Download or read book The Gift of Misfortune written by Joseph P. Policape and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2009-07-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summary T HE GIFT OF MISFORTUNE CHRONICLES THE STORY OF A YOUNG HAITIAN IMMIGRANT TORN BETWEEN HIS NATIVE LAND, WHICH HE LOVES UNCONDITIONALLY, AND AN ADOPTED COUNTRY THAT HE FALLS IN LOVE WITH AT FIRST SIGHT. However, once he reluctantly arrives in his new country, in spite of himself, he loves it, but three major obstacles surface that alter his attitudes and eventually his life: his natural kinship with the Christian notion of poverty and wealth; his encounter with his adopted father/friend, Thomas, who is very critical of America; and the most important, the obstacle that makes him change his attitude about American culture and democracyhis malevolent and greedy wife, Monica. Politics, religion, fear, deception, greed, courage, and revelation all come to play in the journey of Armand, who brings a willing sister to the United States while his heart and soul is still in Haiti. During Haitis most turbulent recent times, Armand and sister, Deborah, become concerned about the chaos that is claiming the streets of Port-au-Prince. The fear, violence, murder, and hopelessness were affecting not only the poor and desperate but the wealthy and desperate as well. Deborah wants to go, and so one morning, she wakes up in her comfortable house. After hearing another story of one of her friends put to death because they will not join the military of Baby Doc (Jean-Claude Duvalier), she wants to go out of Haiti as both patriot and citizen. Deborah cannot go anywhere without her brother, Armand, and though he too is frightened, he feels that he cant leave Haiti. They are not involved in politics, but are religious: Armand, fundamentalist Protestant; and Deborah, traditional Catholic. They are still thrust into the politics of the country. They attend the finest school in Haiti, and they attend this school with the countrys elite who are pro-Duvalier. With warring factions, violence spurting all around them, certain friends disappearing overnight, never to return, and some friends demanding them to choose between their neutral political life, and the need for them to get involved in the Duvalier government, and concerns for Deborahs freedom since an important Duvalier official might want Deborah for his son, they hatch a plan to escape to the United States of America. In the beginning, it is Deborah, and not Armand, who wanted to abandon Haiti, but Armand has to go to protect his sister and make sure she got there safely. After making a careful trip to Bainet to get money from their very wealthy parents, they leave for the United States of America. Armand leaves with a heavy heart because, unlike Deborah, he wanted to stay in Haiti to do religious work, which would end up looking like political work since Armand has a close connection and passion for the poor. But because of family and tradition, Deborah becomes the major priority. Armand starts a whole new journey when he gets on that plane to the United States and lands in New York City, where his relatives and friends are awaiting him and Deborah. In New York City, he is immediately thrown into a quandary. Though he misses Haiti, he excitingly falls in love with the United States and New York City. On his beginning U.S. journey, he is introduced to the two most important people in his life and the two most important characters in the novel. Also, he is introduced to two of the most important persons he met in his life in the United States: Thomas, a radical Christian socialist who constantly places the United States into the glaring light of expectation and reality and compels Armand to go beyond his strict religious beliefs to uncover deeper truth about a society that worships the material greed; and the other person is Monica, a young woman of questionable reputation, but has sterling charm, a charm that, in spite of all of the warning of Armands family and church friends, got Armand to marry her. The novel unfolds with these two polar, opposite ch

Download or read book Divine Misfortune written by A. Lee Martinez and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divine Misfortune is a story of gods and mortals -- -in worship, in love, and at parties. Teri and Phil had never needed their own personal god. But when Phil is passed up for a promotion -- again-it's time to take matters into their own hands. And look online. Choosing a god isn't as simple as you would think. There are too many choices; and they often have very hefty prices for their eternal devotion: blood, money, sacrifices, and vows of chastity. But then they found Luka, raccoon god of prosperity. All he wants is a small cut of their good fortune. Oh -- and can he crash on their couch for a few days? Throw in a heartbroken love goddess and an ancient deity bent on revenge and not even the gods can save Teri and Phil.

Download or read book Isle of Misfortune written by Geoffrey Leavenworth and published by TCU Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gordo, a freelance writer, is married to Ana, an attorney. The couple has built a genteel life in the Oleander City. Sons Jake and Sam attend private schools, the family is active in the community, life is good.".

Download or read book Misfortune Cookies written by Linda P. Kozar and published by Barbour Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WHEN EVEN THE FORTUNE COOKIES HINT AT CALAMITY AHEAD, WATCH OUT! Best friends Sue Jan and Lovita run a beauty shop/boutique in the little West Texas town of Wachita. They share a passion for food and fun. But one day, over lunch in a Chinese restaurant, Lovita opens a fortune cookie with a sinister message: "Your father was murdered. . ." a clue that leads them to God, an international spy ring, and several devastatingly handsome strangers. A most unlikely pair of detectives, these girlfriends "comb" the countryside with style, sarcasm, and lots of Szechwan. This tale is like good take-out food--definitely worth bringing home.

Download or read book Misfortune s Daughters written by Joan Collins and published by Robson Books Limited. This book was released on 2005-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: High charged family saga rich with sibling rivalry, insatiable ambition, eroticism and addiction. The story revovles around two sisters, Venetia and Atlanta, and traces the sisters' desperate struggles to find their own individual identities.Laura Marlowe the mother, is a Hollywood movie star and their father is Greek billionaire Nicholas Stephanolooplis a cold and cruel tycoon who controls and dominates his women as ruthlessly as he does his international business empire.

Download or read book Schadenfreude written by Wilco W. van Dijk and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-24 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When someone suffers a mishap, a setback or a downfall, we sometimes find ourselves experiencing schadenfreude - an emotion defined as deriving pleasure from another's misfortune. Schadenfreude is a common experience and an emotion which is seemingly inherent to social being. This book offers a comprehensive summary of current theoretical and empirical work on schadenfreude from psychological, philosophical and other scientific perspectives. The chapters explore justice as an underlying motive for schadenfreude, and the role played by social comparison processes and envy in evoking pleasure at the misfortunes of others in interpersonal relations. Schadenfreude is also described as a common phenomenon in intergroup relations. This is a compelling volume on a fascinating subject matter that aims to increase our understanding of the nature of this emotion and the role it plays in social relations.

Download or read book Schadenfreude written by Tiffany Watt Smith and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entertaining and insightful exploration of schadenfreude: the deliciously dark and complex joy we've all felt, from time to time, at news of others' misfortunes. You might feel schadenfreude when... the boss calls himself "Head of Pubic Services" on an important letter a cool guy swings back on his chair, and it tips over. a Celebrity Vegan is caught in the cheese aisle. an aggressive driver cuts you off -- and then gets pulled over. your co-worker heats up fish in the microwave, then gets food poisoning. an urban unicyclist almost collides with a parked car. someone cuts the line for the ATM -- and then it swallows their card. your effortlessly attractive friend gets dumped. We all know the pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune. The Germans named this furtive delight in another's failure schadenfreude (from schaden damage, and freude, joy), and it has perplexed philosophers and psychologists for centuries. Why can it be so satisfying to witness another's distress? And what, if anything, should we do about it? Schadenfreude illuminates this hidden emotion, inviting readers to reflect on its pleasures, and how we use other people's miseries to feel better about ourselves. Written in an exploratory, evocative form, it weaves examples from literature, philosophy, film, and music together with personal observation and historical and cultural analysis. And in today's world of polarized politics, twitter trolls and "sidebars of shame," it couldn't be timelier. Engaging, insightful, and entertaining, Schadenfreude makes the case for thinking afresh about the role this much-maligned emotion plays in our lives -- perhaps even embracing it.

Download or read book The Misfortune of Marion Palm written by Emily Culliton and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2017 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wildly entertaining debut about a Brooklyn Heights wife and mother who has embezzled a small fortune from her children's private school and makes a run for it, leaving behind her trust fund poet husband, his maybe-secret lover, her two daughters, and a school board who will do anything to find her. Marion Palm prefers not to think of herself as a thief but rather "a woman who embezzles." Over the years she has managed to steal $180,000 from her daughters' private school, money that has paid for European vacations, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, and perpetually unused state-of-the-art exercise equipment. But, now, when the school faces an audit, Marion pulls piles of rubber-banded cash from their basement hiding places and flees, leaving her family to grapple with the baffled detectives, the irate school board, and the mother-shaped hole in their house. Told from the points of view of Nathan, Marion's husband, heir to a long-diminished family fortune; Ginny, Marion's teenage daughter who falls helplessly in love at the slightest provocation; Jane, Marion's youngest who is obsessed with a missing person of her own; and Marion herself, on the lam--and hiding in plain sight.

Download or read book My Summer of Love and Misfortune written by Lindsay Wong and published by Simon Pulse. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crazy Rich Asians meets Love & Gelato in this hilarious, quirky novel about a Chinese-American teen who is thrust into the decadent world of Beijing high society when she is sent away to spend the summer in China. Iris Wang is having a bit of a rough start to her summer: Her boyfriend cheated on her, she didn’t get into any colleges, and she has no idea who she is or what she wants to do with her life. She’s always felt torn about being Chinese-American, feeling neither Chinese nor American enough to claim either identity. She’s just a sad pizza combo from Domino’s, as far as she’s concerned. In an attempt to snap her out of her funk, Iris’s parents send her away to visit family in Beijing, with the hopes that Iris would “reconnect with her culture” and “find herself.” Iris resents the condescension, but even she admits that this might be a good opportunity to hit the reset button on the apocalyptic disaster that has become her life. With this trip, Iris expects to eat a few dumplings, meet some family, and visit a tourist hotspot or two. Instead, she gets swept up in the ridiculous, opulent world of Beijing’s wealthy elite, leading her to unexpected and extraordinary discoveries about her family, her future, and herself.

Download or read book A Welcome Misfortune written by Kay Bratt and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-25 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Maximizing Misfortune written by Jerome Edmondson and published by Treasure House. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maximizing Misfortune can help erase the pain of personal loss and disappointment. Readers can learn how to transform their misfortunes into fortunes, spiritually and materially, while climbing from the depths of rejection and failure to a place of acceptance and success.

Download or read book A Case of Misfortune The Violet Veil Mysteries Book 2 written by Sophie Cleverly and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2022-01-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second title in this breakout new detective series, from the author of the spine-tingling Scarlet and Ivy series.

Download or read book Misfortune written by Wesley Stace and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-07-31 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lord Loveall, heretofore heirless lord of the sprawling Love Hall, is the richest man in England. He arrives home one morning with a most unusual package - a baby that he presents as the inheritor to the family name and fortune. In honor of his beloved sister, who died young, Loveall names the baby Rose. The household, relieved at the continuation of the Loveall line, ignores the fact that this Rose has a thorn...that she is, in fact, a boy. Rose grows up with the two servant children who are her only friends, blissfully unaware of her own gender, casually hitting boundaries at Love Hall's yearly cricket game and learning to shave even as she continues to wear more and more elaborate dresses. Until, of course, the fateful day when Rose's world comes crashing down around her, and she is banished from Love Hall as an impostor by those who would claim her place as heir.

Download or read book Mis fortune written by Melissa Haag and published by Melissa Haag. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They kept me prisoner for four years, using me for my predictions. They thought they had me subdued, meekly following orders, but they were wrong. I was waiting for a chance to run. I had to be careful, though. They had my brothers, and the leader wasn’t exactly human. The sudden death of her stepfather gives Michelle the only chance she may ever have to escape, and she takes it. She needs a place to hide and someone to listen to her predictions so her head doesn’t explode. Yet, there’s nowhere she can hide and no one to protect her from the monsters pursuing her. Then, she meets Emmitt. He’s calm, kind, caring…and a werewolf. If she can find a way to trust him, he might be able to do more than just keep her safe. He might be the one who can help her fight for answers about her gift and the other women like her.

Download or read book A Dictionary of the English Language in which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals and Illustrated in Their Different Significations Together with a History of the Language and an English Grammar By Samuel Johnson Whith Numerous Corrections and with the Addition of Several Thousand Words by the Rev H J Todd In Four Volumes Vol 1 4 written by and published by . This book was released on 1818 with total page 1090 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Question of the Gift written by Mark Osteen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Question of the Gift is the first collection of new interdisciplinary essays on the gift. Bringing together scholars from a variety of fields, including anthropology, literary criticism, economics, philosophy and classics, it provides new paradigms and poses new questions concerning the theory and practice of gift exchange. In addressing these questions, contributors not only challenge the conventions of their fields, but also combine ideas and methods from both the social sciences and humanities to forge innovative ways of confronting this universal phenomenon.

Download or read book Envy Poison and Death written by Esther Eidinow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores three trials conducted in Athens in the fourth century BCE; the defendants were all women charged with undertaking ritual activities, but much of the evidence remains a mystery. The author reveals how these trials provide a vivid glimpse of the socio-political environment of Athens during the early-mid fourth century BCE.