Paradise Island

Four best friends—Check. One unforgettable week in Kauai—Check. Sun, surf, and hula girls in bikinis—Check. A creepy mansion on the forbidden side of the island…. Check? Sam and Colby’s vacation in paradise goes from enchanting, to weird, to deadly, when Trey, an old acquaintance, insists they can’t leave without a visit to the legendary Nā Pali Coast. It turns out Trey has been living at the infamous Belle Estate, owned by a wealthy and eccentric widow—who locals believe is a witch. The only thing odder than how a twenty-three-year-old college kid from Utah ended up living in a remote and isolated mansion on the North Shore of Kauai is that he is romantically involved with a woman old enough to be their grandmother. Belle Estate’s walls hold an eerie sway over all who enter, and a dark, shadowy presence seems to be following them around the grounds. When an unfavorable change of plans forces them to stay overnight, Sam and Colby are in for the most terrifying encounter of their lives.

Jennifer, Julie, Laurie and Joe were perfectly normal siblings, that is, until their vacation to Paradise Island. When their love for adventure leads them to a new realm that they weren’t meant to discover, the children find the fate of the world on their shoulders. Moreover, an unknown villain is lurking about, seeking power that the four can’t even begin to imagine. Will they be able to save Earth with the help of their new friend? Or will the monster of the depths take over? With thrilling action and awe-evoking sceneries, little do the children know that they are about to embark on a journey that will change reality as they know it.

Ariel becomes bored with her life and decides to do something that turns out to be very dangerous.

Just one month after his 21st birthday, Peter Rudiak-Gould moved to Ujae, a remote atoll in the Marshall Islands located 70 miles from the nearest telephone, car, store, or tourist, and 2,000 miles from the closest continent. He spent the next year there, living among its 450 inhabitants and teaching English to its schoolchildren. At first blush, Surviving Paradise is a thoughtful and laugh-out-loud hilarious documentation of Rudiak-Gould’s efforts to cope with daily life on Ujae as his idealistic expectations of a tropical paradise confront harsh reality. But Rudiak-Gould goes beyond the personal, interweaving his own story with fascinating political, linguistic, and ecological digressions about the Marshall Islands. Most poignant are his observations of the noticeable effect of global warming on these tiny, low-lying islands and the threat rising water levels pose to their already precarious existence. An Eat, Pray, Love as written by Paul Theroux, Surviving Paradise is a disarmingly lighthearted narrative with a substantive emotional undercurrent.

When Diana decides to bring Christmas to her Amazonian family, it does not turn out quite like she expected.

This is the story of organized crime's penetration of the islands and the corruption of its high officials during the time The Bahamas become politically independent of Great Britain. It describes secret U.S. Internal Revenue Service operations aimed at American criminals involved in Bahamian-based tax scams and similar crimes. Block paints a devastating picture of a symbiotic relationship among off-shore tax havens in The Bahamas, sophisticated American criminals, and complacent public officials in the United States. During the 1960s and 1970s, the I.R.S. launched major investigations into American organized crime and the subterranean economy of The Bahamas. Block's access to the private papers of many of the key players in these affairs has given him a unique perspective. He has uncovered details of crime, corruption, and bureaucratic infighting within and among the U.S. Treasury and Justice Departments that have been largely unrecognized by previous researchers. Block shows how important links in the international traffic in cocaine were forged in the Bahamas, in full view of American officials. Masters of Paradise raises major questions about American law enforcement officials' commitment to fighting complex international crime during the 1960s and the 1970s. While there have been other studies of tax havens, money laundering, and offshore investigations, Block's access to information and his grasp of its meaning is unique. Professionals interested in the history and sociology of organized crime and the underground economy will find this book eye-opening. General readers interested in organized crime and political corruption will find it absorbing.

Introduces the basic principles of economics by letting students examine problems relating to the salary and expenses of the citizens of an imaginary island.

Rat Island rises from the icy gray waters of the Bering Sea, a mass of volcanic rock covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive-and massively controversial-wildlife rescue mission is under way. Islands, making up just 3 percent of Earth's landmass, harbor more than half of its endangered species. These fragile ecosystems, home to unique species that evolved in peaceful isolation, have been catastrophically disrupted by mainland predators-rats, cats, goats, and pigs ferried by humans to islands around the globe. To save these endangered islanders, academic ecologists have teamed up with professional hunters and semiretired poachers in a radical act of conservation now bent on annihilating the invaders. Sharpshooters are sniping at goat herds from helicopters. Biological SWAT teams are blanketing mountainous isles with rat poison. Rat Island reveals a little-known and much-debated side of today's conservation movement, founded on a cruel-to-be-kind philosophy. Touring exotic locales with a ragtag group of environmental fighters, William Stolzenburg delivers both perilous adventure and intimate portraits of human, beast, hero, and villain. And amid manifold threats to life on Earth, he reveals a new reason to hope.