Calypso's Promise


Book Description

It is 1922 when Jonas Knight, a seventy-year-old self-made millionaire begins an expedition to find a mysterious cave that he feels holds the secret to what he has been seeking his entire life eternal youth. Known for his energy and vitality, Knight is aware his time on earth is running out as he embarks on a relentless search for a way to cheat death. After uncovering the history of two rival kings one of whom supposedly discovered a fountain of youth Knight heads to a Greek island where he hopes to find the fountain, which was reported to have been lost forever. After he accidentally slips and plunges into an ancient cave, he is exposed to a plant that can reverse the aging process. Suddenly, his team of scientists learns both the benefits and the problems that accompany the ability to live multiple life cycles. Decades later, Mike Andros is a renowned investigative report and author who is on a fast track to self-destruction. Events beyond his control create a new destiny that leads him straight to the same Greek island, where he soon makes a discovery that has the potential to change the future of mankind.




Stories from the Odyssey


Book Description

In the days of long ago there reigned over Ithaca, a rugged little island in the sea to the west of Greece, a king whose name was Odysseus. Odysseus feared no man. Stronger and braver than other men was he, wiser, and more full of clever devices. Far and wide he was known as Odysseus of the many counsels. Wise, also, was his queen, Penelope, and she was as fair as she was wise, and as good as she was fair.




Stolen Time


Book Description

In 1956 Harry Belafonte’s Calypso became the first LP to sell more than a million copies. For a few fleeting months, calypso music was the top-selling genre in the US—it even threatened to supplant rock and roll. Stolen Time provides a vivid cultural history of this moment and outlines a new framework—black fad performance—for understanding race, performance, and mass culture in the twentieth century United States. Vogel situates the calypso craze within a cycle of cultural appropriation, including the ragtime craze of 1890s and the Negro vogue of the 1920s, that encapsulates the culture of the Jim Crow era. He follows the fad as it moves defiantly away from any attempt at authenticity and shamelessly embraces calypso kitsch. Although white calypso performers were indeed complicit in a kind of imperialist theft of Trinidadian music and dance, Vogel argues, black calypso craze performers enacted a different, and subtly subversive, kind of theft. They appropriated not Caribbean culture itself, but the US version of it—and in so doing, they mocked American notions of racial authenticity. From musical recordings, nightclub acts, and television broadcasts to Broadway musicals, film, and modern dance, he shows how performers seized the ephemeral opportunities of the fad to comment on black cultural history and even question the meaning of race itself.




A Calypso Trilogy


Book Description

This drama trilogy shows the story of the Calypso art form over four decades of social and artistic change, 1930-1970. Sing de Chorus, the first in the series, recreates the conditions and conflicts that made the 1930s the classical era of the Calypso and placed the art on the international stage. Ah Wanna Fall is built around the Absurdist genius of Spoiler, who characterized the transitions of post-war Trinidad. Ten to One crowns the series with the triumphant rise of Sparrow in his struggle for social respect for the art and its performers.




The Goddess War Trilogy


Book Description

This discounted ebundle of The Goddess War Trilogy includes: Antigoddess, Mortal Gods, Ungodly “Blake presents a gory, thrilling vision of the twilight of the gods, in all their pettiness and power, while letting readers draw their own messages and conclusions.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Antigoddess Old Gods never die...Or so Athena thought. But then the feathers started sprouting beneath her skin, invading her lungs like a strange cancer, and Hermes showed up with a fever eating away his flesh. Desperately seeking the cause of their slow, miserable deaths, Athena and Hermes travel the world, gathering allies and discovering enemies both new and old. Mortal Gods Ares, god of war, is leading the other dying gods into battle. Which is just fine with Athena. She's ready to wage a war of her own, and she's never liked him anyway. If Athena is lucky, the winning gods will have their immortality restored. If not, at least she'll have killed the bloody lot of them, and she and Hermes can die in peace. Ungodly For the Goddess of Wisdom, what Athena didn't know could fill a book. That's what Ares said. So she was wrong about some things. So the assault on Olympus left them beaten and scattered and possibly dead. So they have to fight the Fates themselves, who, it turns out, are the source of the gods' illness. And sure, Athena is stuck in the underworld, holding the body of the only hero she has ever loved. But Hermes is still topside, trying to power up Andie and Henry before he runs out of time and dies, or the Fates arrive to eat their faces Other Tor Teen books by Kendare Blake Anna Dressed in Blood Girl of Nightmares At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




The Promises of God


Book Description

This study is the first to investigate why Paul makes exclusive use of 'epangelia' for the divine pledge when referring to the Abrahamic covenant, a usage of the term never found in the OT-LXX. After examining Jewish writings and Greek literature of the classical and Hellenistic periods, this study demonstrates that Paul is rather unique in his exclusive use of the 'epangelia' word group for the divine pledge and for using the term predominantly in reference to the Abrahamic promises. This exclusive usage is further deemed unexpected in that the 'horkos' and 'omnymi' lexemes are by far the terms most commonly associated with God's promises to Abraham in the OT, the literature with which Paul was most familiar. The study then moves to explain why Paul has chosen this path of discontinuity, where it is argued that Paul's exclusive choice of 'epangelia' for the divine promise is driven by its conceptual and linguistic correspondence with the 'euangelion', one of the terms Paul adopted from the early church that forms the core of his ministry. This conceptual word study of the divine promise will benefit Pauline scholars interested in Paul's use of the OT as well as his association of the 'euangelion' and 'epangelia' word groups.




Ungodly


Book Description

As ancient immortals are left reeling, a modern Athena and Hermes search the world for answers in Ungodly, the final Goddess War novel by Kendare Blake, the acclaimed author of Anna Dressed in Blood. For the Goddess of Wisdom, what Athena didn't know could fill a book. That's what Ares said. So she was wrong about some things. So the assault on Olympus left them beaten and scattered and possibly dead. So they have to fight the Fates themselves, who, it turns out, are the source of the gods' illness. And sure, Athena is stuck in the underworld, holding the body of the only hero she has ever loved. But Hermes is still topside, trying to power up Andie and Henry before he runs out of time and dies, or the Fates arrive to eat their faces. And Cassandra is up there somewhere too. On a quest for death. With the god of death. Just because things haven't gone exactly according to plan, it doesn't mean they've lost. They've only mostly lost. And there's a big difference. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Rhythm and Blues Goes Calypso


Book Description

Starting in 1945 and continuing for the next twenty years, dozens of African American rhythm and blues artists made records that incorporated West Indian calypso. Some of these recordings were remakes or adaptations of existing calypsos, but many were original compositions. Several, such as “Stone Cold Dead in de Market” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan or “If You Wanna Be Happy” by Jimmy Soul, became major hits in both the rhythm and blues and pop music charts. While most remained obscurities, the fact that over 170 such recordings were made during this time period suggests that there was sustained interest in calypso among rhythm and blues artists and record companies during this era. Rhythm and Blues Goes Calypso explores this phenomenon starting with a brief history of calypso music as it developed in its land of origin, Trinidad and Tobago, the music’s arrival in the United States, a brief history of the development of rhythm and blues, and a detailed description and analysis of the adaptation of calypso by African American R&B artists between 1945 and 1965. This book also makes musical and cultural connections between the West Indian immigrant community and the broader African American community that produced this musical hybrid. While the number of such recordings was small compared to the total number of rhythm and blues recordings, calypso was a persistent and sometimes major component of early rhythm and blues for at least two decades and deserves recognition as part of the history of African American popular music.




Ways of Sunlight


Book Description

'A delightful book, a pleasure to read and reflect over afterwards ... for humour, sprightliness and downright exuberance at being alive' Sunday Times 'You could be lonely as hell in the city, then one day you look around you and you realise everybody else is lonely too' This irresistible, bittersweet collection of short stories from the supreme chronicler of West Indian lives in Britain brings together two worlds: Trinidad and London. Here is an illicit love affair on a plantation, gossip and rivalry between village washerwomen, a boy rebelling against his parents' traditions. Here too is life after leaving for England: hustling for work, eking out money for the gas meter in winter, dancing in clubs, discovering romance in a night-time park, experiencing unexpected kindness, dreams and disenchantment.




The Hero's Quest and the Cycles of Nature


Book Description

This examination of the heroic journey in world mythology casts the protagonist as a personification of nature--a "botanical hero" one might say--who begins the quest in a metaphorical seed-like state, then sprouts into a period of verdant strength. But the hero must face a mythic underworld where he or she contends with mortality and sacrifice--embracing death as a part of life. For centuries, humans have sought superiority over nature, yet the botanical hero finds nothing is lost by recognizing that one is merely a part of nature. Instead, a cyclical promise of continuous life is realized, in which no element fully disappears, and the hero's message is not to dwell on death.