Join us for live music in the courtyard

Join us for live music in the courtyard.

"I had no nation but the imagination," Derek Walcott famously wrote nearly forty years ago. As Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago celebrate fifty years of Independence, how are the imaginations of today's Caribbean writers shaping the futures of our real nations? Writers of different generations reflect on this question through readings from their own works, in Nations and Imaginations: An Evening with the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago's annual literary festival. Featuring 2012 OCM Bocas Prize winner Earl Lovelace, Edwidge Danticat, Olive Senior, Edward Baugh, and Lisa Allen-Agostini; hosted by NGC Bocas Lit Fest programme director Nicholas Laughlin and presented in collaboration with the University of Miami. 

The Stockbroker: Insider Information, a novel by J.R. Shine, follows Jennifer Palmer, a young stockbroker just starting her career , learning the tricks and techniques of her manipulative colleagues who will do whatever they can to succeed. Written by an experienced stockbroker, the novel is chock full of the gritty details of the back-room meetings that drive the market on its rollercoaster ride. Readers will discover this new world along with the naïve Jennifer as she emerges from her privileged upbringing and is thrust into a world of rigorous quota requirements, reckless coworkers and fierce competition, getting carried away by the pressures of her new career and the love of her life, Javier.

Have you ever wondered how it all came about, the skyscrapers, the boxes and cans and jars with labels of some special brand or someone's name? It came about, so often, out of the holds of big ships, where men and their families, or men and women alone, or here and there a courageous youngster, wide-eyed and frightened were discarded like refuse on the docks of this country. And how did they produce the boxes, build the hospitals, the colleges, the churches, make the cars, envision supermarkets and department stores, produce the technology that reaches out to others all over the world and even walk the moon? One Last Child, by Antonia Phillips Rabb, show how they did it and here's what sometimes becomes of those who followed.

Did you ever wonder how to help two parties resolve a dispute where everyone wins? How to help two feuding neighbors? Creative Mediation (CreateSpace, $21.95) by Thomas Glick is designed to offer mediation tips through unique and creative approaches. Each chapter is based on an actual event to help illustrate the various approaches and techniques. Glick is an attorney residing in Miami, Florida. In 1995 along with his partner Rosanne Shore, he created Center for Conflict Resolution an alternative dispute resolution company that mediates and arbitrates well over 2500 cases per year. Glick has personally mediated over 7500 mediations. 

Army sharpshooter and deserter Cooper Chance is trapped. He wants nothing more than to go home; unfortunately, the only thing awaiting him in America is jail. He now leads the life of a mercenary, in a gritty world filled with thugs, prostitutes, and corrupt cops. To survive, Cooper trades diamonds. One day he wanders into a diamond shop, where he meets Sadiq, a young merchant as lost in the world as he is. As they fall in love, Cooper has no idea Sadiq has ulterior motives. Meanwhile huge oil reserves are discovered nearby, and the CIA offers Cooper a way home without jail time if he agrees to carry out a risky, high-stakes mission. Cooper will do anything to get home -- except sell his soul to the devil. But when a teenage prostitute he has promised to save suddenly disappears, Cooper finally relents. Unfortunately, he has no idea that unexpected consequences await. Discover what happens in Cooper's Promise (iUniverse, $15.95) by Timothy Jay Smith. 

Dr. Marty Makary is co-developer of the life-saving checklist outlined in Atul Gawande's bestselling The Checklist Manifesto. As a busy surgeon who has worked in many of the best hospitals in the nation, he can testify to the amazing power of modern medicine to cure. But he's also been a witness to a medical culture that routinely leaves surgical sponges inside patients, amputates the wrong limbs, and overdoses children because of sloppy handwriting. Over the last ten years, neither error rates nor costs have come down, despite scientific progress and efforts to curb expenses