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  Icons and Instincts -...

  Vincent Paterson, Amy Tofte

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  For the first time, the choreographer of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Björk, and many others reveals stage stories through his extraordinary journey. 
   
   
   
  Vincent Paterson began his professional dancing career late in life. It would take an exceptional turn when he became one of the lead dancers in Michael Jackson's Beat It music video. Through hard work, he rises to the rank of choreographer and director for the world's greatest singers, but also for cinema and musical comedy. 
   
   
   
  He tells with humility the fascinating universe of film sets, the rehearsal sessions where he had to orchestrate and synchronize dozens of dancers, life backstage where it is sometimes necessary to manage a few whims of the stars, his successes and his disappointments. It is a dive into the heart of the world of dance.

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  Blue & Green - From their pens...

  Virginia Woolf

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  Adeline Virginia Woolf was born on the 25th January 1882 in South Kensington in London. 
  Although lauded as a founder of modernist writing with such classics as ‘Orlando’, ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and ‘To the Lighthouse’ and, of course, many classic short stories, her background is filled with elements of tragedy that she somehow overcame to become such a revered writer.   Her mother died when she was 13, her half-sister Stella two years later and with it her first of several nervous breakdowns.  Appallingly it was later found that three of her half-brothers had sexually abused her so darkness must have seemed ever present.   
  She began writing professionally at age 20 but her father’s death two years later brought a complete mental collapse and she was briefly institutionalised.  Somehow she found within herself a literary career and with it great innovations in writing; she was a pioneer of “stream of consciousness”.    
  Her tight circle of friends were the founders of the Bloomsbury Group, a movement whose legacy still influences across the arts and society in many way to this day.   
  Whilst the dark periods continued to interrupt her emotional state her rate of work never ceased.  Until, on 28th March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled up its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse, in Lewes, East Sussex and drowned herself.  Her body was not recovered until the 18th April.  She was 59. 
  She left behind a note which read in part “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again.  I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times.  And I shan't recover this time.  I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate.  So I am doing what seems the best thing to do”.

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  Christmas Fiction off the Beaten...

  Laurie Lucking, Michelle L....

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  Not your Granny's Christmas stories … 
   Step off the beaten path and enjoy six stories that look beyond the expected, the traditional, the tried-and-true. 
   Inspired by the song, Mary Did You Know? -- a mother's memories of events leading up to and following that one holy night. MARY, DID YOU KNOW? 
   A young woman seeking her own identity searches for the man who tried to kill her and her mother on Christmas Eve twenty years before. A ROSE FROM THE ASHES 
   Princess, tower, sorceress, dragon, brave knight, clever peasant -- combine these ingredients into a Christmas-time story that isn't quite what you'd expect. RETURN TO CALLIDORA 
   Anticipating tough financial times, the decision not to buy or exchange presents leads to some painful and surprising revelations for a hardworking man and his family. NOT THIS YEAR 
   Years ago, a gunman and a store full of hostages learned some important lessons about faith and pain and what really matters in life -- and the echoes from that day continue to the present. THOSE WHO STAYED 
   A community of refugees, a brutal winter, a doorway to another world -- a touch of magic creating holiday joy for others leads to a Christmas wish fulfilled. CRYSTAL CHRISTMAS 
   

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  Fat Off Fat On - A Big Bitch...

  Clarkisha Kent

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  In this disarming and candid memoir, cultural critic Clarkisha Kent unpacks the kind of compounded problems you face when you’re a fat, Black, queer woman in a society obsessed with heteronormativity. 
   
  There was no easy way for Kent to navigate personal discovery and self-love. As a dark-skinned, first-generation American facing a myriad of mental health issues and intergenerational trauma, at times Kent’s body felt like a cosmic punishment. In the face of body dysmorphia, homophobia, anti-Blackness, and respectability politics, the pursuit of “high self-esteem” seemed oxymoronic. 
   
  Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto is a humorous, at times tragic, memoir that follows Kent on her journey to realizing that her body is a gift to be grown into, that sometimes family doesn’t always mean home, and how even ill-fated bisexual romances could free her from gender essentialism. Perfect for readers of Keah Brown’s The Pretty One, Alida Nugent’s You Don’t Have to Like Me, and Stephanie Yeboah’s Fattily Ever After, Kent’s debut explores her own lived experiences to illuminate how fatphobia intertwines with other oppressions. It stresses the importance of addressing the violence scored upon our minds and our bodies, and how we might begin the difficult—but joyful—work of setting ourselves free.

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  A Middle-Sized Artist - From...

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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  Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on 3rd July 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, to an unaffectionate mother and a father who abandoned her and her older brother to a life of poverty. 
  Inevitably her schooling was limited and by 15 she had attended seven different schools but received only four years education.  However Charlotte was resourceful and did spend time with her father’s aunts – the suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker and the ‘Uncle Tom Cabin’s’ author, Harriet Beecher Stowe as well as many hours at the public library studying ancient civilisations. 
  In 1878, she enrolled in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design where she met Martha Luther and they developed a close relationship until Luther married in 1881. Charlotte was devastated and detested romance and love until she met and married the artist Charles Walter Stetson.  
  Their only child, Katharine Beecher Stetson, was born in 1885 but left Charlotte with post-natal depression, then often dismissed as a case of hysteria or nerves.  Unsuited to domestic life she ruptured her life and moved to California with Katherine.  She divorced in 1894 and then sent Katharine east to live with her father and his second wife confirming that his paternal rights be acknowledged and that Katherine establish a relationship with her father. 
  After her mother died in 1893, Charlotte moved back east and became involved with her first cousin, Wall Street attorney, Houghton Gilman who she married in 1900. After his death she moved back to California, where Katherine now lived.   
  Her most popular story is ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ which touched on her own post-partum depression and underlined the need for women to be responsible for their mental and physical well-being, as the narrator is ordered by her husband/doctor to take compete rest in her room where she is isolated and becomes obsessed with the revolting yellow wallpaper.   
  She wrote other notable short stories the best of which we also include.   
  Charlotte lectured widely for social reform, wrote important non-fiction works that questioned our patriarchal system and left a legacy as a leading and positive spokesperson for feminism.  
  She was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer in 1932 and, as she wrote in her suicide note and autobiography, she ‘chose chloroform over cancer’    
  Charlotte Perkins Gilman took her own life on 17th August 1935, aged 75, in Pasadena, California.

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  Methadone and a Mobile Phone

  Grace Underwood

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  In Methadone and a Mobile Phone,  delve into the turbulent world of Melissa Jane, a woman ensnared by choices that lead her astray. As life’s winding path becomes a treacherous terrain, Melissa grapples with the weight of addiction, an affliction that touches countless souls globally.
   
  While  many bear the scars of this battle, the decision to heal and rise is deeply personal. Melissa, tethered to methadone’s deceptive solace, overlooks the commitment needed to truly reclaim herself, descending further into the abyss of her own making.
   
  A  poignant reflection on the fragility of human spirit, choices, and the battles we wage within, this narrative is a heart-wrenching reminder of the cost of surrendering to one’s demons.

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