Soldiers of Paradise

Soldiers of Paradise PDF Author: Paul Park
Publisher: Arbor House Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Where the seasons last for generations, winter is a hard time suited to hard religion. The theocratic Starbridge caste consider themselves virtuous wardens in a sinners' purgatory, reading infant cries and birthmarks to judge the unpunished crimes of previous incarnations. On the battlefield, all but nobility are denied medicine and anaesthetic. Only the Antinomials have endured winter outside this oppressive social system. People without language, eaters of meat, they are being driven from their lands in the north to seek sanctuary against the very belly of their tormentors, in the slums of the great capital city of Charn. Here a Starbridge doctor and a drunken prince begin a dangerous experiment in compassion that will soon demand heavy sacrifices, just as the people brace for spring, with its flammable and suffocating sugar rain.

Soldiers of Paradise

Soldiers of Paradise PDF Author: Paul Park
Publisher: Arbor House Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
Where the seasons last for generations, winter is a hard time suited to hard religion. The theocratic Starbridge caste consider themselves virtuous wardens in a sinners' purgatory, reading infant cries and birthmarks to judge the unpunished crimes of previous incarnations. On the battlefield, all but nobility are denied medicine and anaesthetic. Only the Antinomials have endured winter outside this oppressive social system. People without language, eaters of meat, they are being driven from their lands in the north to seek sanctuary against the very belly of their tormentors, in the slums of the great capital city of Charn. Here a Starbridge doctor and a drunken prince begin a dangerous experiment in compassion that will soon demand heavy sacrifices, just as the people brace for spring, with its flammable and suffocating sugar rain.

What Strange Paradise

What Strange Paradise PDF Author: Omar El Akkad
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525657916
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
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.

Birds of a Lesser Paradise

Birds of a Lesser Paradise PDF Author: Megan Mayhew Bergman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451643357
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
From a prizewinning young writer whose stories have been anthologized in "The Best American Short Stories" and "New Stories from the South" comes a heartwarming and hugely appealing debut collection that explores the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world.

Tastes of Paradise

Tastes of Paradise PDF Author: Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780679744382
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
From the extravagant use of pepper in the Middle Ages to the Protestant bourgeoisie's love of coffee to the reason why fashionable Europeans stopped sniffing tobacco and starting smoking it, Schivelbusch looks at how the appetite for pleasure transformed the social structure of the Old World. Illustrations.

Soldiers of Salamis

Soldiers of Salamis PDF Author: Javier Cercas
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1984899902
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel of the Spanish Civil War, a modern classic, and a searing exploration of the unknowability of history, by the acclaimed author of Outlaws In the waning days of the Spanish Civil War, an unknown militiaman discovered a Nationalist prisoner who had fled a firing squad and taken refuge in the forest. But instead of killing him, the soldier simply turned and walked away. The prisoner, Rafael Sánchez Mazas—writer, fascist, and founder of the Spanish Falange—went on to become a national hero and ultimately a minister in Franco's first government. The soldier disappeared into history. Sixty years later, Javier Cercas—or at least, a character who shares his name—sifts through the evidence to establish what really happened that day. Who was the soldier? Why didn't he shoot? And who was the true hero in the story? Every answer yields another question in this powerful and elegantly constructed novel about truth, memory, and war.

A Paradise Built in Hell

A Paradise Built in Hell PDF Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101459018
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The author of Men Explain Things to Me explores the moments of altruism and generosity that arise in the aftermath of disaster Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster? whether manmade or natural?people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities? In A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.

The True History of Paradise

The True History of Paradise PDF Author: Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307755592
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
It is 1981. Jean Landing secretly plans to flee her beloved Jamaica–the only home her family has ever known, a place now rife with political turmoil. But before she can make her final preparations, she receives devastating news: Lana, her sister, is dead. The country’s state of emergency leaves no time to arrange a proper funeral. Even Jean’s mother, Monica, who hadn’t spoken to Lana in more than a decade, cannot fully embrace her grief. The tragedy only underscores Jean’s need to leave an island that holds no promise of a future. Her harrowing journey to freedom across a battered landscape takes Jean through a terrain of memories: of her childhood, with a detached mother at odds with an adoring father, of her complex bond with Lana, and of the friends and lovers who have shaped and shared her days. Epic in scope, The True History of Paradise poignantly portrays the complexities of family and racial identity in a troubled Eden.

An Infidel in Paradise

An Infidel in Paradise PDF Author: S.J. Laidlaw
Publisher: Tundra Books
ISBN: 1770493050
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Set in Pakistan, this is the story of a teen girl living with her mother and siblings in a diplomatic compound. As if getting used to another new country and set of customs and friends isn't enough, she must cope with an increasingly tense political situation that becomes dangerous with alarming speed. Her life and those of her sister and brother depend on her resourcefulness and the unexpected help of an enigmatic Muslim classmate.

Birds of Paradise Lost

Birds of Paradise Lost PDF Author: Andrew Lam
Publisher: Red Hen Press
ISBN: 1597092789
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
From the award-winning author of Perfume Dreams, a collection of thirteen short stories following Vietnamese immigrants new to the United States. The thirteen stories in Birds of Paradise Lost shimmer with humor and pathos as they chronicle the anguish and joy and bravery of America’s newest Americans, the troubled lives of those who fled Vietnam and remade themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area. The past—memories of war and its aftermath, of murder, arrest, re-education camps and new economic zones, of escape and shipwreck and atrocity—is ever present in these wise and compassionate stories. It plays itself out in surprising ways in the lives of people who thought they had moved beyond the nightmares of war and exodus. It comes back on TV in the form of a confession from a cannibal; it enters the Vietnamese restaurant as a Vietnam Vet with a shameful secret; it articulates itself in the peculiar tics of a man with Tourette’s Syndrome who struggles to deal with a profound tragedy. Birds of Paradise Lost is an emotional tour de force, intricately rendering the false starts and revelations in the struggle for integration, and in so doing, the human heart. *Finalist for the California Book Award* “His stories are elegant and humane and funny and sad. Lam has instantly established himself as one of our finest fiction writers.” —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Perfume Mountain “Read Andrew Lam, and bask in his love of language, and his compassion for people, both those here and those far away.” —Maxine Hong Kingston, award-winning author of The Woman Warrior

Birds of Paradise: A Novel

Birds of Paradise: A Novel PDF Author: Diana Abu-Jaber
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393082946
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
“A full-course meal, a rich, complex and memorable story that will leave you lingering gratefully at [Abu-Jaber’s] table.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post At thirteen, Felice Muir ran away from home to punish herself for some horrible thing she had done—leaving a hole in the hearts of her pastry-chef mother, her real estate attorney father, and her foodie-entrepreneurial brother. After five years of scrounging for food, drugs, and shelter on Miami Beach, Felice is now turning eighteen, and she and the family she left behind must reckon with the consequences of her actions—and make life-affirming choices about what matters to them most, now and in the future.