Slipping into Paradise

Slipping into Paradise
Author: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2008-12-30
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0307491048

In the tradition of Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence, here is Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s ode to his personal paradise–his adopted home, New Zealand. After living in California, why did Masson settle– out of all the places on earth–in such a faraway land? It turns out that while visiting a beautiful sandy beach just fifteen minutes from bustling Auckland, Masson and his family were utterly seduced by the exotic locale. There was little deliberation. This place, surrounded by lush forest on a bay dotted with volcanic islands, would be their new home. Masson takes readers on a remarkable journey to another world, as he and his family “slip into” the paradise that is New Zealand. For anyone who has ever dreamed of finding utopia, Masson reveals a country where neighbors talk to one another and provide a sense of real community–rarely, outside of the big cities, locking their doors–and where politics are as mellow as the weather. New Zealand is also a land of spectacular scenery, made even more famous for being the shooting location for the Lord of the Rings films. The flora is plentiful. Mangroves, banana plants, papaya trees, and more than ten thousand species of ferns grow wild and freely. The fauna is benign. There are no snakes, tarantulas, or scorpions. Children can walk to school barefoot without a care– there is nothing to sting them, bite them, or give them a rash. In the blue waters near the lush coastline, dolphins and orcas abound. While describing his love affair with the country and his affinity for its citizens, Masson reflects on the meaning of home, the importance of acting on intuition, and what happens when we lose our connection to the place we live in. Responding to an impulse, Masson reveals, he realized a dream. Featuring a its glossary of phrases used by New Zealanders and important Maori words, as well as the author’s recommended travel itinerary, Slipping into Paradise is ideal for anyone planning a visit to this exquisite land. Full of photographs, delightful anecdotes, and little-known facts (jogging, for example, was invented in New Zealand), Slipping into Paradise is also a book for those who fantasize about dramatically changing their lives–and who imagine something better for themselves. Jeffrey Masson’s message: New Zealand awaits.

Slipping Into Paradise

Slipping Into Paradise
Author: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2004
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9780345466143

A tribute to the author's adopted home in New Zealand describes his decision to relocate to a lush bay area near Auckland, where his family and he thrived in the wake of its natural flora and fauna, dolphin-filled waters, and wildlife. By the author of The Pig Who Sang to the Moon.

Paradise Rot

Paradise Rot
Author: Jenny Hval
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 119
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 178663385X

Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo's sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh. This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.

Stumbling into Paradise

Stumbling into Paradise
Author: Steve Osman
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2010-06-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1453508007

In 1989 just as tourism was beginning in Costa Rica, the author moved to the tropics with his wife and two young daughters. This is the saga of their often humorous adventures in their new found paradise. The Costa Rican saying pura vida "pure life" summed up their hopes, but they soon learned that there's no such thing as heaven on earth. This is a must read for those contemplating dropping out to live on a tropical beach. Steve and Mary Lou now live in Montana and maintain their home in Manuel Antonio as a vacation rental, visiting as tourists when they can.

In Paradise

In Paradise
Author: Peter Matthiessen
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2015-02-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1594633525

The bestselling final novel by a writer of incomparable range, power, and achievement, a three-time winner of the National Book Award. Peter Matthiessen was a literary legend, the author of more than thirty acclaimed books. In this, his final novel, he confronts the legacy of evil, and our unquenchable desire to wrest good from it. One week in late autumn of 1996, a group gathers at the site of a former death camp. They offer prayer at the crematoria and meditate in all weathers on the selection platform. They eat and sleep in the sparse quarters of the Nazi officers who, half a century before, sent more than a million Jews in this camp to their deaths. Clements Olin has joined them, in order to complete his research on the strange suicide of a survivor. As the days pass, tensions both political and personal surface among the participants, stripping away any easy pretense to resolution or healing. Caught in the grip of emotions and impulses of bewildering intensity, Olin is forced to abandon his observer’s role and to bear witness, not only to his family’s ambiguous history but to his own. Profoundly thought-provoking, In Paradise is a fitting coda to the luminous career of a writer who was “for all readers. He was for the world” (National Geographic).

An Hour in Paradise: Stories

An Hour in Paradise: Stories
Author: Joan Leegant
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2010-08-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 039334018X

"Joan Leegant writes stories that last, stories that take root in the soul."—Bret Lott, author of Jewel Joan Leegant's collection takes its title from the Yiddish proverb "Even an hour in Paradise is worthwhile." In settings from Jerusalem to Queens, from Hollywood's outskirts to Sarasota, Florida, the characters in this mesmerizing debut collection are drawn to the seductions of religion, soldiering on in search of divine and human connection. A former drug dealer turned yeshiva student faces his past with a dying AIDS patient. A disaffected American in the ancient city of Safed ventures into Kabbalist mysticism and gets more than he bargained for. A rabbi whose morning minyan is visited by a pair of Siamese twins considers the possibility that his guests are not mere mortals. An aging Jerusalemite chronicles his country's changes during the biblical year of rest. By turns poignant and comic, unflinching and compassionate—with a dose of fabulist daring—An Hour in Paradise explores the dangers and unforeseen rewards of our most fundamental longings.

A Beginner's Guide to Paradise

A Beginner's Guide to Paradise
Author: Alex Sheshunoff
Publisher: Berkley
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2015
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0451475860

In a true story of a quarter-life crisis, the author shares his experiences living on the remote Pacific island of Yap, covering such topics as loincloth-tying, monkey-diapering, and the effects of global capitalism.

Apocalypse in Paradise

Apocalypse in Paradise
Author: Nancy E. Rose
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2014-04-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1493154001

Apocalypse in Paradise is a supernatural story that is a manifestation of the end time prophecies from the Word. Themes in modern society that are most troubling are reflected in this supernatural thriller. These disturbing events speak to the presence of evil in our society and around the globe. Issues like genocide, racism, white supremacy, gun proliferation, severely debilitating drug abuse, increased epidemics of infectious diseases, pedophilia, sexual assault, and the lack of a moral compass in modern society. Just like Babylon. The story takes place on a tropical island that has a military installation with a diabolical colonel, who like Captain Cook, tries to destroy the Polynesian islanders. Furthermore, he has his sights set on the rest of mankind. Colonel Strauss, like Hitler before him, wants to fully restore the Aryan race. Disgusted about the election of an African American president, Colonel Strauss is bent on ridding the world of the colored people, black and brown. And let’s not forget the Jews. They’d missed some in the gas chambers and death camps. His diabolical plan is to insert a horrible plague-a fatal disease-into humanity. The only hope is a life-saving vaccine that will only be given to white people. The story begins with a prologue that highlights the catastrophic events occurring on the beautiful tropical island called Nardei (Nar-day), located in the southern Pacific Ocean, as a result of the implementation of Colonel Strauss’s diabolical plan. It has been twenty-nine days since the ill-fated luxury ocean liner, Tropicana, left the port of Honolulu. Most of the passengers were either sick or dead. Kate, the nurse from the cruise ship, was now sick too. She still could not believe that evil could exist in a place so beautiful that it had been compared to the Garden of Eden. In this majestic setting, evil was running amok. And why not? Lucifer could quietly get his hold on the world from such a remote location. A sneak attack, if you will. Kate, the nurse on the Tropicana, has just found love with a Hawaiian warrior named Kimo, the leader of the island’s people. And sadly, now she was dying of the sickness. She knows that the end draws near. The evil present on the island is reminiscent of the days of Captain Cook, when he sailed into Kealakekua Bay in 1788 and exploited the island’s people. Ghastly incidents occurred, like decapitations, mutilations, human sacrifices, and rape of women and children, darkening the sunny days that were once bright and majestic in this tropical paradise. Now history was repeating itself. Today, the village is burning. Once again, the decapitation of the warrior men was happening. The heads were stuck on stakes in front of the village heiau, an ancient temple of worship. The same demon in Cook’s day is orchestrating the unfolding calamity on Nardei—a horror so great that scores of local people are taking their own lives, jumping from the high cliffs into the raging ocean crashing below on sharp outcroppings of rocks, death by drowning. Kate was not going to give in to the compulsion to commit suicide. Kimo, her new love, and the other village men are currently on a mission to invade and occupy the military installation to steal the life-saving vaccine. They dared to enter the lair of the beast. Colonel Strauss, a Nazi, a white supremacist, has a plan to restore the Aryan nation. He intends to destroy not only the island but he seeks to impose the eugenic goals of Adolf Hitler. Would Kimo and his men really be able to defeat the military of the United States? The odds were against them. Pastor Kua, the village preacher, joins Kate on the beach where she is watching the magenta sunset. Would it be her last? After all, she has the sickness. Pustules, sores that were bleeding, covered most of her body. She was already experiencing the hemorrhaging from her eyes, nose, and mouth. It gave her a dead vampire look. Despite one disaster after another, Pastor and Kat

Last Day in Paradise

Last Day in Paradise
Author: Robert K. Swisher Jr.
Publisher: Sunstone Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2020-08-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1611395976

Banjo Ortega, an old Mexican bandit who hates white people, and Rodney Slugger, a down on his luck white cowboy from Montana, are both men who know they are living relics of the old West. But they must hang onto what they are no matter the hardships. Banjo Ortega is 85 years old and scratches out a living on 80 acres of land in New Mexico that has been in his family for generations. William Cook, the new owner of the 167,000 acre Last Day in Paradise Ranch, wants Banjo's land for a subdivision and fences off a tiny trickle of water that Banjo and his ancestors used to water their few sheep. But Banjo will not sell. They must kill him. Rodney Slugger becomes the foreman of the Last Day in Paradise Ranch and meets Banjo when he has to fix the fence that Banjo keeps cutting so his sheep can drink. What first starts out as hatred slowly turns into a deep friendship. Together they fight the efforts of Mr. Cook and his gangsters to buy Banjo's land. This moving novel about the shrinking west, greed, love, devotion, and murder makes a statement that all mankind should have the right to live the way they choose and can work through their differences.

A Beast in Paradise

A Beast in Paradise
Author: Cécile Coulon
Publisher: Europa Editions
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1609456483

A French bestseller and winner of the Le Monde Literary Prize. A “powerful, feverish” novel about a lineage of women possessed by their land (Femme Actuelle). Emilienne’s life is Paradise, her isolated farm at the end of a winding path. After the sudden death of her daughter and son-in-law, this is where she farms alone, with her courage and her land as her only resources, along with her two little grandchildren: Blanche and Gabriel. As seasons pass, Blanche grows older and develops an even stronger connection to her home and the generations of women who have guarded it, like her mother and grandmother before her. When she meets Alexandre, Blanche falls into a devastatingly deep love from which she can never recover. Alexandre, devoured by his ambition, wishes to move to the city to make a name for himself, while the passion Blanche dedicates to Paradise dominates her completely. Almost immediately, their differences become irreconcilable, tearing their worlds apart. Years later, when Alexandre shows up once again on her doorstep, ingratiating himself back into her life, Blanche believes that now she can finally be happy again. But all is not what it seems when there is a darkness lurking at every corner—and Blanche would do anything to protect Paradise. “Coulon’s new novel gives an enthralling voice to the rural world.” —La Croix “A harsh and combative novel which pays homage to the courage and persistence of women to stay alive and standing. Readers will emerge shattered and nourished with an undeniable and mysterious energy.” —Le Parisien “This sensual, bold novel will surprise and delight.” —Publishers Weekly “A quiet tale of love and vengeance.” —Kirkus Reviews