The Dancing Dead

The Dancing Dead

Author: W. E. A. van Beek

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2012-06-05

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0199858160

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Walter E. A. van Beek draws on over four decades of extensive fieldwork to offer an in-depth study of the religion of the Kapsiki/Higi, who live in the Mandara Mountains on the border between North Cameroon and Northeast Nigeria. Concentrating on ritual as the core of traditional religion, van Beek shows how Kapsiki/Higi practices have endured through the long and turbulent history of the region. Kapsiki rituals reveal a focus on two fundamental concepts: dwelling and belonging. Van Beek examines their sacrificial practices, through which the Kapsiki show a complex and pervasive connection with the Mandara Mountains, as well as the character of their relationships among themselves and with outsiders. Van Beek also explores their rituals of belonging, rites of passage which take place from birth through initiation and marriage - and even death, with the tradition of the ''dancing dead,'' when a fully decorated corpse on the shoulders of a smith ''dances'' with his mourning kinsmen. The Dancing Dead is the result of the author's lifelong study of the Kapsiki/Higi. It gives a unique description of the rituals in an African traditional religion based not upon ancestors, but on a completely relational thought system, where in the end all rituals are integrated into one major cycle.


Dancing with the Dead

Dancing with the Dead

Author: Christopher T. Nelson

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2008-12-12

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0822390078

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Challenging conventional understandings of time and memory, Christopher T. Nelson examines how contemporary Okinawans have contested, appropriated, and transformed the burdens and possibilities of the past. Nelson explores the work of a circle of Okinawan storytellers, ethnographers, musicians, and dancers deeply engaged with the legacies of a brutal Japanese colonial era, the almost unimaginable devastation of the Pacific War, and a long American military occupation that still casts its shadow over the islands. The ethnographic research that Nelson conducted in Okinawa in the late 1990s—and his broader effort to understand Okinawans’ critical and creative struggles—was inspired by his first visit to the islands in 1985 as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. Nelson analyzes the practices of specific performers, showing how memories are recalled, bodies remade, and actions rethought as Okinawans work through fragments of the past in order to reconstruct the fabric of everyday life. Artists such as the popular Okinawan actor and storyteller Fujiki Hayato weave together genres including Japanese stand-up comedy, Okinawan celebratory rituals, and ethnographic studies of war memory, encouraging their audiences to imagine other ways to live in the modern world. Nelson looks at the efforts of performers and activists to wrest the Okinawan past from romantic representations of idyllic rural life in the Japanese media and reactionary appropriations of traditional values by conservative politicians. In his consideration of eisā, the traditional dance for the dead, Nelson finds a practice that reaches beyond the expected boundaries of mourning and commemoration, as the living and the dead come together to create a moment in which a new world might be built from the ruins of the old.


Dancing Dead

Dancing Dead

Author: Deborah Woodworth

Publisher: Avon

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780380804276

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The curious are flocking to a quaint Kentucky village, where the North Homage Shakers have opened a hostel rumored to be inhabited by a nineteenth-century spirit. Business is booming even in the throes of the Great Depression -- until a hostel guest is found murdered and Sister Rose Callahan is compelled to investigate. An orphan girl claims to have seen a hooded specter dancing through the village. And now Sister Rose fears there is more than one ghost involved in this dark shadow play -- as the secrets haunting visiting strangers and the local devout alike threaten to turn Shaker against Shaker and shatter their peaceful society forever.


The Dancing Dead

The Dancing Dead

Author: Robert Jeschonek

Publisher: Robert Jeschonek

Published: 2012-05-22

Total Pages: 35

ISBN-13: 1370124562

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Dance or die! That’s the choice faced by victims of the Dance/Drop plague raging through the United States of tomorrow. Everyone in the nation dances nonstop, knowing all the while that as soon as they quit moving, they will die an agonizing and senseless death. What triggered this nightmarish marathon remains unknown...at least until Laurette, a dancer with a dark past, is swept to the West Coast as part of a mysterious migration that reveals the secret behind the plague. Can she survive attacks by brutal fanatics and disease-control warriors long enough to embrace her twisted destiny at the end of the biggest, and deadliest, dance number of all time?


Dead Girl Dancing

Dead Girl Dancing

Author: Linda Joy Singleton

Publisher: North Star Editions, Inc.

Published: 2010-09-08

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0738722073

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Apparently, this freaky phenomenon of stepping into someone else’s life—and their body!—has a name: Temp Lifer. Thanks to my dead grandmother, it’s happened again. So now I’m hungover and gazing in the mirror at ... my boyfriend’s sister. Grammy, help!


Dancing at the Pity Party

Dancing at the Pity Party

Author: Tyler Feder

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0525553037

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This acclaimed graphic memoir that Kirkus calls “cathartic and uplifting” is the tale of losing a parent and what it feels like to grieve and to move forward. “I can’t recommend this kind, funny, and poignant memoir enough. It’s an intimate, life-affirming story of resilience that feels like a good friend.” —Mari Andrew, author of Am I There Yet? Tyler Feder had just white-knuckled her way through her first year of college when her super cool mom was diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Now, with a decade of grief and nervous laughter under her belt, Tyler shares the story of that gut-wrenching, heart-pounding, extremely awkward time in her life—from her mom’s first oncology appointment to her funeral through the beginning of facing reality as a motherless daughter. She shares the sting of loss that never goes away, the uncomfortable post-death firsts, and the deep-down, hard-to-talk-about feelings of the grieving process. Dancing at the Pity Party is a frank and refreshingly funny look at what it’s like to grieve—for anyone struggling with loss who just wants someone to get it.


Dead Dancing Women

Dead Dancing Women

Author: Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

Publisher: Beyond The Page

Published: 2016-08-04

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1940846951

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Fans of Louise Penny will love the Emily Kincaid mysteries by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli! “Every woman who’s ever struggled with saying no, fitting in, and balancing independence against loneliness will adore first-timer Emily.” —Kirkus Reviews Following an ugly divorce and the death of her father, Emily Kincaid decides what she needs most is peace and quiet and time to think, so the part-time journalist and full-time struggling mystery writer relocates to a remote house in the woods of northern Michigan. When a severed head shows up in her garbage can, Emily knows she’s been singled out, and suddenly her peaceful solitude feels a lot like isolation and vulnerability. Discovering that the victim was a member of the Women of the Moon, a group of older local ladies who sing and dance around a bonfire in the woods late at night, Emily’s at a loss to know why anyone would want to hurt one of them. The women claim it’s a harmless act in praise of Mother Earth, a way to feel young again, but certain townspeople don’t see it that way. As Emily digs deeper, more of the women are turning up dead. Knowing she’ll have to root out a killer to save her peaceful paradise, Emily teams up with the cantankerous Deputy Dolly and begins navigating between eccentric town gossips and reclusive neighbors who would rather be left alone. When the killer gets too close for comfort, Emily knows she’ll have to put aside her fears before the natural life she’s chosen comes to a grisly and very unnatural end. Rave reviews for the Emily Kincaid Mysteries: Dead Dogs and Englishmen A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2011! “Buzzelli will have you packing your bags for a move to northern Michigan.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Emily is a detective for our times: She can’t afford health care, but she can make flour out of cat tails and work three jobs at once.” —Christian Science Monitor Dead Sleeping Shaman “Buzzelli’s well-crafted third Emily Kincaid . . . [features] sharp prose and spirited characterizations.” —Publishers Weekly “The appeal of this third in the series comes both from Emily—a likable character forging a new life after her divorce—and the evocatively described, nicely detailed small-town setting.” —Booklist Praise for A Most Curious Murder: “Fans of [Lewis] Carroll will delight in Zoe’s flights of fancy, and the northern Michigan setting in all its splendor is a charmer . . . an entertaining series with a quirky premise and captivating characters.” —Library Journal “This quirky, clever cozy series launch . . . [is] hard to resist.” —Publishers Weekly “Quirky main characters, lyrical dialogue and a story sure to appeal to bookworms as well as cozy mystery fans are all elements that give this novel a distinctive voice. A clever mystery and intriguing supporting cast round out the mix.” —RT Book Reviews (four star review)


Bad Axe County

Bad Axe County

Author: John Galligan

Publisher: Atria Books

Published: 2020-07-07

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1982110716

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Dennis Lehane meets Megan Miranda in this “dark beauty of a novel” (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author) about the first female sheriff in rural Bad Axe County, Wisconsin, as she searches for a missing girl, battles local drug dealers, and seeks the truth about the death of her parents twenty years ago—all as a winter storm rages in her embattled community. Fifteen years ago, Heidi White’s parents were shot to death on their Bad Axe County farm. The police declared it a murder-suicide and closed the case. But that night, Heidi found the one clue she knew could lead to the truth—if only the investigators would listen. Now Heidi White is Heidi Kick, wife of local baseball legend Harley Kick and mother of three small children. She’s also the interim sheriff in Bad Axe. Half the county wants Heidi elected but the other half will do anything to keep her out of law enforcement. And as a deadly ice storm makes it way to Bad Axe, tensions rise and long-buried secrets climb to the surface. As freezing rain washes out roads and rivers flood their banks, Heidi finds herself on the trail of a missing teenaged girl. Clues lead her down twisted paths to backwoods stag parties, derelict dairy farms, and the local salvage yard—where the body of a different teenage girl has been carefully hidden for a decade. As the storm rages on, Heidi realizes that someone is planting clues for her to find, leading her to some unpleasant truths that point to the local baseball team and a legendary game her husband pitched years ago. With a murder to solve, a missing girl to save, and a monster to bring to justice, Heidi is on the cusp of shaking her community to its core—and finding out what really happened the night her parents died. With “striking prose, engaging characters, and a searing story of crimes rooted in the heartland,” Bad Axe County is a “darkly irresistible thriller” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) that you won’t be able to put down.


Dancing at the Dead Sea

Dancing at the Dead Sea

Author: Alanna Mitchell

Publisher: Hunter House

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13:

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"Dancing at the Dead Sea is a powerful narrative on the critically important topic of the world's environmental hotspots. This is not a pessimistic tirade, but instead a factual commentary that will convince many, written by a gifted writer with an independent mind. I recommend this book without reservation." Richard Leakey Alanna Mitchell, winner of the Global Reuters IUCN media award for excellence in environmental reporting, embarks on an incredible worldwide cultural and environmental odyssey, zeroing in on environmental hotspots and examines how we can live, even flourish, without destroying the planet. One hundred and fifty years after the publication of The Origin of Species, Mitchell retraces the development of evolutionary theory, grappling with Richard Leakey's contention that the extinction of the human species is well under way. How and why are we human beings shortening our time on Earth? Travelling to the last living Eden, Madagascar, Mitchell is witness to the destruction of all but 10 percent of the original forest, not due to industrial activity but woodcutting by a primitive society still dependent on fire as its main energy resource. She then moves on to the badlands of Alberta, where she draws on the theory of world-famous paleontologist Philip Currie and the extinction of dinosaurs to gain insight on humanitys own impending suicide. Travel to the Azraq Oasis in Jordan, the meeting place of Africa, Asia and Europe, the mythical Galapagos Islands, seemingly unspoiled, but not immune to degradation, the far north and the Arctic desert of Banks Island, one of the first places on Earth where climate change with global impact is visible. Like the work of Wade Davis or books such as Krakatoa by Simon Winchester and Four Wings and a Prayer by Sue Halpern, Dancing at the Dead Sea intertwines scientific theory with travel adventure and history, creating a dramatic, fresh narrative voice examining not the origin, but the ultimate fate of the human species. (April 2004)


The Return of the Dancing Master

The Return of the Dancing Master

Author: Henning Mankell

Publisher: New Press/ORIM

Published: 2004-03-25

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 1595586156

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From the New York Times–bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander novels: An “absorbing” and “chilling” historical mystery “dripping with evil atmosphere” (The Times, London). December 12, 1945. The Third Reich lies in ruins as a British warplane lands in Bückeburg, Germany. A man carrying a small black bag quickly disembarks and travels to Hamelin, where he disappears behind the prison gates. Early the next day, England’s most experienced hangman executes twelve war criminals. Fifty-four years later, retired policeman Herbert Molin is found brutally slaughtered on his remote farm in Härjedalen, Sweden. The police discover strange tracks in the blood on the floor . . . as if someone had been practicing the tango. Stefan Lindman is a young police officer who has just been diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. When he reads about the murder of his former colleague, he decides to travel north and find out what happened. Soon he is enmeshed in a puzzling investigation with no witnesses and no discernible motives. Terrified of the illness that could take his life, Lindman becomes more and more reckless as he uncovers the links between Molin’s death, World War II, and an underground neo-Nazi network. Mankell’s impeccably researched historical thriller is “a worthy successor to the Wallander whodunits” (The Sunday Telegraph). “[Mankell] never fails to find a deep vein of humanity within the perpetually furrowed brows of his troubled cops.” —Booklist