Coconut Wireless, first published in 1948, is a World War II novel set in the Far East. The book follows an American, Graydon, in his counter-espionage efforts against the occupying Japanese forces. Featuring many authentic details of the region and exciting action scenes as the hero infiltrates enemy territory, completes his missions and eludes capture, the book is based, in part, on author Ray Kauffman’s own experiences with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) during the war. The book’s title refers to the quick movement of news and gossip in the tropics. Kauffman is also the author of Hurricane’s Wake, an account of a round-the-world voyage in a 45-foot sailboat.
"If you like the Miss Fortune series, you'll love Kat and her clue crew on Maui!" ~Reviewer The coconut wireless is humming in Ohia, Maui, and the latest topic of gossip is me, Kat Smith. I’m Secret Service, not Postal Service—but I feel like a criminal when I’m appointed postmaster to a cozy little village on Maui. Turns out I’ve stolen a well-earned promotion from beloved Auntie Pua Chang, who’s been there forever—but all I want to do is hide out in paradise until the witch hunt to kill my career is over. I haven’t been in Ohia a day when Tiki the post office cat brings a prize to my doorstep—a piece of the woman who had the job before me. I’m thrust into the middle of a murder mystery, and if I don’t help solve it, I might be next—but it’s hard to tell whom to trust. A fortune-telling general store owner, a hunky Hawaiian pilot, Tiki the cat, and a couple of well-meaning cops named Lei and Pono seem to want to help—but they're all Auntie Pua supporters, and she'd be happy to see the last of me. This Hawaii village has more factions than a Mafia convention in Vegas, and I’m on my own tracking a killer with only a grumpy cat for backup. “Can't stop reading and chuckling! Kat is my new favorite heroine!”~ Reviewer
As the wheels touch down on the runway at Belize's international airport, an old Buddhist saying skips through Amanda's mind; "Make the truth your island, make the truth your refuge; there is no other refuge." The life she's worked so hard to achieve has crumbled. Amanda needs a refuge; a safe place, time for bruises to heal, a space to assess the damage and gain distance from the barrage of events that nearly ended her life. To friends and coworkers, she said, "It's time to pick up the pieces. Two or three weeks alone on the beach in Cancun, soaking up the sun and visiting blue fish on the reef, should do the trick ... then, I'll return to Chicago, get back to work, and search for an apartment." She knew that was a stretch. Sorting through lies, deceits, and her disturbing dreams would take time, but heaped on top of all that is the pain from the tragic loss of her closest friend and her broken marriage. It would not be a simple vacation on the beach, or that after it, like magic, life would return to normal. Normal was over. Her true destination is a private island off the coast of Belize, far from the crowded Avenida Kukulkan in Cancun, and even farther from the danger of those that might have followed from Chicago. As she steps onto the hot tarmac in Belize, she knows — life has changed forever. Just not in the ways she had imagined. *contains profanity. Amanda J. Wilde: a continuing series Disruption (short read - prequel) Tumbling Down (novel) Refuge (novel) Asylum (novel) gifts from the gods (a short read)
Crossing disciplinary boundaries, At Home and in the Field is an anthology of twenty-first century ethnographic research and writing about the global worlds of home and disjuncture in Asia and the Pacific Islands. These stories reveal novel insights into the serendipitous nature of fieldwork. Unique in its inclusion of "homework"—ethnography that directly engages with issues and identities in which the ethnographer finds political solidarity and belonging in fields at home—the anthology contributes to growing trends that complicate the distinction between "insiders" and "outsiders." The obligations that fieldwork engenders among researchers and local communities are exemplified by contributors who are often socially engaged with the peoples and places they work. In its focus on Asia and the Pacific Islands, the collection offers ethnographic updates on topics that range from ritual money burning in China to the militarization of Hawai'i to the social role of text messages in identifying marriage partners in Vanuatu to the cultural power of robots in Japan. Thought provoking, sometimes humorous, these cultural encounters will resonate with readers and provide valuable talking points for exploring the human diversity that makes the study of ourselves and each other simultaneously rewarding and challenging.
An inspiring memoir, spanning 73 years, from humble beginnings to becoming the head of Fiji's civil aviation regulator, and participating with ICAO in the introduction of new technologies (such as GPS) which made aviation safer and more effi cient locally regionally and internationally. And a rare expose into the personal lives of a Chinese migrant family living in Fiji, of childhood escapades, of love and marriage, as well as Norman's incredible spiritual experiences where in mid-career, God intervened dramatically and changed his whole outlook on life A book to inspire you to ?Catch the Wind? of your dreams of a successful life.
"Larry W. Jones has written over 3,500 song lyrics with island based themes. Most are in the sytle of the "hapa haole" return-to-paradise tradition of the golden years of Territorial Hawaii"--Volume 7, title page verso
This volume contains a comprehensive corpus-based study of prepositional constructions in written Fiji English. It explores the endo- and exonormative dynamics of norm-giving and norm-developing varieties and contributes to our understanding of structural nativization and variety formation in a multi-ethnic setting. The book provides an account of the sociolinguistic development of English in Fiji against the backdrop of the country's colonial and post-independence history, with special focus on the Indo-Fijian part of the population. Drawing on the written sections of the Indian, Great Britain, New Zealand and preliminary Fiji components of the International Corpus of English, quantitative and qualitative analyses of prepositional phenomena are conducted on the word level (frequency, semantic effects and stylistic variation), phrase level (productivity in verb-particle combinations), and pattern level (prepositions and -ing clauses). The book will be relevant to scholars interested in lexico-grammar, variety and corpus linguistics, and sociolinguistics in general.
Rich Zubaty relates his adventures living and loving his way through 25 countries. Romance is glorious and frightening, stimulating and enervating, loud and quiet – a rare atmosphere beyond pleasure and pain. Romance is not about "feeling", it is about "being". It is about cooking monkeys on a balsa fire in the Peruvian jungle, catching sharks in a too-small boat, landing on uninhabited coral atolls, scraping bat droppings from your hair in a Honduran cave, cooking a slab of tuna on a beach in Marseilles, having raw animal sex with Asian girls in Paris and Thailand, singing Christian hymns with brown kids on the shore of a turquoise lagoon. Forgoing food and drink, radio, TV, speech, smoke – any and all sense distractions – on a ten day forest retreat in a Thai/Buddhist monastery – coming face to face with your demons. Romance is watching kangaroos scamper away from the lush grass around your garden when you go to pick tomatoes in New South Wales, burning your draft card and leaving the country when your government has lied to you, watching a young girl herding geese from your train window rolling across the golden plains of Slovakia, watching the swallows swarm around medieval castle turrets on the cliffs of Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia.Romance is escaping Prague hours before a Russian invasion, watching the birth of your son in a wood stilt hospital in Hawaii, and watching your daughter born on a mattress on the floor of the house you made with your own hands – a house you built with your brother, sleeping in a tent in the mud and rain, during the months of construction. Planting her placenta beneath a lime tree seedling and watching it, and her, swell with life.Romance is living with petty thieves in Paris and London, working as a ticket-taker in a strip club in Soho, stealing carrots from the Covent Garden market to survive, ordering a burger at Wimpy’s then sneaking out without paying, living with an English woman with a black baby who rips off all your money in a hash deal gone awry, flying from London to Toronto and sneaking across the U.S. border knowing the F.B.I. is looking for you.Romance is tracking rabbits in the snow, catching a live pheasant with your hands when it thought it was hiding, huddled in a clump of grass. Romance is catching a tail-dancing 200 pound blue marlin off the Kona coast of Hawaii, and another one off Bimini.Romance is falling in love again and again and again, so many times that it becomes obvious you don’t know what love is. And don’t care. Romance is being married to a woman who eats your soul...And then there's more.
