Forty-something Beverly Brown, who feels as common as her name, embarks on an insightful, and often humorous journey of self-discovery. Along the way she meets Grant, a paraplegic French Canadian, who relights her passion for music and helps her discover things she never realized about herself. But they both know right from the get-go that they only have six weeks before he moves back to Montreal, and he does not believe in long distance relationships. Is it worth the risk to open up her heart again knowing it will soon be broken? Or can she make him change his mind? Theres also Jack, the part-time judge she works with. There is a bit of sexual tension in their friendly relationship that Bev tries hard to ignore. Now Jack has offered her a job in his law firm in the city. It sounds exciting, but also seems a bit more change than she is ready to make. Throw in her needy adult children, her narrow minded family and her manipulative ex-husband and it is easy to see how Bev has locked herself away in her self-made cocoon for so long. This is not a romance, but there is love. It is not religious, but there is spiritual confl ict. It is not a comedy, though there is humor. It is, however, a life changing story of confronting guilt, regret, and unfulfilled dreams, and rediscovering passion and hope for a purpose filled future.

'I learned about conflict from my parents.' So begins Christina McKenna's haunting memoir of her lonely early life. Recounting scenes from her childhood in Ulster, she paints a memorable and poignant picture of violence and oppression with her brutal father and protective mother, whose retalliation to her husband's meaness came in the form of a secret yellow dress. This is a rite-of-passage account of two generations of Irish women, told with great humour and compassion. On the one hand is the writer; on the other the heroic mother who showed her love as best she could. McKenna concludes that our past, no matter how painful, need not keep us bound - once we choose love over hate. That choice, she suggests, will set us free.

"Ingstad traveled to Canada, where he lived as a trapper for four years with the Chipewyan Indians. The Chipewyans told him tales about people from their tribe who traveled south, never to return. He decided to go south to find the descendants of his Chipewyan friends and determine if they had similar stories. In 1936 Ingstad arrived in the White Mountains and worked as a cowboy with the Apaches. His hunch about the Apaches' northern origins was confirmed by their stories, but the elders also told him about another group of Apaches who had fled from the reservation and were living in the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Ingstad launched an expedition on horseback to find these "lost" people, hoping to record more tales of their possible northern origin but also to document traditions and knowledge that might have been lost among the Apaches living on the reservation.".

Landmark interdisciplinary study of religious systems through their dance performances

When Americans mamboed in the kitchen, waltzed in the living room, polkaed in the pavilion, and tangoed at the club; with glorious, full-color record cover art. In midcentury America, eager dancers mamboed in the kitchen, waltzed in the living room, Watusied at the nightclub, and polkaed in the pavilion, instructed (and inspired) by dance records. Glorious, full-color record covers encouraged them: Let’s Cha Cha Cha, Dance and Stay Young, Dancing in the Street!, Limbo Party, High Society Twist. In Designed for Dancing, vinyl record aficionados and collectors Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder examine dance records of the 1950s and 1960s as expressions of midcentury culture, identity, fantasy, and desire. Borgerson and Schroeder begin with the record covers—memorable and striking, but largely designed and created by now-forgotten photographers, scenographers, and illustrators—which were central to the way records were conceived, produced, and promoted. Dancing allowed people to sample aspirational lifestyles, whether at the Plaza or in a smoky Parisian café, and to affirm ancestral identities with Irish, Polish, or Greek folk dancing. Dance records featuring ethnic music of variable authenticity and appropriateness invited consumers to dance in the footsteps of the Other with “hot” Latin music, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and Hawaiian hulas. Bought at a local supermarket, department store, or record shop, and listened to in the privacy of home, midcentury dance records offered instruction in how to dance, how to dress, how to date, and how to discover cool new music—lessons for harmonizing with the rest of postwar America.

A dark comedy to make you tear your hair, split your sides and smack your lips. Two sisters in search of love; parents torn between tradition and transition; matrimonial encounters of the most mirthful, miserable, mercenary and macabre kind. A culinary adventure with the most unholy alliances.