The Cat King of Havana

The Cat King of Havana
Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
Total Pages : 221
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780062422859
ISBN-13 : 0062422855
Rating : 4/5 (59 Downloads)

Synopsis The Cat King of Havana by : Tom Crosshill

Lolcats. Salsa dancing. Unrequited love. Tom Crosshill's smart and witty debut teen novel treads a colorful coming-of-age journey from New York City to Havana that will appeal to fans of books by Matthew Quick and Junot Díaz. When Rick Gutiérrez—known as "That Cat Guy" at school—gets dumped on his sixteenth birthday for uploading cat videos from his bedroom instead of experiencing the real world, he realizes it's time for a change. So Rick joins a salsa class . . . because of a girl, of course. Ana Cabrera is smart, friendly, and smooth on the dance floor. He might be half Cuban, but Rick dances like a drunk hippo. Desperate to impress Ana, he invites her to spend the summer in Havana. The official reason: learning to dance. The hidden agenda: romance under the palm trees. Except Cuba isn't all sun, salsa, and music. As Rick and Ana meet his family and investigate the reason why his mother left Cuba decades ago, they learn that politics isn't just something that happens to other people. And when they find romance, it's got sharp edges.

The Sugar King of Havana

The Sugar King of Havana
Author :
Publisher : Penguin
Total Pages : 337
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781101458914
ISBN-13 : 1101458917
Rating : 4/5 (14 Downloads)

Synopsis The Sugar King of Havana by : John Paul Rathbone

"Fascinating...A richly detailed portrait." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Known in his day as the King of Sugar, Julio Lobo was the wealthiest man in prerevolutionary Cuba. He had a life fit for Hollywood: he barely survived both a gangland shooting and a firing squad, and courted movie stars such as Joan Fontaine and Bette Davis. Only when he declined Che Guevara's personal offer to become Minister of Sugar in the Communist regime did Lobo's decades-long reign in Cuba come to a dramatic end. Drawing on stories from the author's own family history and other tales of the island's lost haute bourgeoisie, The Sugar King of Havana is a rare portrait of Cuba's glittering past—and a hopeful window into its future.

Queens of Havana

Queens of Havana
Author :
Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages : 462
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780802199102
ISBN-13 : 0802199100
Rating : 4/5 (02 Downloads)

Synopsis Queens of Havana by : Alicia Castro

“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).

Freedom's Just Another Word

Freedom's Just Another Word
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 232
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1772600113
ISBN-13 : 9781772600117
Rating : 4/5 (13 Downloads)

Synopsis Freedom's Just Another Word by : Caroline Stellings

The year Louisiana--Easy for short—meets Janis Joplin is the year everything changes. Easy is a car mechanic in her dad's shop, but she can sing the blues like someone twice her age. So when she hears that Janis Joplin is passing through her small town of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Easy is there with her guitar in hand. It's 1970, and Janis Joplin is an electrifying blues-rock singer at the height of her fame--and of her addictions. Yet she recognizes Easy's talent and asks her to meet her in Texas to sing. Easy will do anything to get to Texas, so when she is offered a ride with two nuns in exchange for help with their car, Easy begins an unexpected journey that will change everything.

Mile Zero

Mile Zero
Author :
Publisher : Vintage
Total Pages : 367
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780307766083
ISBN-13 : 030776608X
Rating : 4/5 (83 Downloads)

Synopsis Mile Zero by : Thomas Sanchez

"Mile zero" marks the location of Key West -- the island that defines the end of the American road, the cultural junction where Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Afro worlds collide. On this island, with its cruel legacy of slave trade and Latin revolution, and its turbulent present of marijuana millionaires, threadbare illegal immigrants, and hard-luck treasure hunters, lives St. Cloud, an American expatriated in his own country, a fugitive from the unresolved anguish of his generation. Chronicling St. Cloud's dangerous reawakening, Mile Zero illuminates the inward and outward tumult of our time in a huge, startling, and profoundly felt novel.

Classic Cat Stories

Classic Cat Stories
Author :
Publisher : Pan Macmillan
Total Pages : 280
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781529038101
ISBN-13 : 1529038103
Rating : 4/5 (01 Downloads)

Synopsis Classic Cat Stories by : Becky Brown

Cats, be they much loved pets or inscrutable creatures, lend themselves to stories and literary invention. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning pocket size classics. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is edited by anthologist, editor and literary agent Becky Brown. Classic Cat Stories is a beautiful anthology that includes fairy tales and fables from the likes of Rudyard Kipling and Charles Perrault as well as comic tales from Saki and E. F. Benson. Cats, of course, have always had a dark and mysterious side which is explored to chilling effect by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe in The Black Cat and H. P. Lovecraft in The Cats of Ulthar. But above all, we love them and you’ll find here stories about all kinds of cats that tug at the heartstrings and which celebrate their curious ways.

Adios Muchachos

Adios Muchachos
Author :
Publisher : Akashic Books
Total Pages : 193
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781617750847
ISBN-13 : 1617750840
Rating : 4/5 (47 Downloads)

Synopsis Adios Muchachos by : Daniel Chavarría

This Edgar Award–winning crime novel offers “pulp fiction in Castro’s Cuba” (Martin Cruz Smith, author The Girl from Venice). Alicia is a smart, confident, and gorgeous prostitute in Havana. She is not a streetwalker. Rather, she displays her wares on bicycle, seducing men through the irresistible pull of her fine derrière. John King, her new client, is a Canadian businessman with a striking resemblance to movie star Alain Delon. This is no ordinary john, and as Alicia’s feelings for him grow, she sees in their relationship the possibility of escape from her dead-end life in a city plagued with scarcity. So when King’s wealthy and sexually deviant boss is suddenly killed, Alicia and John hatch a get-rich-quick scheme. A web of deception is woven—but it will be quickly and disastrously unraveled, and only one person will be able to say adiós to the dilapidated island of Cuba . . . “Fun, fast, and intelligent . . . A madcap caper full of twisted sex, devious schemes and high-rolling hijinks . . . Will leave readers clamoring for more.” —Publishers Weekly “The book’s cynical take on ambition and greed is tempered by humor and humanity.” —The New York Times “Impossible to put down. This is a great read.” —Library Journal

Castro's Curveball

Castro's Curveball
Author :
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages : 308
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0803259573
ISBN-13 : 9780803259577
Rating : 4/5 (73 Downloads)

Synopsis Castro's Curveball by : Tim Wendel

When an old scrapbook stirs memories, Billy Bryan looks back to the year 1947 when he was playing winter ball in Cuba, enjoying Havana's decadent nightlife, and dreaming of a major-league career.

Havana Storm

Havana Storm
Author :
Publisher : Sphere
Total Pages : 386
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781408733035
ISBN-13 : 140873303X
Rating : 4/5 (35 Downloads)

Synopsis Havana Storm by : Clive Cussler

Renowned marine adventurer Dirk Pitt returns to stem a toxic outbreak. While investigating a toxic outbreak in the Caribbean Sea that may ultimately threaten the United States, Pitt unwittingly becomes involved in something even more dangerous - a post-Castro power struggle for the control of Cuba. Meanwhile, Pitt's children, marine engineer Dirk and oceanographer Summer, are on an investigation of their own, chasing an Aztec stone that may reveal the whereabouts of a vast historical Aztec treasure. The problem is, that stone was believed to have been destroyed on the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898, which brings the pair both to Cuba as well - and squarely into harm's way. Pitt father, son and daughter have been in desperate situations before . . . but perhaps never quite as dire as the one facing them now. Dirk Pitt returns in Havana Storm, the thrilling new novel from the grandmaster of adventure and No.1 New York Times bestselling author, Clive Cussler. Praise for Clive Cussler 'Clive Cussler is hard to beat' Daily Mail 'The guy I read' Tom Clancy 'The adventure king' Daily Express 'Nobody does it better than Clive Cussler, nobody' Stephen Coonts

Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle
Author :
Publisher : Dial Press
Total Pages : 306
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780307567277
ISBN-13 : 0307567273
Rating : 4/5 (77 Downloads)

Synopsis Cat's Cradle by : Kurt Vonnegut

“A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!”—The New York Times Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works—and Vonnegut at his very best. “[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.”—Harper’s Magazine “Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.”—Atlantic Monthly