Pilgrims In Paradise

It was a cold winter day in the England of 1647, and Paul Sutton, a young doc­tor, began to feel the lure of the tropics. But when he signed on as medical officer to a shipload of pilgrims bound for the Bahamas, the beckoning attractions spelled far more than escape—for Paul knew that the pilgrims' leader, his own brother, was a religious fanatic. Throughout the journey, Paul tried to help and understand his brother, Silas, for he knew the resolve that mo­tivated the Puritan band to seek a new home. But despite his efforts, Paul soon found himself enveloped in the torment of a deep and forbidden love for the beautiful Anne Trevor, his brother's fiancée. PILGRIMS IN PARADISE, with its remarkable portrait of a religious zealot bent on carrying the cause of the non-conformists to the New World, of the settlement and incipient rebellion against Silas' iron rule, of bigotry, superstition and passion, of war and trial for life, is rewarding and realistic reading—another in Frank G. Slaughter's long line of successful novels.

Every year, the Indian pilgrimage town of Pushkar sees its population of 20,000 swell by two million visitors. Since the 1970s, Pushkar, which is located about 250 miles southwest of the capital of New Delhi, has received considerable attention from international tourists. Originally hippies and backpackers, today's visitors now come from a wide range of social positions. To locals, though, Pushkar is more than just a gathering place for pilgrims and tourists: it is where Brahma, the creator god, made his home; it is where Hindus should feel blessed to stay, if only for a short time; and it is where locals would feel lucky to be reborn, if only as a pigeon. In short, it is their paradise. But even paradise needs upkeep. In Guest is God, Drew Thomases uses ethnographic fieldwork to explore the massive enterprise of building heaven on earth. The articulation of sacred space necessarily works alongside economic changes brought on by tourism and globalization. Here the contours of what actually constitutes paradise are redrawn by developments in, and the agents of, tourism. And as paradise is made and remade, people in Pushkar help to create a brand of Hindu religion that is tailored to its local surroundings while also engaging global ideas. The goal, then, becomes to show how religion and tourism can be mutually constitutive.

Written in the form of a revelation from divine beings, the classic guide to expanding consciousness presents texts discussing God, the universe, angels and other beings, the history of the world, the development of civilization, personal spiritual growth, and the life and teachings of Jesus.

The bestselling final novel by a writer of incomparable range, power, and achievement, a three-time winner of the National Book Award. Peter Matthiessen was a literary legend, the author of more than thirty acclaimed books. In this, his final novel, he confronts the legacy of evil, and our unquenchable desire to wrest good from it. One week in late autumn of 1996, a group gathers at the site of a former death camp. They offer prayer at the crematoria and meditate in all weathers on the selection platform. They eat and sleep in the sparse quarters of the Nazi officers who, half a century before, sent more than a million Jews in this camp to their deaths. Clements Olin has joined them, in order to complete his research on the strange suicide of a survivor. As the days pass, tensions both political and personal surface among the participants, stripping away any easy pretense to resolution or healing. Caught in the grip of emotions and impulses of bewildering intensity, Olin is forced to abandon his observer’s role and to bear witness, not only to his family’s ambiguous history but to his own. Profoundly thought-provoking, In Paradise is a fitting coda to the luminous career of a writer who was “for all readers. He was for the world” (National Geographic).

The year is 1621 and Pilgrims have just landed at Plymouth Rock where life is hard and women are in short supply. This is one girl's story of life in the new world.