Download or read book The Havana Room written by Colin Harrison and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-02 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attorney Bill Wyeth agrees to help Jay Rainey, the friend of a Manhattan steakhouse manager, in concluding a real estate transaction, only to become entangled in the dangerous goings-on in the Havana Room, the steakhouse's private bar.
Download or read book The Havana Room written by Colin Harrison and published by Bloomsbury Paperbacks. This book was released on 2009-04-20 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Wyeth is a successful attorney with a wife and son. Then, in one devastating night, he loses everything- family, job, status. Moving out of his family home and into a lousy flat, he tramps around Manhattan in a suit and tie disguised as a businessman with a future. One rainy day, he wanders into an old-time steakhouse and becomes intrigued by the restaurant's sexy, intuitive manager, Allison, and by a virtually unnoticeable door. It leads down to the mysterious Havana Room which only the privileged can enter. Returning day after day, Bill gains Allison's confidence and is invited into the room, but he finds himself sucked into a dark and terrifying world. Now he will have to unlock the deadly secrets of the Havana Room in order to survive.
Download or read book The Havana Room written by Colin Harrison and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bill Wyeth is a real estate attorney in his late thirties who seems to have it all: a wonderful wife and son, a successful practice, and all the benefits wealth can bestow. Then, through a devastating twist of fate, he loses everything. Within weeks, he is unmoored and alone, drifting toward the city's darker corners. Wyeth is soon drawn to an old-time Manhattan steakhouse, where he becomes intrigued by the manager, Allison Sparks - sexy, complicated, and independent in all ways. Allison controls access to the restaurant's private bar, the Havana Room - and what goes on in there, he's told, is secret." "To impress Allison, Wyeth agrees to help her friend, Jay Rainey, conclude a last-minute midnight real estate transaction. But once he sees the players and the paperwork, Wyeth knows something is wrong. And before long, he's inextricably ensnared in Rainey's peculiar obsessions, which involve a Chilean businessman who feels he's been swindled, an old farmer frozen dead to a bulldozer, an outrageous black owner of a downtown hip-hop club, and a fourteen-year-old English girl. Only Rainey knows the connections between these people, which are revealed when Wyeth is finally admitted to the Havana Room where the survival of its occupants is most uncertain."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Havana Room written by Colin Harrison and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-04-17 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fallen New York lawyer unlocks a world of intrigue and murder in a mysterious steakhouse in this crime noir thriller by the author of Afterburn. Bill Wyeth is a rising real estate attorney living the lofty heights of success. Then a tragic accident claims everything he has: his family, his fortune, his Park Avenue apartment, his career. But this is Manhattan, and Bill has so much further to fall. His downward spiral lands him at the table of Allison Sparks, the dangerously alluring manager of a Midtown steakhouse. She needs a personal favor of him—to engineer a midnight trade-off in a shady multi-million-dollar real estate deal. For a man with nothing left to lose, the setup is too intriguing to refuse, and like Allison, too forbidden to resist. But her favor draws him deep into a web of sex, deception, and murder—and to a secret place at the back of the restaurant, the Havana Room, where a man might find both evil and redemption . . . A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, Colin Harrison’s The Havana Room is an intense and intoxicating thriller from a modern master of the New York noir.
Download or read book Havana Room the written by Colin Harrison and published by . This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his gripping new thriller, Harrison tells the story of a man who falls from the heights of power and wealth in New York, and finds himself in a dangerous and potentially lethal state of affairs.
Download or read book Havana Blues written by Pamela Ruiz and published by Assouline Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crumbling pastel-colored facades line its streets, parked vintage cars evoke times past, live music permeates the air. Welcome to Havana, home to an overwhelming energy. Situated along the Straits of Florida, the capital of Cuba has been through several identities: Spanish colonial settlement, mobster rule in the 1930s, glamour of the 1950s, Cuban revolution and, most recently, a cultural renaissance. Havana’s bold, provocative approach to art, cuisine and entertainment—as well as the eclectic blend of African, French, Spanish and North American influences—including its range of architecture styles from the sixteenth century to the modern day, confer this epic city with a legendary status on par with the world’s greatest cities. While some of the building are in disrepair, the beauty of the baroque, neoclassical and art deco features triumphs. The iconic Copa Room cabaret that hosted Ginger Rogers and Abbott and Costello still stands. The Gran Teatro de la Habana, built in the early twentieth century, is now home to the Cuban National Ballet. Habana Vieja is undergoing a massive restoration to its former glory. Havana could be seen as a work-in-progress, but it is more a testament to its never-ending determination to improve and progress, which might be the allure that attracts so many visitors. So take a seat at an authentic paladar (family-run restaurant) and enjoy the vibrant evolution of Havana.
Download or read book Waiting For Snow In Havana written by Carlos Eire and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other-but with certain differences. The neighbour's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates with fathers in the Batista government were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. At a home crammed with artifacts and paintings, portraits of Jesus spoke to him in dreams and nightmares. Then, in January 1959, the world changes: Batista is suddenly gone, a cigar-smoking guerrilla has taken his place, and Christmas is cancelled. The echo of firing squads is everywhere. And, one by one, the author's schoolmates begin to disappear-spirited away to the United States. Carlos will end up there himself, without his parents, never to see his father again. Narrated with the urgency of a confession, WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA is both an ode to a paradise lost and an exorcism. More than that, it captures the terrible beauty of those times in our lives when we are certain we have died-and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.
Download or read book Last Dance in Havana written by Eugene Robinson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.
Download or read book Next Year in Havana written by Chanel Cleeton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A HELLO SUNSHINE x REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK "A beautiful novel that's full of forbidden passions, family secrets and a lot of courage and sacrifice."--Reese Witherspoon After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution... Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary... Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.
Download or read book Cuban Revelations written by Marc Frank and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cuban Revelations, Marc Frank offers a first-hand account of daily life in Cuba at the turn of the twenty-first century, the start of a new and dramatic epoch for islanders and the Cuban diaspora. A U.S.-born journalist who has called Havana home for almost a quarter century, Frank observed in person the best days of the revolution, the fall of the Soviet Bloc, the great depression of the 1990s, the stepping aside of Fidel Castro, and the reforms now being devised by his brother. Examining the effects of U.S. policy toward Cuba, Frank analyzes why Cuba has entered an extraordinary, irreversible period of change and considers what the island's future holds. The enormous social engineering project taking place today under Raúl's leadership is fraught with many dangers, and Cuban Revelations follows the new leader's efforts to overcome bureaucratic resistance and the fears of a populace that stand in his way. In addition, Frank offers a colorful chronicle of his travels across the island's many and varied provinces, sharing candid interviews with people from all walks of life. He takes the reader outside the capital to reveal how ordinary Cubans live and what they are thinking and feeling as fifty-year-old social and economic taboos are broken. He shares his honest and unbiased observations on extraordinary positive developments in social matters, like healthcare and education, as well as on the inefficiencies in the Cuban economy.
Download or read book Dirty Havana Trilogy written by Pedro Juan Gutierrez and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2002-02-05 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Banned in Cuba but celebrated throughout the Spanish-speaking world, this picaresque novel in stories chronicles the misadventures of Pedro Juan, a former Cuban journalist living from hand to mouth in the squalor of contemporary Havana, half disgusted and half fascinated by the depths to which he has sunk. Like the lives of so many of his neighbors in the crumbling, once-elegant apartment houses that line Havana's waterfront, Pedro Juan's days and nights have been reduced by the so-called special times -- the harsh recession that followed the Soviet Union's collapse -- to the struggle of surviving the daily grit through the escapist pursuit of sex. Pedro Juan scrapes by under the shadow of hunger -- all the while observing his lovers and friends, strangers on the street, and their suffering with an unsentimental, mocking, yet sympathetic eye.
Download or read book Our Man in Havana written by Graham Greene and published by Collector's Library. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life in pre-revolutionary Cuba is not easy and James Wormold, a failing vacuum cleaner salesman, is struggling to fund the increasingly lavish lifestyle of his manipulative sixteen year-old daughter, Milly. So when an enigmatic Englishman offers him an extra income in return for a little spying, he is sorely tempted. But when the fake reports he's been sending to London start to come true, Havana suddenly becomes a very dangerous place indeed. Both a brilliant Cold War thriller and hilarious work of satire, Our Man in Havana is Graham Greene's classic tale of an accidental spy.
Download or read book Havana Lunar written by Robert Arellano and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edgar Award finalist: A “hypnotic” crime novel set in Cuba after the collapse of the USSR (Tim McLoughlin, author of Heart of the Old Country). One hungry, hallucinatory night in the dark heart of Havana, Mano Rodriguez, a young doctor with the revolutionary medical service, comes to the aid of a teenage jinetera named Julia. She takes refuge in his clinic to break away from the abusive chulo who prostituted her, and they form an unlikely allegiance that Mano thinks might save him from his twin burdens: the dead-end hospital assignment he was delegated after being blacklisted by the Cuban Communist Party, and a Palo Monte curse on his love life commissioned by a vengeful ex-wife. But when the pimp and his bodyguards come after Julia and Mano, the violent chain reaction plunges them all into the decadent catacombs of Havana’s criminal underworld . . . “In the weeks before Hurricane Andrew sweeps down on Cuba in 1992, Dr. Mano Rodriguez is caught up in intrigue in this thoughtful, lushly detailed neo-noir.” —Publishers Weekly “A sad, surreal, beautiful tour of the hell that was Cuba in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The writing is hypnotic, the storytelling superb. Havana Lunar is perfect.” —Tim McLoughlin, editor, Brooklyn Noir
Download or read book Cuba Winner of the Pulitzer Prize written by Ada Ferrer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States—as well as the author’s own extensive travel to the island over the same period—this is a stunning and monumental account like no other.
Download or read book Bacardi written by Hernando Calvo Ospina and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 2002-07-20 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bacardí rum company is one of the most successful and recognisable brands in the world. It spends millions on marketing itself as the spirit of youth and vitality. But behind its image as a party drink lies a very different story.In this book, investigative journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina brings to light the commercial and political activities of the Bacardí empire to reveal its role in fostering the 40-year long confrontation between the United States and the revolutionary government of Cuba. Through meticulous research, Ospina reveals how directors and shareholders of the family-owned firm have aggressively worked to undermine the Castro government. He explores how they have been implicated in supporting paramilitary organisations that have carried out terrorist attacks, and reveals their links to the extreme right-wing Cuban-American Foundation that supported Ronald Reagan's Contra war in Nicaragua.Bacardí: The Hidden War explains the company's hand in promoting 'special interest' legislation against its competitor, Havana Club Rum, which is manufactured in Cuba and promoted by the European company Pernod-Ricard. Ospina reveals the implications of Bacardí's involvement in this growing dispute that threatens to create a trade war between America and Europe. Exploring the Bacardí empire's links to the CIA, as well as its inside links with the Bush administration, this fascinating account shows how multinational companies act for political as well as economic interests.
Download or read book Queens of Havana written by Alicia Castro and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This evocative memoir is a joyous, rhythmic history” of the 11-sister dance band that broke musical and cultural barriers in 1930s Cuba and beyond (Publishers Weekly). In the 1930s, Havana was the place to be for tourists, ex-pats, celebrities, and excitement-seekers. Nights were filled with drinking, dancing, romance, and the roar of infectious music spilling from cafés into the streets. It was a time and place immortalized by Hemingway, and a macho mecca where only men took the stage. That is until Alicia Castro, a thirteen-year-old greengrocer’s daughter, picked up a saxophone and led her sisters into the limelight. With infectious melodies and saucy lyrics, the Sisters Castro—professionally known as Anacaona—became a dance-band of irresistible force. In her jubilant memoir, Queens of Havana, Alicia Castro tells of her incredible rise beyond her native city, to international stardom—swinging alongside legends from Dizzy Gillespie and Celia Cruz to Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. In an age that insisted women be seen and not heard, Alicia Castro and her unstoppable sisters grabbed the world by the ears and got it dancing to their beat. At eighty-seven-years old, Alicia’s stories are intoxicating and gloriously punctuated with more than 100 vintage photos, posters, and other memorabilia in a book that “reverberates with exotic echoes of a fabulous long-ago era” (Publishers Weekly).
Download or read book The Duke of Havana written by Steve Fainaru and published by Villard. This book was released on 2001-06-01 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1998, a mysterious right-handed pitcher emerged from the ashes of the Cold War and helped lead the New York Yankees to a World Championship. His origins and even his age were uncertain. His name was Orlando El Duque Hernandez. He was a fallen hero of Fidel Castro's socialist revolution. The chronicle of El Duque's triumph is at once a window into the slow death of Cuban socialism and one of the most remarkable sports stories of all time. Once hailed as a paragon of Castro's revolution, the finest pitcher in modern Cuban history was banned from baseball for life for allegedly plotting to defect. Instead of accepting his punishment, he fearlessly fought back, defying the Communist party authorities, vowing to pitch again, and ultimately fleeing his country in the bowels of a thirty-foot fishing boat. Here, for the first time and in astonishing detail, the secrets behind El Duque's persecution and escape are revealed. Moving from the crumbling streets of post Cold War Havana to the polarized world of exile Miami, from the deadly Florida Straits to the hallowed grounds of Yankee Stadium, it is a story of cloak-and-dagger adventure, audacious secret plots, the pull of big money, and the historic collision of ideologies. Present throughout are the larger-than-life characters who converged at this bizarre intersection of baseball and politics: El Duque himself, Fidel Castro, the Miami sports agent Joe Cubas, the late John Cardinal O'Connor along with scouts, smugglers, and the Cuban ballplayers who gave up their lives as tools of socialism to test the free market and chase their major-league dreams. Reported in the United States and Cuba by two award-winning journalists who became part of the story they were covering, The Duke of Havana is a riveting saga of sports, politics, liberation, and greed.
