Paradise Lodge

A delightful story of growing up, getting old, and every step in between, from the acclaimed author of Man at the Helm and Love, Nina. After succeeding in her quest to help her unconventional mother find a new "man at the helm," fifteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel simply wants to be a normal teenager. Just when it looks as if things have settled down, her mother goes and has another baby. On top of that, Lizzie's best friend has deserted her for the punk craze, which Lizzie finds too exhausting to commit to herself. But Lizzie soon gets more commitment than she bargained for when she takes a job as a junior nurse at Paradise Lodge, a ramshackle refuge for the elderly that has seen better days. It's no place for a teenager, much less one with as little experience emptying a bedpan as Lizzie. What begins as away to avoid school and earn some spending money (for the finer things in life, like real coffee and beer shampoo) quickly turns into the education of a lifetime. Lizzie encounters a colorful cast of eccentric characters -- including a nurse determined to turn one of the patients into a husband (and a retirement plan); an efficient but clueless nun trying to modernize the place; and Lizzie's unlikely first love -- who become her surrogate family. When Paradise Lodge faces a crisis in the form of a rival nursing home with enough amenities to make even the comatose jealous, Lizzie must find a way to save her job before she loses the only place she's ever felt she belongs. A hilarious and heartfelt coming-of-age tale, Paradise Lodge proves that it's never too early -- or too late -- to grow up.

Lizzie Vogel's story continues in Paradise Lodge, the brilliantly comic sequel to Nina Stibbe's hilarious Man at the Helm. 'LOVE it! Instant classic - funny, wise, touching, entirely delightful' MARIAN KEYES ***** Working in a care home is not really a suitable job for a schoolgirl but 15-year-old Lizzie Vogel went for it. It just seemed too exhausting to commit to being a full-time girlfriend or a punk (it is the 1970s after all), plus she has some knowledge of old people. They're not suited to granary bread, and you mustn't compare them to toddlers, but she doesn't know there's a right way to get someone out of the bath - or what to do when someone dies. When a rival old people's home with better parking and daily chairobics threatens to take all their residents, Paradise Lodge's cast of staff and helpers have to come together to save the home before it's too late. From the bestselling author of Love, Nina comes a story of being very young, and very old, and the laughter and tears in between. LIZZIE'S STORY CONTINUES IN REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL! ***** 'The one problem with reviewing Stibbe is that I just want to quote entire pages: it's all so brilliant' THE I 'Stibbe looks at another chapter of her life through the prism of her trademark deadpan, acutely observed humour' STYLIST 'A dollop of nostalgia and very British humour' GLAMOUR NINA STIBBE'S NEW NOVEL ONE DAY I SHALL ASTONISH THE WORLD IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW

Bernard Walsh, agnostic theologian, has a professional interest in heaven. But when he travels to Hawaii with his reluctant father Jack, to visit Jack's dying, estranged sister it feels more like purgatory than paradise. Surrounded by quarrelling honeymooners, a freeloading anthropologist and assorted tourists in search of their own personal paradise, and with his father whisked off to hospital after an unfortunate accident, Bernard is beginning to regret ever coming to Haiwaii. Until, that is, he stumbles on something he had given up hope of finding: the astonishing possibility of love.

Thirty years ago, a young Colorado ski racer falls in love with the freedom and sensuality of a remote Costa Rican rainforest. However, unlike most of us who return home from our tropical vacations, she sets out to make this sensation her life, and to help others experience it. With her own hands, and the help of a Costa Rican boyfriend, she builds an ecolodge in the remote rainforest of Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula. During her journey, a tractor trailer rolls over on her, breaking her leg in four places, her house burns to the ground, and she completely runs out of money. These calamities only strengthen her resolve. In the end, she succeeds in building a lodge praised by media ranging from Travel + Leisure to CNN, and in helping people from all over the world experience one of the most biologically diverse places on earth. She also creates the nonprofit Whitehawk Foundation to save the Osa rainforest.

Elegant, brutal, and profound—this magnificent debut captures the grit and glory of modern Hawai'i with breathtaking force and accuracy. In a stunning collection that announces the arrival of an incredible talent, Kristiana Kahakauwila travels the islands of Hawai'i, making the fabled place her own. Exploring the deep tensions between local and tourist, tradition and expectation, façade and authentic self, This Is Paradise provides an unforgettable portrait of life as it’s truly being lived on Maui, Oahu, Kaua'i and the Big Island. In the gut-punch of “Wanle,” a beautiful and tough young woman wants nothing more than to follow in her father’s footsteps as a legendary cockfighter. With striking versatility, the title story employs a chorus of voices—the women of Waikiki—to tell the tale of a young tourist drawn to the darker side of the city’s nightlife. “The Old Paniolo Way” limns the difficult nature of legacy and inheritance when a patriarch tries to settle the affairs of his farm before his death. Exquisitely written and bursting with sharply observed detail, Kahakauwila’s stories remind us of the powerful desire to belong, to put down roots, and to have a place to call home.

A New York Times Notable Book of 2015: From the writer of the hugely acclaimed Love, Nina comes a sharply funny debut novel about a gloriously eccentric family. Soon after her parents' separation, nine-year-old Lizzie Vogel moves with her siblings and newly single mother to a tiny village in the English countryside, where the new neighbors are horrified by their unorthodox ways and fatherless household. Lizzie's theatrical mother only invites more gossip by spending her days drinking whiskey, popping pills, and writing plays. The one way to fit in, the children decide, will be to find themselves a new man at the helm. The first novel from a remarkably gifted writer with a voice all her own, Man at the Helm is a hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking portrait of childhood in an unconventional family.

Presiding over the Puget Sound region, Mount Rainier has lured adventurers and entrepreneurs to its slopes since the earliest settlers. Visitors rode packhorses or hiked miles to tent “hotels” at Theosophy Ridge, Indian Henry’s Hunting Ground, and Ohanapecosh. James Longmire opened Longmire Springs Hotel near bubbling mineral springs. In 1899, Mount Rainier became a national park, and eventually, a motley array of services was consolidated by the Rainier National Park Company, which built National Park Inn and Paradise Inn. Roads, services, and activities expanded, and guests poured in. Winter activities, such as skiing and tobogganing, increased the park’s popularity. The 1936 Winter Olympic Ski Trials and training for World War II ski troops were even hosted there. Visitors today might be surprised to know that many inns, rental cabins, bathhouses, and other buildings have come and gone, leaving some areas more pristine now than for much of the park’s history.