A Different Kind of Paradise
A Different Kind of Paradise

Author: Sofia Scott

Publisher:

Published: 2021-03-31

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

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"What happened between us was a mistake. A bad one. Now, you just keep your mouth shut and forget about it, okay?" Two men: an inexperienced college boy and his best friend's ruggedly handsome father. Deep in the New Zealand wilderness, the little wooden house by the sea becomes a hotbed of forbidden love. Rob has closed himself off for years now, concentrating on being a good father and a pillar of the community. But his son's best friend Josh awakens long-repressed desires, desires he just can't face up to. He's not afraid of anything, except where his own heart is leading him, and losing the love and respect of his own son. Young college-boy Josh likes everything about Rob. He's strong, tough, capable - and utterly gorgeous. Not that Josh is gay, of course. So why does he keep fantasizing about his best friend's father? And what will his friend say if he ever finds out? Both the repressed alpha male and the innocent college boy are determined that nothing will happen. But they can't deny the passion that flares when they touch, and a troubled romance slowly blossoms. A high-heat age-gap MM romance, featuring a young man's awakening, crossed swords in all their glory, steamy first-time gay experiences, and a guaranteed happy ending.

A Kind of Paradise
A Kind of Paradise

Author: Amy Rebecca Tan

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0062795449

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Read the book that Ali Standish (author of The Ethan I Was Before) calls "a heartwarming story" and Melissa Roske (author of Kat Greene Comes Clean) calls "a joyful, heartfelt debut!" Thirteen-year-old Jamie Bunn made a mistake at the end of the school year. A big one. And every kid in her middle school knows all about it. Now she has to spend her summer vacation volunteering at the local library—as punishment. What a waste of a summer! Or so she thinks. A Kind of Paradise is an unforgettable story about the power of community, the power of the library, and the power of forgiveness.

Some Kind of Paradise
Some Kind of Paradise

Author: Mark Derr

Publisher: Florida Sand Dollar Books

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9780813016290

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For 500 years, visitors to Florida have discovered magic. In Some Kind of Paradise, an eloquent social and environmental history of the state, Mark Derr describes how this exotic land is fast becoming a victim of its own allure. Written with both tenderness and alarm, Derr's book presents competing views of Florida: a paradise to be protected and nurtured or a frontier to be exploited and conquered.

A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise
A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise

Author: Sandy Allen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2018-01-23

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1501134051

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“Compelling…A bracing work of art and a loving tribute” (Los Angeles Times), this propulsive, stunning book illuminates the experience of living with schizophrenia like never before. Sandra Allen did not know their uncle Bob very well. As a child, Sandy had been told Bob was “crazy,” that he had spent time in mental hospitals while growing up in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s. But Bob had lived a hermetic life in a remote part of California for longer than Sandy had been alive, and what little Sandy knew of him came from rare family reunions or odd, infrequent phone calls. Then in 2009 Bob mailed Sandy his autobiography. Typewritten in all caps, a stream of error-riddled sentences more than sixty, single-spaced pages, the often-incomprehensible manuscript proclaimed to be a “true story” about being “labeled a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic,” and arrived with a plea to help him get his story out to the world. “Searing” (O, The Oprah Magazine), “enthralling” (Star-Tribune, Minneapolis), and “a marvel” (Esquire), A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise shows how Sandy translated Bob’s autobiography, artfully creating a gripping coming-of-age story while sticking faithfully to the facts as he shared them. Sandy also shares background information about their family, the culturally explosive time and place of their uncle’s formative years, and the vitally important questions surrounding schizophrenia and mental healthcare in America more broadly. The result is a heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious portrait of a young man striving for stability in his life as well as his mind, and an utterly unique lens into an experience that, to most people, remains unimaginable. “Thrilling…Gorgeous…a watershed in empathetic adaptation of ‘outsider’ autobiography” (The New Republic), A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise is a dazzlingly, daringly written book that’s poised to change conversations about schizophrenia and mental illness overall.

La Conchita
La Conchita

Author: Bonnie G. Kelm

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781634991810

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It was through the failed beachfront resort development of 1923 that the tiny enclave of Punta, California, was renamed La Conchita del Mar and promoted as a seaside paradise. La Conchita, however, was destined to become a different kind of paradise. Abandoned by wealthy investors, it was settled by Filipino farmhands, Mexican railroad workers, and white oil workers, and became a unique, multicultural, working-class neighborhood. Total equality marked this early integrated community. At a time when the Civil Rights movement wasn't even on the horizon, in La Conchita, prejudice simply didn't exist. La Conchita's distinct sense of place clashed with the affluent, exclusive communities surrounding it on the Gold Coast. Despite attempts to destroy this perceived misplaced community over the years, like-minded people have been drawn to it like magnets. The recollections of La Conchita residents reveal untold stories of fascinating people, a few with familiar names and others with names that won't soon be forgotten. This tiny place with a receptive atmosphere also nurtured astonishing historic and cultural landmarks that deserve to be remembered and celebrated.

Dark Way to Paradise
Dark Way to Paradise

Author: Jennifer D. Upton

Publisher: Sophia Perennis

Published: 2005-03

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9781597310093

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Dante's Inferno is often presented today in lurid 'gothic' terms as if it were no more than an entertaining demonic freak-show. Alternately, it is taken as merely a cultural and political commentary on Dante's own place and time, cast in allegorical terms. But the Inferno, and the Divine Comedy as a whole, are much more than that. The human passions, and the Mystery of Iniquity of which they are expressions, are fundamentally the same in any place and time; the Inferno presents not so much a history of sin as a catalogue of the archetypes of sin, the fundamental ways in which all of us are tempted to betray the human form. Based on the works of a number of the Greek Fathers, on the writings of several members of the Traditionalist School, notably Frithjof Schuon and Rene Guenon, and on the kind of wide personal experience of the violation of the human form that is available to anyone in these times with both the requisite discernment-rooted in love-and the courage to keep his or her eyes open, Jennifer Doane Upton has once again seen Dante's Inferno as it really is. It is the record of the struggle of the human mind, will, and emotions to discover and name, by the grace of God, the sins resident in the human soul. As both a traditional re-presentation and a contemporary revisioning of the 'examination of conscience', individual and collective, Dark Way to Paradise is at once an exegetical masterpiece and a handbook of demonology of concrete use to any true physician of the soul. In its direct application of metaphysical principles to 'infernal psychology', it is unique among Dante commentaries. And in a time like ours, when the Western Church appears to be dissolving before our eyes, to save again what Dante himself saved out of the great medieval Christian synthesis has never been so timely.

To Paradise
To Paradise

Author: Hanya Yanagihara

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 720

ISBN-13: 0385547943

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the award-winning, best-selling author of the classic A Little Life—a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • ESQUIRE • NPR • GOODREADS To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family, and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot. In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances. These three sections comprise an ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.

Paradise
Paradise

Author: Toni Morrison

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2014-03-11

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0804169888

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The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner challenges our most fiercely held beliefs as she weaves folklore and history, memory and myth into an unforgettable meditation on race, religion, gender, and a far-off past that is ever present—in prose that soars with the rhythms, grandeur, and tragic arc of an epic poem. “They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.” So begins Toni Morrison’s Paradise, which opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage. “A fascinating story, wonderfully detailed. . . . The town is the stage for a profound and provocative debate.” —Los Angeles Times

This Is Paradise
This Is Paradise

Author: Kristiana Kahakauwila

Publisher: Hogarth

Published: 2013-07-09

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0770436250

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Elegant, brutal, and profound—this magnificent debut captures the grit and glory of modern Hawai'i with breathtaking force and accuracy. In a stunning collection that announces the arrival of an incredible talent, Kristiana Kahakauwila travels the islands of Hawai'i, making the fabled place her own. Exploring the deep tensions between local and tourist, tradition and expectation, façade and authentic self, This Is Paradise provides an unforgettable portrait of life as it’s truly being lived on Maui, Oahu, Kaua'i and the Big Island. In the gut-punch of “Wanle,” a beautiful and tough young woman wants nothing more than to follow in her father’s footsteps as a legendary cockfighter. With striking versatility, the title story employs a chorus of voices—the women of Waikiki—to tell the tale of a young tourist drawn to the darker side of the city’s nightlife. “The Old Paniolo Way” limns the difficult nature of legacy and inheritance when a patriarch tries to settle the affairs of his farm before his death. Exquisitely written and bursting with sharply observed detail, Kahakauwila’s stories remind us of the powerful desire to belong, to put down roots, and to have a place to call home.

What Strange Paradise
What Strange Paradise

Author: Omar El Akkad

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2021-07-20

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0525657916

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the widely acclaimed, bestselling author of American War—a beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving novel that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child. "Told from the point of view of two children, on the ground and at sea, the story so astutely unpacks the us-versus-them dynamics of our divided world that it deserves to be an instant classic." —The New York Times Book Review More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vänna. Vänna is a teenage girl, who, despite being native to the island, experiences her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though Vänna and Amir are complete strangers, though they don’t speak a common language, Vänna is determined to do whatever it takes to save the boy. In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir’s life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety. What Strange Paradise is the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. But it is also a story of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair—and about the way each of those things can blind us to reality.