Desperate to save her brother from being condemned as a traitor, Lady Rexana Villeaux must dance in disguise at a feast for the High Sheriff of Warringham. She soon learns that the "dance of desire" is only the beginning.
From Elie Wiesel, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and one of our fiercest moral voices, a provocative and deeply thoughtful new novel about a life shaped by the worst horrors of the twentieth century and one man’s attempt to reclaim happiness. Doriel, a European expatriate living in New York, suffers from a profound sense of desperation and loss. His mother, a member of the Resistance, survived World War II only to die in an accident, together with his father, soon after. Doriel was a child during the war, and his knowledge of the Holocaust is largely limited to what he finds in movies, newsreels, and books—but it is enough. Doriel’s parents and their secrets haunt him, leaving him filled with longing but unable to experience the most basic joys in life. He plunges into an intense study of Judaism, but instead of finding solace, he comes to believe that he is possessed by a dybbuk. Surrounded by ghosts, spurred on by demons, Doriel finally turns to Dr. Thérèse Goldschmidt, a psychoanalyst who finds herself particularly intrigued by her patient. The two enter into an uneasy relationship based on exchange: of dreams, histories, and secrets. Despite Doriel’s initial resistance, Dr. Goldschmidt helps to bring him to a crossroads—and to a shocking denouement. In Doriel’s journey into the darkest regions of the soul, Elie Wiesel has written one of his most profoundly moving works of fiction, grounded always by his unparalleled moral compass.
Throughout centuries of European colonial domination, the bodies of Middle Eastern dancers, male and female, move sumptuously and seductively across the pages of Western travel journals, evoking desire and derision, admiration and disdain, allure and revulsion. This profound ambivalence forms the axis of an investigation into Middle Eastern dance—an investigation that extends to contemporary belly dance. Stavros Stavrou Karayanni, through historical investigation, theoretical analysis, and personal reflection, explores how Middle Eastern dance actively engages race, sex, and national identity. Close readings of colonial travel narratives, an examination of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, and analyses of treatises about Greek dance, reveal the intricate ways in which this controversial dance has been shaped by Eurocentric models that define and control identity performance.
From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Christopher Rice comes a new standalone romance… When Amber Watson walks in on her husband in the throes of extramarital passion with one of his employees, her comfortable, passion-free life is shattered in an instant. Worse, the fate of the successful country music bar that bears her family's name suddenly hangs in the balance. Her soon to be ex-husband is one of the bar's official owners; his mistress, one of its employees. Will her divorce destroy her late father's legacy? Not if Amber's adopted brother Caleb has anything to do with it. The wandering cowboy has picked the perfect time for a homecoming. Better yet, he's determined to use his brains and his fists to put Amber's ex in his place and keep the family business intact. But Caleb's long absence has done nothing to dim the forbidden desire between him and the woman the State of Texas considers to be his sister. Years ago, when they were just teenagers, Caleb and Amber shared a passionate first kiss beside a moonlit lake. But that same night, tragedy claimed the life of Caleb's parents and the handsome young man went from being a family friend to Amber's adopted brother. Has enough time passed for the two of them to throw off the roles Amber's father picked for them all those years ago? Will their desire for each other save the family business or put it in greater danger? DANCE OF DESIRE is the first contemporary romance from award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice, told with the author's trademark humor and heart. It also introduces readers to a quirky and beautiful town in the Texas Hill Country called Chapel Springs. READER ADVISORY. DANCE OF DESIRE contains fantasies of dubious consent, acted on by consenting adults. Readers with sensitivities to those issues should be advised. **Every 1001 Dark Nights novella is a standalone story. For new readers, it’s an introduction to an author’s world. And for fans, it’s a bonus book in the author’s series. We hope you'll enjoy each one as much as we do.**
Two women wait for him at two different ends of the crossroads. He knows which path is his, but he can't walk that path till he has attended to the other. One perfect couple. An obsessed seductress. A bharatnatyam show in Manhattan, New York. One hell of a love story. Raj Shekhar Subramanian and Manasi, both Bharatanatyam dancers, are made for each other. Till an obsessed fan, Vatsala Pandit, enters their lives, testing the man's character and his wife's patience. But then why does Manasi invite Vatsala to her Bharatanatyam show, for a dance of passion with her husband-the very man Vatsala wants to take from her? Why did Shekhar agree to take in Vatsala as his student in the first place? This singular love story deftly explores the many facets of love-mutual trust, obsessiveness, the arrogance of passion, the need for self-fulfillment, the yearning for the beloved, and the complexity of modern relationships.
"Ambitious in its scope and interdisciplinary in its purview. . . . Without doubt future researchers will want to refer to Hanna's study, not simply for its rich bibliographical sources but also for suggestions as to how to proceed with their own work. Dance, Sex, and Gender will initiate a discussion that should propel a more methodologically informed study of dance and gender."—Randy Martin, Journal of the History of Sexuality
“Pollan shines a light on our own nature as well as on our implication in the natural world.” —The New York Times “A wry, informed pastoral.” —The New Yorker The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?
Ballet dancers have the strongest, most beautiful, probably the most envied bodies in the world. How do they stay slender and willowy while maintaining the extraordinary energy it takes to perform night after night? Can a nondancer or an amateur attain a dancer's figure and a dancer's vitality? And keep it? Here, in The Dancers' Body Book, the legendary ballerina Allegra Kent discloses the health, weight-watching, and relaxation secrets of some of the world's greatest ballet dancers -- from Suzanne Farrell and Fernando Bujones to Darci Kistler and Madame Alexandra Danilova. Combining them with two well-balanced diets -- one to lose weight by and one to live by -- and an exercise regimen that can be tailored to the individual, she provides a fabulous fitness program for everyone who longs to be slimmer, healthier, and more energetic. Fourteen varied menus incorporate delicious recipes from the dancers themselves (such as Jacques D'Amboise's Wonderful Dinner Salad and Dierdre Carberry's Almond Meringue Kisses), along with calorie guides and advice on how to create additional menus using your own favorite dishes. Helpful discussions on sports and exercise systems -- ranging from jogging and swimming to the sophisticated "Pilates" workout -- are also included, and in a special chapter entitled "A Healthy Outlook," the dancers talk candidly on such issues as smoking, anorexia, vitamins, doctors, massage, junk foods, fad diets, and injuries. Dancers take meticulous care of all their equipment because training and performance depend on it. Of course, the most essential piece of equipment, the body, needs the most care of all, and that is what this book is about: how to take care of the world's greatest machine. Allegra Kent joined the New York City Ballet at the age of fifteen and was a principal dancer with the company for thirty years, during which time she created a number of starring roles in ballets by Balanchine and Robbins. The mother of two daughters and a son, she is also the author of Allegra Kent's Water Beauty Book.
“Set in 1970s Bombay, the novel explores art, ambition, gender roles and class with the same shimmering prose of Swamy’s first book, the story collection A House Is a Body.” —San Francisco Chronicle “[A] sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity, and love.” —NPR In this transfixing novel, a young woman comes of age in 1960s- and 1970s-era Bombay, a vanished world that is complex and indelibly rendered. Vidya’s childhood is marked by the shattering absence and then the bewildering reappearance of her mother and baby brother at the family home. Restless, observant, and longing for connection with her brilliant and increasingly troubled mother, Vidya navigates the stifling expectations of her life with a vivid imagination until one day she peeks into a classroom where girls are learning kathak, a dazzling, centuries-old dance form that requires the utmost discipline and focus. Her pursuit of artistic transcendence through kathak soon becomes the organizing principle of her life, even as she leaves home for college and falls in complicated love with her best friend. As the uncertain future looms, she must ultimately confront the tensions between romantic love, her art, and the legacy of her own imperfect mother. Lyrical and deeply sensual, with writing as mesmerizing as kathak itself, Shruti Swamy’s The Archer is a bold portrait of a singular woman coming of age as an artist—navigating desire, duty, and the limits of the body. It is also an electrifying and utterly immersive story about the transformative power of art, and the possibilities that love can open when we’re ready.
Fifteen stunning short stories from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, “a true master of the form” (Salman Rushdie). “How does one know when one is in the grip of art—of a major talent? . . . It is art that speaks from the pages of Alice Munro’s stories.”—The Wall Street Journal A young girl gets an unexpected glimpse into her father’s past when she realizes the sales call they’ve made one summer afternoon during the Great Depression is to his old sweetheart. A married woman, returning home after the death of her invalid mother, tries to release the sister who’d stayed behind as their mother’s caretaker. The audience at a children’s piano recital receives a surprising lesson in the power of art to transform when a not-quite-right student performs with unexpected musicality and a spirit of joy. In Dance of the Happy Shades, Alice Munro conjures ordinary lives with an extraordinary vision, displaying the remarkable talent for which she is now widely celebrated. Set on farms, by river marshes, in the lonely towns and new suburbs of western Ontario, these tales are luminous acts of attention to those vivid moments when revelation emerges from the layers of experience that lie behind even the most everyday events and lives.