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China Run

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David Ball

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“There was something elemental in the air, something that heated the blood and brought to the conscious mind desires long suppressed. Serena's body felt heavy and warm as she swayed involuntarily to the compelling music. The fire on such a steamy night was too much, and she felt an irresistible impulse to tear off her elaborate gown so she could dance freely in the sheer coolness of her chemise. Dance to the insistent music with one man's dark eyes watching her, devouring her, till he was forced to leap up and join her as was the young man who leaped up beside the Spanish woman.”

Romance Book QuotesSensual RomanceTropical Paradise
Book:The Eagle and the Rose
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“Whatever my future held, I was certain it wouldn’t be borne on the bitter wind that blew along Broadway. It was waiting in a place where lime-green leaves burst forth from soil the color of night, where flowers bloomed under skies on fire, where pariah dogs fucked in the streets and wild monkeys called in the twilight—a place where women smiled and the moon smiled with them.”

FutureEscapeNycTropical Paradise
Book:Banging the Monkey
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“Even paradise has a dark side as shown in Bokur’s welcome debut and series launch introducing Det. Kali Māhoe, of the Maui PD, who’s also a cultural anthropologist…Bokur nimbly contrasts the Hawaii of sun and golden beaches with its less well-known underbelly of poverty, discrimination, and crime. Fans of strong female cops will look forward to Kali’s further adventures.”

MysteryCrimeHawaiiMystery SuspenseMystery ThrillerMystery SeriesTropical Paradise
Author:Publisher's Weekly
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“Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite right to term it 'hyper-canonical.' And Twain is a figure in American history as well as in American letters. The only objectors to his presence in the schoolroom are mediocre or fanatical racial nationalists or 'inclusivists,' like Julius Lester or the Chicago-based Dr John Wallace, who object to Twain's use—in or out of 'context'—of the expression 'nigger.' An empty and formal 'debate' on this has dragged on for decades and flares up every now and again to bore us. But what if Twain were taught as a whole? He served briefly as a Confederate soldier, and wrote a hilarious and melancholy account, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. He went on to make a fortune by publishing the memoirs of Ulysses Grant. He composed a caustic and brilliant report on the treatment of the Congolese by King Leopold of the Belgians. With William Dean Howells he led the Anti-Imperialist League, to oppose McKinley's and Roosevelt's pious and sanguinary war in the Philippines. Some of the pamphlets he wrote for the league can be set alongside those of Swift and Defoe for their sheer polemical artistry. In 1900 he had a public exchange with Winston Churchill in New York City, in which he attacked American support for the British war in South Africa and British support for the American war in Cuba. Does this count as history? Just try and find any reference to it, not just in textbooks but in more general histories and biographies. The Anti-Imperialist League has gone down the Orwellian memory hole, taking with it a great swirl of truly American passion and intellect, and the grand figure of Twain has become reduced—in part because he upended the vials of ridicule over the national tendency to religious and spiritual quackery, where he discerned what Tocqueville had missed and far anticipated Mencken—to that of a drawling, avuncular fabulist.”

HistoryUnited StatesRacismImperialismAmerican Civil WarMark TwainHuckleberry Finn
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing, and made them skip out.”

HumorHuckleberry Finn
Author:Mark Twain
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