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Underground Airlines
''Underground Airlines'' is a 2016 science fiction novel by American writer Ben Winters, set in a contemporary alternate-history United States where the American Civil War never occurred because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated prior to his 1861 inauguration and a version of the Crittenden Compromise was adopted instead. As a result, slavery has remained legal in the "Hard Four" (a group of Southern states that have kept slavery): Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and a unified Carolina. Its name evokes the Underground Railroad in relations to its setting. The novel attracted praise for exploring racism through the alternate-history mechanism. Plot The novel is narrated by Victor, a former Person Bound to Labor ('peeb') who, after escaping the Hard Four, has been forced to work as an undercover agent for U.S. Marshal Bridge, infiltrating and gathering evidence to prosecute fellow escapees and the people and organizations helping peebs escape slavery. If Victor refuses to hel ...
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Ben H
Ben is frequently used as a shortened version of the given names Benjamin, Benedict, Bennett, Benson or Ebenezer, and is also a given name in its own right. Ben meaning "son of" is also found in Arabic as ''Ben'' (dialectal Arabic) or ''bin'' (بن), ''Ibn''/''ebn'' (ابن). Ben (賁/便嗯 ) is a Chinese surname. People with the given name * Ben Adams (born 1981), member of the British boy band A1 * Ben Affleck (born 1972), American Academy Award-winning actor and screenwriter * Ben Ashkenazy (born 1968/69), American billionaire real estate developer * Ben Askren (born 1984), American sport wrestler and mixed martial artist * Ben Axtman (born 1933), American politician * Ben Bailey (born 1970), American comedian and game show host * Ben Banogu (born 1996), American football player * Ben Barba (born 1989), Australian rugby player * Ben Barnes (other), multiple people * Ben Bartch (born 1998), American football player * Ben Bartlett, British composer * Ben Be ...
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Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an organized network of secret routes and safe houses used by freedom seekers to escape to the abolitionist Northern United States and Eastern Canada. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery as early as the 16th century and many of their escapes were unaided. However, a network of safe houses generally known as the Underground Railroad began to organize in the 1780s among Abolitionist Societies in the North. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln.Vox, Lisa"How Did Slaves Resist Slavery?", ''African-American History'', About.com. Retrieved July 17, 2011. The escapees sought primarily to escape into free states, and potentially from there to Canada. The network, primarily the work of free and enslaved African Americans, was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The enslaved people who risked capture and thos ...
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Sidewise Award For Alternate History
The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were established in 1995 to recognize the best alternate history stories and novels of the year. Overview The awards take their name from the 1934 short story " Sidewise in Time" by Murray Leinster, in which a strange storm causes portions of Earth to swap places with their analogs from other timelines. The awards were created by Steven H Silver, Evelyn C. Leeper, and Robert B. Schmunk. Over the years, the number of judges has fluctuated between three and eight and have included judges in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and South Africa. Two awards are normally presented each year, usually at WorldCon or at NASFiC. The Short-Form award is presented to a work under 60,000 words in length. The Long-Form award is presented to a work or works longer than 60,000 words, which may include a single novel or a multi-volume series. The judges have four times also recognized an individual with a Special Achievement Award in recognitio ...
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International Thriller Writers
International Thriller Writers (ITW), was founded October 9, 2004, at Bouchercon XXXV, the "World Mystery and Suspense Conference", in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Six months later, some 150 authors with more than one billion books sold worldwide had joined the organization as founding members. As of October 5, 2014, the organization's website said it had more than 3,100 members in 28 countries. History On October 9, 2004, at Bouchercon XXXV, the "World Mystery and Suspense Conference", in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, International Thriller Writers was founded. The organization was founded by Gayle Lynds and David Morrell and they became the organization's first co-presidents. Notable members / alumni Notable members of International Thriller Writers include the following. * David Baldacci * Steve Berry * Dale Brown * Sandra Brown * S.A. Cosby * Lisa Gardner * Brian Garfield * David Liss * Lee Child * Lincoln Child * Clive Cussler * David Dun * Joseph Finder * Tess Gerri ...
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Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance
Southern Book Prize (formerly the SEBA Book Award and SIBA Book Award) is a literary award given by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA). It was first awarded in 1999.Summer, Bob (1999). "SEBA presents first book awards." ''Publishers Weekly'', 246(20), 24. 1 Color Photograph. Last accessed Oct. 8, 2012. Nominated books must be Southern in nature or by a Southern author, have been published the previous year, and have been nominated by a SIBA-member bookstore or one of their customers. Voting categories include fiction, Nonfiction, poetry, cooking and children's literature. In 2016, the award was renamed the Southern Book Prize and awarded in honor of southern writer Pat Conroy Donald Patrick Conroy (October 26, 1945 – March 4, 2016) was an American author who wrote several acclaimed novels and memoirs; his books ''The Water Is Wide (book), The Water is Wide'', ''The Lords of Discipline'', ''The Prince of Tides (no ..., who died in March 2016. The first awa ...
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Invisible Man
''Invisible Man'' is Ralph Ellison's first novel, and the only one published during his lifetime. It was first published by the British magazine Horizon in 1947, and addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early 20th century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity. ''Invisible Man'' won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, making Ellison the first African-American writer to win the award. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''Invisible Man'' 19th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. ''Time'' magazine included the novel in its 100 Best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 list, calling it "the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century", rather than a "race novel, or even a ''bildungsroman''". Malcolm Bradbury ...
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Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel '' Invisible Man'', which won the National Book Award in 1953. Ellison wrote '' Shadow and Act'' (1964), a collection of political, social, and critical essays, and ''Going to the Territory'' (1986). ''The New York Times'' dubbed him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus". A posthumous novel, '' Juneteenth'', was published after being assembled from voluminous notes Ellison left upon his death. Early life Ralph Waldo Ellison, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap, on March 1, 1913. He was the second of three sons; firstborn Alfred died in infancy, and younger brother Herbert Maurice (or Millsap) was born in 1916. Lewis Alfred Ellison, a small-business owner and a construction foreman, died in 1916, after work-related injury and a failed operation. The elder Elliso ...
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Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) is the law enforcement agency for the city of Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Its operational jurisdiction covers all of the consolidated city of Indianapolis and Marion County except for the four excluded cities of Beech Grove, Lawrence, Southport, and Speedway (see Unigov). It was created on January 1, 2007, by consolidating the Indianapolis Police Department and the road division of the Marion County Sheriff's Office. Indianapolis Park Rangers were merged into IMPD in 2009. Organization At the time of its formation, the IMPD was headed by the elected sheriff of Marion County, Frank J. Anderson. However, on February 29, 2008, the department came under the control of the mayor of Indianapolis, Greg Ballard, after Ballard and Anderson reached a resolution for the transfer of power and the City-County Council passed Proposal 6 effecting the change. The mayor appoints the Chief of Police to administer the da ...
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Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula and East Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Peninsular Malaysia shares land and maritime Malaysia–Thailand border, borders with Thailand, as well as maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia; East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, and a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the country's national capital, List of cities and towns in Malaysia by population, largest city, and the seat of the Parliament of Malaysia, legislative branch of the Government of Malaysia, federal government, while Putrajaya is the federal administrative capi ...
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African Americans
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the U.S. after White Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. In 2023, an estimated 48.3 million people self-identified as Black, making up 14.4% of the country’s population. This marks a 33% increase since 2000, when there were 36.2 million Black people living in the U.S. African-American history began in the 16th century, with Africans being sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere. They were sold as slaves to European colonists and put to work on plantations, particularly in the southern colonies. A few were able to achieve freedom th ...
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Montreal
Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cities by population, ninth-largest in North America. It was founded in 1642 as ''Fort Ville-Marie, Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", and is now named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked mountain around which the early settlement was built. The city is centred on the Island of Montreal and a few, much smaller, peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. The city is east of the national capital, Ottawa, and southwest of the provincial capital, Quebec City. the city had a population of 1,762,949, and a Census geographic units of Canada#Census metropolitan areas, metropolitan population of 4,291,732, making it the List of census metropolitan areas and agglomerations in Canada, second-largest metropolitan area in Canada. French l ...
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Catholicism
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.Gerald O'Collins, O'Collins, p. v (preface). The church consists of 24 Catholic particular churches and liturgical rites#Churches, ''sui iuris'' (autonomous) churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and Eparchy, eparchies List of Catholic dioceses (structured view), around the world, each overseen by one or more Bishops in the Catholic Church, bishops. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the Papal supremacy, chief pastor of the church. The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The ...
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