Women Dancing

Strictly Come Dancing professional and breast cancer and Crohn's awareness advocate Amy Dowden shares her journey from growing up in the Welsh Valleys to dancing on the glittering stage of prime-time television. Through her debilitating illness as a teen and her recent chemotherapy treatment for stage 3 breast cancer, Amy's is a story of an unbreakable spirit with an irrepressible joy for life and dance; she is living proof that our darkest times do not define us.

From modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos - in this classic collection of essays, Ursula K. Le Guin roves with her customary audacity over the intersecting arenas of literature, feminism, and social responsibility, exploding any received notions she comes across and revealing visionary possibilities in their stead.

Millie Cameron is furious when she finds herself obliged to sort through the belongings of her aunt Flo, who has died recently. She hardly knew her aunt, and besides, she has her own career to think of.

Young, pretty, full of confidence - or so she likes to pretend - she wants nothing to do with a dull spinster aunt whom her family refuses to talk about. But when she arrives at Flo’s basement flat, Millie’s interest is awakened.

Join Candace as she reflects on the self-discovery that came through leaping out of her comfort zone. Go behind the scenes and experience the highs and lows, the roadblocks, and the personal victories. Hear straight from her heart on tough lessons learned about grace, rejection, perfectionism, disappointment, accountability, dealing with criticism, and more. Through God’s strength, and with the help of endless support from her family and friends, see how Candace stayed true to herself and publicly lived out her faith in Christ all the way to the finale.

By the time Sara Davies left university, she was running a business with a half-million-pound turnover from her student bedroom. When she became the youngest of BBC 1's iconic Dragons, that turnover was £25 million. Today, she is one of Britain's biggest business names. Now, in a memoir as full of warmth, wit and wisdom as she is, Sara shares what it took to get there - from manning factories overnight with her mam and dad to hitting the trade shows of Las Vegas alone, armed with little more than ambition and a passion for crafts. What does she look for in a business investment?

Lexi Steiner is a New York girl transplanted to Southern California, an ambitious immigration lawyer whose best friend (alter ego, actually) is Nell, a writer. The two of them have followed each other around the country since college, being constantly together, sometimes sharing bedmates, and always telling each other absolutely everything. But at the age of 29, their shared life as refugees is beginning to wear thin; maybe love and caring about someone isn't such a bad idea after all.

At 16 years old, Laurie Hernandez has already made many of her dreams come true - and yet it’s only the beginning for this highly accomplished athlete. A Latina Jersey girl, Laurie saw her life take a dramatic turn last summer when she was chosen to be a part of the 2016 US Olympic gymnastics team. After winning gold in Rio as part of the Final Five, Laurie also earned an individual silver medal for her performance on the balance beam.

Cally Magalhães’ memoir is a gripping pause-resister of an autobiography. With a novelist’s eye for descriptive detail, Cally invites us to accompany her on her astonishing journey from England to India and Estonia, and finally to São Paulo, Brazil. We join her as she follows a trail of signs and blessings to bring relief, hope, and healing to people who need help, wherever they may be - in the streets, the favelas, the prisons, or hidden under bridges.

The hilarious and poignant new novel from the best-selling author of The Kicking the Bucket List. When a box set of Broadchurch is more appealing than having sex with your husband, then perhaps it's time to hide the remote.... Cait and Matt have been married for 30 years. They are rock solid. An inspiration to others. Stuck together like glue - aren't they? But Cait can't shake off the feeling that something is missing.

Sparkling with suspense and vulnerability, Tap Dancing on Everest is a true survival story about the risks we take to become our most authentic selves. In this inspiring coming-of-age travel memoir that includes solo hiking through Nepal, Zieman weaves her childhood as the daughter of Jewish immigrants raised in 1970's New York City, her father a Holocaust survivor, with adventure, medicine, and empowerment. She captures the curiosity and awe of a young woman as she faces down messages to stay small and safe and ventures into the unknown.

Returning to her parents’ birthplace in 1994, Pamela Nomvete became a household name as Ntsiki Lukhele, “the bitch”, on a South African soap opera called Generations. Dancing to the Beat of the Drum details the traumatic personal crisis Pamela went through as her success grew—a crisis which took everything she had worked for from her—and how she came to re-evaluate her priorities and reconnect with the spiritual side of her life, something she had long neglected.

Kate and Josh Hutchins have lived on Dancing Hill Farm in Dorset for thirty years. Here they have brought up three children, expected to grow old, and imagined they would pass the farm on to one of their boys, like generations of family before them. But things have not gone to plan and Kate is restless. Longing for some time to herself, dreaming of what she might have achieved had she not married so young.

Eileen Kramer has lived the most extraordinary life. Born just after Australia entered World War I, she embraced creativity and adventure from an early age. She danced and painted murals in Karachi; worked as an artist's model in Paris and London; met Ella Fitzgerald and Groucho Marx; and learned the twist from Louis Armstrong. In September 2013, aged ninety-nine, Eileen returned to Australia. Now, at 108, she is still dancing.

From licking a Monet in Paris, to pushing an abusive macho honeymooner off his sailboat in the shark-infested Galapagos, to saving her toddler son from a charging bull elephant in Africa, these 14 delightful, award-winning true tales will inspire listeners to follow the call of a wild life and leave home with their doors unlocked.

Infertility is devastating. Feelings of loss and disappointment isolate you and threaten to rob you of hope. No matter how much time, energy, or money you invest trying to conceive and give birth to a healthy baby, ultimately, that tiny life is beyond your control. In Dancing with Hope in the Midst of Infertility, Cari Moy shares her personal experience of struggling with long-term infertility. Drawing from her extensive background in dance, Cari shares strategies for maintaining hope during seemingly utterly impossible times.

In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnny’s chemistry, to Bergstein’s political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The film’s remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes—deeply feminist, sensitively written—that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.

Visiting a psychic is outside the norm for Ellison Russell. Finding bodies is not. Unfortunately, the psychic's crystal ball says she'll soon be surrounded by death. Again. Drat. Now there's a corpse in the front drive, a witchy neighbor ready to turn Ellison and her (not so) little dog into toadstools, and a stripper named Starry Knight occupying the guest room. How did 1975 go so wrong so quickly? Ellison must handle Mother (who's found a body of her own), make up with a certain handsome detective, and catch a killer, or the death surrounding her might be her own.

In 1950s Bombay, Jaya Malhotra studies medicine at the direction of her father, a champion of women’s education who assumes the right to choose his daughters’ vocations. A talented painter drawn to the city’s dynamic new modern-art movement, Jaya is driven by her desire to express both the pain and extraordinary force of life of a nation rising from the devastation of British rule.

Sheryl has seen better days; but now, at the wrong side of 35, she has lost it all and must start again; not alone, but under the watchful eye of her mother, her sister, and various friends who have known her since she was in nappies. How does she cope? With a newly discovered passion for belly dancing, Sheryl sets out to chase her fantasies. But with a teacher like Nefertiti, and a mother like Beatrice, chasing your fantasies is easier said than done....

When Sadie Harlan visits her daughter, Lauren, at her summer internship in Yosemite National Park, it seems like the perfect way to forget about her empty nest and failing marriage back home. But when the two women get lost on what’s meant to be a short hike, they suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives. As they search for food, water, and civilization, they battle injury, exhaustion, and natural predators. Sadie, however, is assaulted by more than just the unforgiving elements.