Download or read book A Treacherous Paradise written by Henning Mankell and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Gates of Paradise written by V.C. Andrews and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-11-24 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Man from Beijing written by Henning Mankell and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2010-02-16 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the dean of Scandinavian noir, Henning Mankell, the internationally bestselling and universally acclaimed Kurt Wallander series, an incredible stand-alone masterpiece: a bone-chilling mystery that spans two centuries and four continents. In the far north of Sweden a small, quiet village has been almost entirely wiped out by a mass murderer. The only clue left at the scene is a red ribbon. Among the victims are the grandparents of Judge Birgitta Roslin, who sets out to find the killer. Despite being brushed off by the police, Birgitta is determined to prove that the murders were not a random act of violence but are part of something far more dark and complex. Her investigation leads to the highest echelons of power and into the recesses of history where the seeds of evil deeds were planted.
Download or read book The Rock Blaster written by Henning Mankell and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henning Mankell's first novel, never before released in English, explores the reflections of a working class man who has struggled against the constraints of his station for his entire life. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL. The year is 1911. The young rock blaster Oskar Johansson has been killed in an accident. Or so it says in the local newspaper. In spite of serious injuries, however, Oskar survives. Decades later, Oskar looks back and reflects on his working life as an invalid, his marriage, his dreams, and his hopes. Oskar's life is woven together out of fragments of voices, images, and episodes that, taken together, provide a sharp and precise picture of life in Sweden for the working class.
Download or read book The Troubled Man written by Henning Mankell and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth riveting installment in the mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander • "As satisfying for its emotional depth as its suspense.... A gripping mystery.” —PEOPLE Magazine A retired navy officer has vanished in a forest near Stockholm. Kurt Wallander is prepared to stay out of the relatively straightforward investigation—which is, after all, another detective’s responsibility—but the missing man is his daughter’s father-in-law. With his typical disregard for rules and regulations, Wallander is soon pursuing his own brand of dogged detective work on someone else’s case. His methods are often questionable, but the results are not: he finds an extremely complex situation which may involve the secret police and ties back to Cold War espionage. Adding to Wallander’s concerns are more personal troubles. Having turned sixty, and having long neglected his health, he’s become convinced that his memory is failing. As he pursues this baffling case, he must come to grips not only with the facts at hand, but also with his own troubling situation.
Download or read book Welcome to Paradise written by Mahi Binebine and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mahi Binebine's courageous novel delves into a world that most readers know only from stories on the nightly news, delivering a compassionate glimpse into the difficulties facing asylum seekers and a striking portrait of human desperation. Mahi Binebine’s courageous novel takes place in Morocco, where seven would-be immigrants gather one night near the Strait of Gibraltar to wait for a signal from a trafficker that it is time to cross. While they wait, their stories unfold: Kacem Judi is an escapee from the civil war in Algeria; Nuara, with her newborn child, hopes to find her husband, who hasn’t been in touch for months since moving to France; and Aziz, the young narrator, and his cousin Reda are severed, in different ways, from their families in southern Morocco. They all share a longing to escape and a readiness to risk everything. Welcome to Paradise delves into a world that most readers know only from stories on the nightly news, delivering a compassionate and striking portrait of human desperation.
Download or read book The Shadow Girls written by Henning Mankell and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesper Humlin is a poet of middling acclaim who is saddled by his underwhelming book sales, an exasperated girlfriend, a demanding mother, and a rapidly fading tan. His boy-wonder stockbroker has squandered Humlin's investments, and his editor, who says he must write a crime novel to survive, begins to pitch and promote the nonexistent book despite Humlin's emphatic refusals. Then, when he travels to Gothenburg to give a reading, he finds himself thrust into an entirely different world, where names shift, stories overlap, and histories are both deeply secret and in profound need of retelling. Leyla from Iran, Tanya from Russia, and Tea-Bag, who is from Africa but claims to be from Kurdistan (because Kurds might receive preferential treatment as refugees)--these are the shadow girls who become Humlin's unlikely pupils in impromptu writing workshops. Though he had imagined their stories as fodder for his own book, soon their intertwining lives require him to play a much different role. Offering both surprising humor and heartbreaking moments, The Shadow Girls is a triumph that will please longtime fans of Mankell as well as readers new to his work.
Download or read book Firewall written by Henning Mankell and published by New Press/ORIM. This book was released on 2002-11-07 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international bestseller: Murder becomes a high tech game of cat and mouse in this “thinking man’s thriller” from the master of Nordic noir (The New York Times Book Review). Ystad, Sweden. A man stops at an ATM during his evening walk and inexplicably falls to the ground dead. Two teenage girls brutally murder a taxi driver. They are quickly apprehended, shocking local policemen with their complete lack of remorse. A few days later a blackout cuts power to a large swath of the country. When a serviceman arrives at the malfunctioning power substation, he makes a grisly discovery. Inspector Kurt Wallander senses these events must be linked, but he has to figure out how and why. The search for answers eventually leads him dangerously close to a group of anarchic terrorists who hide in the shadows of cyberspace. Somehow, these criminals always seem to know the police department’s next move. How can a small group of detectives unravel a plot designed to wreak havoc on a worldwide scale? And will they solve the riddle before it’s too late? A riveting police procedural about our increasing vulnerability in the modern digitized world, Firewall “proves once again that spending time with a glum police inspector in chilly Sweden can be quite thrilling . . . A notable success” (Publishers Weekly).
Download or read book Paradise Reclaimed written by Halldor Laxness and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Nobel Prize winner comes a captivating novel about an idealistic Icelandic farmer who journeys to Mormon Utah and back in search of paradise. • "Full of an earthy poetry...a style wonderfully wise and entirely Scandinavian in its combination of magic and reality." —The New York Times Book Review • With an introduction by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres. The quixotic hero of this long-lost classic is Steinar of Hlidar, a generous but very poor man who lives peacefully on a tiny farm in nineteenth-century Iceland with his wife and two adoring young children. But when he impulsively offers his children's beloved pure-white pony to the visiting King of Denmark, he sets in motion a chain of disastrous events that leaves his family in ruins and himself at the other end of the earth, optimistically building a home for them among the devout polygamists in the Promised Land of Utah. By the time the broken family is reunited, Laxness has spun his trademark blend of compassion and comically brutal satire into a moving and spellbinding enchantment, composed equally of elements of fable and folkore and of the most humble truths.
Download or read book Beyond the Point written by Claire Gibson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three women enter the demanding West Point military academy in this “inspiring tribute to female friendship and female courage” (Kate Quinn, New York Times–bestselling author of The Alice Network). Duty. Honor. Country. That’s West Point’s motto, and every cadet who passes through its stone gates vows to live it. But on the eve of 9/11, as Dani, Hannah and Avery face four grueling years ahead, they realize they’ll only survive if they do it together. With athletic talent and a brilliant mind, Dani navigates West Point’s predominantly male environment with wit and confidence, breaking stereotypes and embracing new friends. Hannah’s grandfather, a legendary Army general, warns her about the dangers ahead, but she’s determined to let faith guide her path—and when that path leads to her soul mate, the future looks perfect. Wild child Avery doesn’t mind breaking a few rules (or hearts) along the way. But she can’t outpace her self-doubt, and the harder she tries, the further it leads her down a treacherous path. These three women know that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But soon, that adage no longer rings true—for their future, or their friendship. As they’re pulled in different directions, will their hard-forged bond prevail or shatter?
Download or read book Paradise of the Pacific written by Susanna Moore and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-09 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Hawaii may be said to be the story of arrivals -- from the eruption of volcanoes on the ocean floor 18,000 feet below to the first hardy seeds that over millennia found their way to the islands, and the confused birds blown from their migratory routes. Early Polynesian adventurers sailed across the Pacific in double canoes. Spanish galleons en route to the Philippines and British navigators in search of a Northwest Passage were soon followed by pious Protestant missionaries, shipwrecked sailors, and rowdy Irish poachers escaped from Botany Bay -- all wanderers washed ashore. This is true of many cultures, but in Hawaii, no one seems to have left. And in Hawaii, a set of myths accompanied each of these migrants -- legends that shape our understanding of this mysterious place. Susanna Moore pieces together the story of late-eighteenth-century Hawaii -- its kings and queens, gods and goddesses, missionaries, migrants, and explorers -- a not-so-distant time of abrupt transition, in which an isolated pagan world of human sacrifice and strict taboo, without a currency or a written language, was confronted with the equally ritualized world of capitalism, Western education, and Christian values.
Download or read book An Event in Autumn written by Henning Mankell and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eleventh riveting installment in the mystery thriller series that inspired the Netflix crime drama Young Wallander • Wallander is "one of the most impressive creations in crime fiction today.... An old-fashioned moral force and sense of disquiet of the sort rarely found in contemporary crime fiction." —The Guardian After nearly thirty years in the same job, Inspector Kurt Wallander is tired, restless, and itching to make a change. He is taken with a certain old farmhouse, perfectly situated in a quiet countryside with a charming, overgrown garden. There he finds the skeletal hand of a corpse in a shallow grave. Wallander’s investigation takes him deep into the history of the house and the land, until finally the shocking truth about a long-buried secret is brought to light. Includes an afterword by the author.
Download or read book Depths written by Henning Mankell and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Henning Mankell will be published for the first time in Canada by Knopf Canada with Depths. October 1914: the destroyer Svea emerged from the Stockholm archipelago bearing south-southeast. On board was Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, a naval engineer charged with making depth soundings to find a navigable channel for the Swedish navy. As a child Tobiasson-Svartman was fascinated by measurement; nothing is as magical as exact knowledge. His instinct for his profession is reflected in the comfortable domesticity he enjoys with his wife – herself meticulous in every detail. Close to the waters where soundings are taken Tobiasson-Svartman alights on a barren skerry, presumed uninhabited, and is surprised to discover there a young woman, Sara Fredrika. Despite her almost feral appearance, something about her strikes him to the core. The mission is a success and the Svea returns to Gothenburg. Tobiasson-Svartman, however, remains haunted by this chance encounter; his equilibrium has been disturbed, and he is now compelled to find any pretence to return to the remote islet. In Depths Mankell confirms his status as a writer deserving acclaim beyond the crime genre. By delving deep into the male psyche, he has produced a novel as tense and compelling in every way as the Wallander series, but also powerful, moving and ultimately tragic.
Download or read book The Return of the Dancing Master written by Henning Mankell and published by New Press/ORIM. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times–bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander novels: An “absorbing” and “chilling” historical mystery “dripping with evil atmosphere” (The Times, London). December 12, 1945. The Third Reich lies in ruins as a British warplane lands in Bückeburg, Germany. A man carrying a small black bag quickly disembarks and travels to Hamelin, where he disappears behind the prison gates. Early the next day, England’s most experienced hangman executes twelve war criminals. Fifty-four years later, retired policeman Herbert Molin is found brutally slaughtered on his remote farm in Härjedalen, Sweden. The police discover strange tracks in the blood on the floor . . . as if someone had been practicing the tango. Stefan Lindman is a young police officer who has just been diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. When he reads about the murder of his former colleague, he decides to travel north and find out what happened. Soon he is enmeshed in a puzzling investigation with no witnesses and no discernible motives. Terrified of the illness that could take his life, Lindman becomes more and more reckless as he uncovers the links between Molin’s death, World War II, and an underground neo-Nazi network. Mankell’s impeccably researched historical thriller is “a worthy successor to the Wallander whodunits” (The Sunday Telegraph). “[Mankell] never fails to find a deep vein of humanity within the perpetually furrowed brows of his troubled cops.” —Booklist
Download or read book The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise written by Dario Fernandez-Morera and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A finalist for World Magazine's Book of the Year! Scholars, journalists, and even politicians uphold Muslim-ruled medieval Spain—"al-Andalus"—as a multicultural paradise, a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony. There is only one problem with this widely accepted account: it is a myth. In this groundbreaking book, Northwestern University scholar Darío Fernández-Morera tells the full story of Islamic Spain. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise shines light on hidden history by drawing on an abundance of primary sources that scholars have ignored, as well as archaeological evidence only recently unearthed. This supposed beacon of peaceful coexistence began, of course, with the Islamic Caliphate's conquest of Spain. Far from a land of religious tolerance, Islamic Spain was marked by religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of Christians and other groups—all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise provides a desperately needed reassessment of medieval Spain. As professors, politicians, and pundits continue to celebrate Islamic Spain for its "multiculturalism" and "diversity," Fernández-Morera sets the historical record straight—showing that a politically useful myth is a myth nonetheless.
Download or read book The Fifth Woman written by Henning Mankell and published by New Press/ORIM. This book was released on 2000-08-01 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 international-bestselling master of Scandinavian noir: a “marvelously told mystery” of murder in Sweden and corruption in Africa (Austin American-Statesman). In an African convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are found with their throats slit. The local police do little to investigate . . . and cover up the unknown woman’s death. A year later in Sweden, Holger Eriksson, a retired car dealer and birdwatcher, is skewered to death after falling into a pit of carefully sharpened bamboo poles. Soon after, the body of a missing florist is discovered strangled and tied to a tree. Baffled and appalled by the crimes, the only clues Inspector Kurt Wallander has to go on are a skull, a diary, and a photo of three men. What ensues is a complex, meticulously plotted investigation that will push the detective to his limits. The key is the unsolved killing of the fifth woman in Africa—who was she, and what did she have to do with the brutal deaths of two seemingly innocent men? Are more victims in danger? The answers will lead Wallander to question everything he thought he knew about the psychology of murder. An international bestseller, this “scary and cunning tale” (Rocky Mountain News) “achieves the satisfying density of plot and characterization” that established Henning Mankell as one of the twentieth-century’s finest crime writers. His Kurt Wallander mysteries are now the basis for the hit TV show Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh (The Baltimore Sun).
Download or read book A Treacherous Paradise written by Henning Mankell and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the internationally acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander crime novels, a powerful stand-alone novel set in early-twentieth-century Sweden and Mozambique, whose vividly drawn female protagonist is awoken from her naïveté 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 1904, at nineteen, 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 two brief marriages both leave her widowed, she finds herself the owner of a bordello in Portuguese East Africa, a world where colonialism and white colonists rule, where she is isolated within white society by her profession and her gender, and, among the bordello’s black prostitutes, by her color. As Hanna’s story unfurls over the next several years in this “treacherous paradise,” she wrestles with a devastating 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 all the expectations society has of her and, more important, those she has of herself. Gripping in its drama, evocative and searing in its portrait of colonial Africa, A Treacherous Paradise is, at its heart, a deeply moving story of a woman who manages to wrench wisdom, empathy, and grace from the most unforgiving circumstances.
