons expert, a student of the arts and sciences – and sits high in her country’s royal family. Her father, a billionaire Saudi strongman, trains and raises her as his terrorist tool and sends her to detonate bombs on Washington, DC, subway trains. Catastrophe awaits. Norah has endured the life her father drew up and she’s desperate for an out. She confronts private demons – dread inspired by the authoritarians who’ve controlled and threatened her since she was born – and wants for a world where she can be her own judge and master.

This is Norah’s story, a portrait of human nature both crooked and magical. It’s also a dark page-turner about the autocrats’ playbook, their claim of entitlement to authority, their obsession with secrecy and loyalty, their faith in violence. It’s the search for a path that goes above and beyond state-sponsored brutality. Exhilarating and poetic, Blood Lily is a reinvention of the international thriller.