Showing results for "Paradiso" in Literature & Fiction

I never realized how much I wanted to live until the choice was no longer mine. I’ve spent my entire life unraveling mysteries of the human mind as a police psychologist, but somehow, I’ve ended up here: drunk, mostly naked, and locked out of my own house in the rain. I think I might be an alcoholic. I refuse to enter rehab like my station chief wants. I’ll do it my way, by hiking Haleakala on Maui and kicking the booze on my own in the crater.

Italy, 1937. In a tiny village in rural Lombardy, Graziella Ponti is born into a loving family. Though they are not rich and life is full of challenges, Graziella and her family are content and safe, surrounded by the tightly knit community of Pieve Santa Clara. But when the shadow of World War Two falls across the village with the arrival of Nazi soldiers, nothing in young Graziella’s life will ever be the same again.

While the crew of the starship Flying Dutchman have been trying to assure that hostile aliens do not have access to Earth, the UN Expeditionary Force has been stranded on the planet they nicknamed "Paradise". The Flying Dutchman is headed back out on another mission, and the UN wants the ship to find out the status of the humans on Paradise. But Colonel Joe Bishop warns that they might not like what they find, and they can't do anything about it without endangering Earth.

John Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny.

Claire Leccese is a romance novelist who writes happy endings for a living. Quite ironic, since she’s spent a lifetime battling demons from childhood trauma and has been anything but happy. She is plagued by self-doubt and an inability to trust people who claim to love her. Along comes Sydney Howard, a younger successful artist who rocks Claire’s world and “lit an agreeable blaze inside my belly…” However, as Sydney falls in love with the older woman, Claire’s fears overtake her and she runs away, vowing never to see Sydney again.

If the Roaring Twenties are remembered as the era of "flaming youth," it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who lit the fire. His semiautobiographical first novel, This Side of Paradise, became an instant bestseller and established an image of seemingly carefree, party-mad young men and women out to create a new morality for a new, post-war America.

Twenty-nine-year-old workaholic Libby Dewitt lives by the motto "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail." She's finally about to start her dream life with her fiance, Richard Tomy. Together, they're the perfect power couple - right down to the fact that he's agreed to use their honeymoon to help further her career in mergers and acquisitions. But 10 minutes before the wedding, her dreams dissolve via text message. Libby escapes to Paradise Bay alone. She's got two goals for her trip: devise a plan to get Richard back and convince resort owner Harrison Banks to sell his property.

Set in Southern California, Three Women in Paradise tells the story of passionate student Elektra Brooke. When Elektra becomes entangled in a mesmerizing romance with her enigmatic medieval poetry professor, Dr. Gina Caldwell, she believes she’s discovered paradise. However, this idyllic world rapidly spirals into a nightmarish inferno. Elektra enters a world where the boundary between life and death is terrifyingly thin. Guided by the ancient poet Virgil, she embarks on a chilling journey mirroring Dante’s descent into the Inferno, each step pulling her deeper into the shadows.

In a world where a virus has spread turning most of the population into flesh-eating monsters, there are two friends partying it up in New Orleans when the infection hits. Far away from home, they are trapped and trying to make sense of all that has happened with the help of new friends and enemies along the way. Zombies aren't the only thing to fear.

In words remarkable for their richness of rhythm and imagery, Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall, and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men". Here, unabridged, and told with exceptional sensitivity and power by Anton Lesser, is the plight of Adam and Eve, the ambition and vengefulness of Satan and his cohorts.

Dante Alighieri's poetic masterpiece is a moving human drama, an unforgettable visionary journey through the infinite torment of Hell, up the arduous slopes of Purgatory, and on to the glorious realm of Paradise-the sphere of universal harmony and eternal salvation. One of the greatest works in literature, Dantes story-poem is an allegory that represents mankind as it exposes itself, by its merits or demerits, to the rewards or the punishments of justice.

Born in East Africa, Yusuf has few qualms about the journey he is to make. It never occurs to him to ask why he is accompanying Uncle Aziz or why the trip has been organised so suddenly, and he does not think to ask when he will be returning. But the truth is that his ‘uncle' is a rich and powerful merchant and Yusuf has been pawned to him to pay his father's debts. Paradise is a rich tapestry of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition, the story of a young boy's coming of age against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation's shifting mood and manners after World War I. In Paradise Lost, David Brown contends that Fitzgerald's deepest allegiances were to a fading antebellum world he associated with his father's Chesapeake Bay roots. Yet as a midwesterner, an Irish Catholic, and a perpetually in-debt author, he felt like an outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts.

Julia Maguire can't wait to spend two weeks in Hawaii with her best friends. She's been dreaming about this trip for years and all she wants is to lay on a sandy beach with an icy cocktail in her hand. But those vacation goals change the moment she meets Reed Baxter. Reed is a busy doctor with family demands. She's in Hawaii to let go, not find love, and she's not interested in any commitment. Adding a little heat to the vacation seems like a good idea as long as there aren't expectations for anything more.

While the crew of the UN Expeditionary Force's pirate starship Flying Dutchman are enjoying a luxury vacation cruise (not!), UNEF troops are still stranded on an alien-controlled planet. Major Emily Perkins and her team are busy picking up the pieces, and it's not easy, because there is trouble on Paradise...

Four young women are brutally attacked in a convent near an all-black town in America in the mid-1970s. The inevitability of this attack, and the attempts to avert it, lie at the heart of Paradise. Spanning the birth of the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, the counter-culture and politics of the late 1970s, deftly manipulating past, present and future, this novel reveals the interior lives of the citizens of the town with astonishing clarity.

Escape from isolation and broaden your horizons with this audio collection of murder mysteries by Agatha Christie, read by David Suchet, television’s iconic Poirot for more than two decades. Train journeys through rolling countryside and cruises across the open ocean might sound exotic, but when murder strikes mid-journey, they’re anything but. Even on holiday, tensions can bubble beneath the surface, and when the end of the line leads to murder, everyone’s a suspect.

Peach Blossom Paradise, set at the time of the reform, is the story of Xiumi, the daughter of a wealthy landowner and former government official who falls prey to insanity and disappears. Days later, a man with a gold cicada in his pocket turns up at their family estate and is inexplicably welcomed as a relative.

When glamorous model Angel was forced to make a life-changing decision and choose between a Ethan, the laid-back Californian baseball player, and giving her marriage to football star Cal another go, many were stunned when she picked Ethan. But life in LA is good: Ethan adores her and Honey and their life could not be more glamorous.

In an alternate version of 1893 America, 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.