Dancing on Broken Glass

Dancing on Broken Glass
Author: Ka Hancock
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2012-03-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1451637381

A powerfully written novel offering an intimate look at a beautiful marriage and how bipolar disorder and cancer affect it, Dancing on Broken Glass by Ka Hancock perfectly illustrates the enduring power of love. Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn’t have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They’re both plagued with faulty genes—he has bipolar disorder, and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy’s twenty-first birthday, sparks fly, and there’s no denying their chemistry. Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work—and they put it all in writing. Mickey promises to take his medication. Lucy promises not to blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty. She promises patience. Like any marriage, they have good days and bad days—and some very bad days. In dealing with their unique challenges, they make the heartbreaking decision not to have children. But when Lucy shows up for a routine physical just shy of their eleventh anniversary, she gets an impossible surprise that changes everything. Everything. Suddenly, all their rules are thrown out the window, and the two of them must redefine what love really is. An unvarnished portrait of a marriage that is both ordinary and extraordinary, Dancing on Broken Glass takes readers on an unforgettable journey of the heart.

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge
Author: Chanrithy Him
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2001-04-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393076164

"A gut-wrenching story told with honesty, restraint, and dignity." —Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author of Waiting Chanrithy Him felt compelled to tell of surviving life under the Khmer Rouge in a way "worthy of the suffering which I endured as a child." In a mesmerizing story, Chanrithy Him vividly recounts her trek through the hell of the "killing fields." She gives us a child's-eye view of a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps for both adults and children are the norm and modern technology no longer exists. Death becomes a companion in the camps, along with illness. Yet through the terror, the members of Chanrithy's family remain loyal to one another, and she and her siblings who survive will find redeemed lives in America. A Finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.

Dancing on Thorns

Dancing on Thorns
Author: Rebecca Horsfall
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 734
Release: 2006
Genre: Ballet dancers
ISBN: 0099474247

When Jonni Kendal comes to London to pursue her dream of becoming an actress, she's young, naive, full of courage and determined to excel. Just nineteen, she's desperate to escape the narrow, parochial life her parents have planned for her. Jean-Baptiste St. Michel is haunted by his father: the man who abandoned him as a child, the man he can hardly remember, the man he cannot forget. Driven by his determination to forge a life for himself outside of the shadow his father's famous name casts, he's ambitious, talented and dangerously attractive - but suspicious of emotional attachments. When Michel rescues Jonni one night and takes her home, there's an immediate attraction. Jonni finds herself embraced by an exciting new world she never suspected existed, and Michel, ever wary of commitment, finds himself growing used to her presence in his life. But before he can commit to any kind of future, he must release himself from his past ...

Broken Glass Park

Broken Glass Park
Author: Alina Bronsky
Publisher: Europa Editions UK
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2014-11-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1609459709

17-year-old Sascha Naimann lives in Berlin's Russian ghetto with her two younger siblings and, until recently, her mother. She is precocious, independent, street-wise, and, since her stepfather murdered her mother several months ago, an orphan. Unlike most of her companions, she doesn't dream of escaping from the tough housing project where they live. Sascha's dreams are different: she longs to write a novel about her beautiful but nave mother and kill her stepfather. Sacha's story, candid and self confident, relates her struggle.

The Other Side of Perfect

The Other Side of Perfect
Author: Mariko Turk
Publisher: Poppy
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0316703427

For fans of Sarah Dessen and Mary H.K. Choi, this lyrical and emotionally driven novel follows Alina, a young aspiring dancer who suffers a devastating injury and must face a world without ballet—as well as the darker side of her former dream. Alina Keeler was destined to dance, but then a terrifying fall shatters her leg—and her dreams of a professional ballet career along with it. After a summer healing (translation: eating vast amounts of Cool Ranch Doritos and binging ballet videos on YouTube), she is forced to trade her pre-professional dance classes for normal high school, where she reluctantly joins the school musical. However, rehearsals offer more than she expected—namely Jude, her annoyingly attractive castmate she just might be falling for. But to move forward, Alina must make peace with her past and face the racism she experienced in the dance industry. She wonders what it means to yearn for ballet—something so beautiful, yet so broken. And as broken as she feels, can she ever open her heart to someone else? Touching, romantic, and peppered with humor, this debut novel explores the tenuousness of perfectionism, the possibilities of change, and the importance of raising your voice.

Dancing Through It

Dancing Through It
Author: Jenifer Ringer
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2014-02-20
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 069815150X

“A glimpse into the fragile psyche of a dancer.” —The Washington Post Jenifer Ringer, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, was thrust into the headlines after her weight was commented on by a New York Times critic, and her response ignited a public dialogue about dance and weight. Ballet aficionados and aspiring performers of all ages will want to join Ringer behind the scenes as she shares her journey from student to star and candidly discusses both her struggle with an eating disorder and the media storm that erupted after the Times review. An unusually upbeat account of life on the stage, Dancing Through It is also a coming-of-age story and an inspiring memoir of faith and of triumph over the body issues that torment all too many women and men.

Dancing in the Mosque

Dancing in the Mosque
Author: Homeira Qaderi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2020-12-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 006297033X

A People Book of the Week & a Kirkus Best Nonfiction of the Year An exquisite and inspiring memoir about one mother’s unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life. No ordinary Afghan woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights in her theocratic and patriarchal society. Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story—and that of Afghan women—Homeira challenges you to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice, and survival. Her story asks you to consider the lengths you would go to protect yourself, your family, and your dignity.

Girl Through Glass

Girl Through Glass
Author: Sari Wilson
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2016-01-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062326295

Long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize An Amazon Best Book of the Month A Buzzfeed Most Exciting Book of the Year A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year & Bestseller Selected as a Skimm Read A Refinery 29 Best Book of the Year Chosen as a Rumpus Book Club Selection Chosen as a Bustle Best Literary Debut Novel Written By Women in the Last 5 Years An enthralling literary debut that tells the story of a young girl’s coming of age in the cutthroat world of New York City ballet—a story of obsession and the quest for perfection, trust and betrayal, beauty and lost innocence. In the roiling summer of 1977, eleven-year-old Mira is an aspiring ballerina in the romantic, highly competitive world of New York City ballet. Enduring the mess of her parent’s divorce, she finds escape in dance—the rigorous hours of practice, the exquisite beauty, the precision of movement, the obsessive perfectionism. Ballet offers her control, power, and the promise of glory. It also introduces her to forty-seven-year-old Maurice DuPont, a reclusive, charismatic balletomane who becomes her mentor. Over the course of three years, Mira is accepted into the prestigious School of American Ballet run by the legendary George Balanchine, and eventually becomes one of “Mr. B’s girls”—a dancer of rare talent chosen for greatness. As she ascends higher in the ballet world, her relationship with Maurice intensifies, touching dark places within herself and sparking unexpected desires that will upend both their lives. In the present day, Kate, a professor of dance at a Midwestern college, embarks on a risky affair with a student that threatens to obliterate her career and capsizes the new life she has painstakingly created for her reinvented self. When she receives a letter from a man she’s long thought dead, Kate is hurled back into the dramas of a past she thought she had left behind. Told in interweaving narratives that move between past and present, Girl Through Glass illuminates the costs of ambition, secrets, and the desire for beauty, and reveals how the sacrifices we make for an ideal can destroy—or save—us.

Instructions for Dancing

Instructions for Dancing
Author: Nicola Yoon
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 152471898X

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A charming, wholehearted love story that's sure to make readers swoon."—Entertainment Weekly "Nicola Yoon writes from the heart in this beautiful love story."—Good Morning America “It’s like an emotional gut punch—so beautiful and also heart-wrenching."—US Weekly In this romantic page-turner from the author of Everything, Everything and The Sun is Also a Star, Evie has the power to see other people’s romantic fates—what will happen when she finally sees her own? Evie Thomas doesn't believe in love anymore. Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. After all, even the greatest love stories end with a broken heart, eventually. As Evie tries to understand why this is happening, she finds herself at La Brea Dance Studio, learning to waltz, fox-trot, and tango with a boy named X. X is everything that Evie is not: adventurous, passionate, daring. His philosophy is to say yes to everything--including entering a ballroom dance competition with a girl he's only just met. Falling for X is definitely not what Evie had in mind. If her visions of heartbreak have taught her anything, it's that no one escapes love unscathed. But as she and X dance around and toward each other, Evie is forced to question all she thought she knew about life and love. In the end, is love worth the risk?

Dancing with the Octopus

Dancing with the Octopus
Author: Debora Harding
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-08-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1782837019

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION* 'Extraordinary' Kate Mosse 'Electric' Lemn Sissay 'Searing' Julia Samuel One Omaha winter day in 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knife-point, thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and left to die. But what if this wasn't the most traumatic, defining event in her childhood? Undertaking a radical project, Debora Harding dexterously shifts between the past and present to unravel her story. From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery.