Rushing to Paradise

Rushing to Paradise
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1996-04-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312134150

The rise and fall of a cult leader. After losing her medical license, Dr. Barbara Rafferty turns environmentalist to protest French nuclear testing in the Pacific. The campaign attracts media attention, money flows and she sets up a commune on an atoll, an experiment which ends in bloodshed

Rushing to Paradise: A Novel

Rushing to Paradise: A Novel
Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2013-02-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0871403374

Led by a charismatic and slightly unhinged woman, a group of environmentalists win control over a small atoll in the Pacific and sets up a utopian community. Breeding other threatened species and among themselves, these homesteaders slowly transform an Eden of their very own into a much darker place.

Paradise

Paradise
Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0804169888

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

Gates of Paradise

Gates of Paradise
Author: V.C. Andrews
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2009-11-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439187762

Now a major Lifetime movie event, from New York Times bestselling author and literary phenomenon V.C. Andrews (Flowers in the Attic, My Sweet Audrina) comes the fourth installment in the classic story of the Casteel family saga. Stunned by tragedy, a young woman finds herself desperate and alone, and clinging to the frailest of dreams. Can Heaven’s daughter find the inner strength to survive? The car crash that killed Heaven and Logan left Annie Casteel Stonewall orphaned and crippled. Whisked off to Farthinggale Manor by the possessive Tony Tatterton, Annie pines for her lost family, but especially for Luke, her half-brother. Friend of her childhood, her fantasy prince, her loving confidante…without the warm glow of Luke’s love, she is lost in the shadows of despair. When Annie discovers Troy’s cottage hidden in Farthinggale’s woods, the mystery of her past deepens. And even as she yearns to see Luke again, her hopes and dreams are darkened by the sinister Casteel spell…treacherous, powerful, and evil.

Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy

Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy
Author: Dani Anguiano
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1324005157

The harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century. On November 8, 2018, the ferocious Camp Fire razed nearly every home in Paradise, California, and killed at least 85 people. Journalists Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano reported on Paradise from the day the fire began and conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents, firefighters and police, and scientific experts. Fire in Paradise is their dramatic narrative of the disaster and an unforgettable story of an American town at the forefront of the climate emergency.

Criminal Paradise

Criminal Paradise
Author: Steven M. Thomas
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2008-02-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345504909

The literature of larceny welcomes a newcomer with some serious chops, as Steven M. Thomas muscles his way to a place at the table–elbow-to-elbow with Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen–courtesy of a harrowing, hilarious, two-fisted, hard-boiled thriller that’s pure heaven for anyone who loves a hell of a crime novel. Robert Rivers is a crook. No excuses, no apologies. Breaking the law is his calling, crime is his rush, capers his reason for getting up in the morning and staying up late at night. But he’s a thief with honor, plotting and pulling off carefully choreographed heists where no shots are fired, no blood is spilled, and nobody gets hurt . . . except in the wallet. After a brief stint behind bars back in the day, he’s managed to carve out a comfortable existence, cheerfully plundering the sunny Southern California community whose streets he tools in the tweaked-out Cadillac DeVille that’s his pride and joy. But now Rob (whose name has become ironic) is pushing forty, and–like his trusty partner, Switch, who’s got a pregnant girlfriend and a hefty stash of loot–he’s thinking about quitting the game. But then he and Switch, pulling their latest Butch and Sundance, score a payday that could end up costing them plenty. Inside a strongbox packed with greenbacks rests a disturbing black-and-white photo of a beautiful young girl, eyes full of fear as naked as she is. It’s an image that Rob can’t shake, and a wake-up call: There are rules even he won’t break. It’s also his one-way ticket into the underbelly of the underworld–a lethal landscape of sex slaves, sadistic psychopaths, and sawed-off shotguns, where honor is for fools, and trust is for suckers, where very bad people do even worse things and nice guys don’t finish at all. They just get finished off. With its alluring setting, quirky characters, and restrained and subtle prose, Criminal Paradise has something for every thriller fan. And with sharp natural instincts and writing skills as serious as his humor is sly, Steven M. Thomas shows as much promise as any author on the suspense scene.

Birds of Paradise

Birds of Paradise
Author: Anne Malcom
Publisher: Anne Malcom
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-03-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1386117633

He collected beautiful things. Rare things. Ripped them out of their natural environment and preserved them in all of their dead splendor. The problem was I wasn't beautiful. I was all of the hideous and ugly realities of the world packaged into one broken human being. He came to kill me. That was his business. Death. He ripped me out of my natural environment, the prison I'd created, and locked me away with all of his beautiful dead things. I hated him. I still hate him. But if I was given the choice and the ability to leave this cage, come back to life, I'd stay dead. In all of my hideous splendor. Because my murderer can only possess dead things. And I can only be possessed by someone more broken and ugly than me.

A Treacherous Paradise

A Treacherous Paradise
Author: Henning Mankell
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2013-07-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307362450

From the internationally acclaimed author of the Wallander crime series, a dramatic new standalone novel set in turn-of-the-century Sweden and Mozambique, whose indomitable female protagonist is awoken from naiveté by her exposure to racism, and by her own unexpected inner strengths. Cold and poverty define Hanna Renström's childhood in remote northern Sweden, and in 1905, at 19, she boards a ship for Australia in hope of a better life. But none of her hopes--or fears--prepares her for the life she will lead. After 2 brief marriages, she finds herself a widow twice over, and the owner of a bordello in Portuguese East Africa, a world where colonialism and white supremacy rule, where she is isolated within society by her profession and her sex, and, among the bordello's black prostitutes, by her colour. As Hanna's story unfurls over the next several years, we watch her in this "treacherous paradise," as she wrestles with a constant, wrenching loneliness and with the racism she's meant to unthinkingly adopt. And as her life becomes increasingly intertwined with the prostitutes, she moves inexorably toward the moment when she will make a decision that defies every expectation society has of her, and, more importantly, those she has of herself.