Orphans, Assassins and the Existential Eggplant is not your everyday novel. For starters, this book has a talking eggplant—a shrunken, hardened, 600-year-old vegetable the size of a baby toe. The story begins in early 13th century England with a female alchemist, orphan teenager and the shrunken eggplant that can speak to whomever wears it. In search of the fabled Lost Stone of Eden, they cross Europe and the Mediterranean with the Children’s Crusade, hijack a caravan in the Sahara desert, live with hashish-fueled Assassins in the mountains of Persia and rediscover paradise on the island of Bahrain.