Piercings and tattoos, scarification and cosmetic surgery, foot binding and body building, corsets, and crinolines. People have long altered the shape of their body parts using physical modifications or specially designed clothing in order to fulfill a beauty standard. Then, they learned that other culture's ideas were different. For instance, exploration and trade brought Europeans into contact with peoples who had far different ideals of physical beauty from their own. This exciting tome covers world and cultural history in an enticing, easy-to-read way that is sure to keep it in high demand.

From the bestselling author of Midnight Train to Paris comes a spellbinding and sexy thriller that will take you on a shocking ride through the darkest sides of Paris... After surviving a brutal childhood, Paris-based writer Eve Winters has lived her entire adult life totally under the radar. That all changes one warm spring day when she releases an explicit memoir detailing her dangerous foray into the world of high-end prostitution, and her scandalous affair with a prominent married businessman. The day of the release, Eve is set to land in New York for her glamorous book launch party...but there's just one problem--she never boarded the plane. Across the Atlantic, in a Park Avenue penthouse fit for a queen and her millionaire husband... Acclaimed New York author, writing professor, and socialite Sophia Grayson is all set to attend the book release party of her former student, Eve Winters. Except...Eve never shows. When news travels from Paris that the author has gone missing, Sophia spends the evening reading Eve's shocking memoir. What she discovers in its pages turns her perfect Park Avenue façade upside down and sends her searching for the truth in the one city she'd sworn off forever, the city where she'd locked away her own sordid past and thrown away the key...Paris. What reviewers are saying about All the Beautiful Bodies: "Absolute must-read thriller!" "WOW. I can't wait for the rest of this series!" "A dark but deeply moving story." "I was absolutely blown away by how much I loved it." "If you won't mind being sleep-deprived...then you will be captivated by this novel." "As with all of the other novels Danielle has written, this new thriller is incredible." "This book was spectacular!!! I couldn't put it down!" "I was spellbound and I can't recommend this book enough!" "Filled with twists, turns, and scandals, All the Beautiful Bodies is a sexy thriller you don't want to miss!" "Danielle Porter's ALL THE BEAUTIFUL BODIES is what would happen if THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN and FIFTY SHADES OF GREY were to hook up and have a love child." City of Darkness Series: All the Beautiful Bodies Sequel coming soon... City of Light Series: One Night in Paris Dancing with Paris Midnight Train to Paris City of Love Series: Sleeping with Paris Kissed in Paris Honeymoon in Paris A Paris Dream True Stories in the City of Love: Meet Me in Paris I Loved You in Paris Danielle Porter's captivating Paris novels written under her pen name of Juliette Sobanet have reached over 500,000 readers worldwide, hitting the top 100 Bestseller Lists on Amazon US, UK, France, and Germany, becoming bestsellers in Italy and Turkey as well. Time for that trip to Paris? All you have to do is grab your copy of All the Beautiful Bodies and turn the page...

Blending social history and personal experiences, an exploration of how people try to control their bodies with food reveals the struggle everyone experiences with their own bodies.--

Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in Urban India follows a postcolonial city as it transforms into a bustling global metropolis after the liberalization of the Indian economy. Taking the once idyllic “garden city” of Bangalore in southern India as its point of departure, the book explores how artists across India and beyond foreground neoliberalism as a “structure of feeling” permeating aesthetics, selfhood, and everyday life. Jisha Menon conveys the affective life of the city through multiple aesthetic projects that express a range of urban feelings, including aspiration, panic, and obsolescence. As developers and policymakers remodel the city through tumultuous construction projects, urban beautification, privatization, and other templated features of “world‐class cities,” urban citizens are also changing—transformed by nostalgia, narcissism, shame, and the spaces where they dwell and work. Sketching out scenes of urban aspiration and its dark underbelly, Menon delineates the creative and destructive potential of India’s lurch into contemporary capitalism, uncovering the interconnectedness of local and global power structures as well as art’s capacity to absorb and critique liberalization’s discontents. She argues that neoliberalism isn’t just an economic, social, and political phenomenon; neoliberalism is also a profoundly aesthetic project.

Consideration of the body as a subject for study has increased in recent years with new technologies, forms of modification, debates about obesity and issues of age being brought into focus by the media. Drawing on contemporary culture, Body Studies: The Basics introduces readers to the key concerns and debates surrounding the study of the sociological body, cutting across disciplines to cover topics which include: Nature vs. Culture: how we ‘build’ and transform our bodies Conformity and resistance in bodily practice Issues of body image – beauty, diet, exercise and age Sporting bodies and the pursuit of ideals Enfreakment, disability and monstrosity Cyborgs and virtual online bodies With further reading signposted throughout, this accessible book is essential reading for anyone studying the body through the lens of sociology, cultural studies, sports studies, media studies and gender studies; and all those with an interest in how the physical body can be a social construct.

Twisty and brimming with the emotional power of beautifully drawn characters, the solo debut by the coauthor of The Boy in the Suitcase is a brooding and atmospheric thriller that sets a young mother on a collision course with her past in order to save her son's future. Ella Nygaard, 27, has been a ward of the state since she was seven years old, the night her father murdered her mother. She doesn’t remember anything about that night or her childhood before it—but her body remembers. The PTSD-induced panic attacks she now suffers incapacitate her for hours at a time, sometimes days. After one particularly bad episode lands Ella in a psych ward, she discovers her son, Alex, has been taken from her by the state and placed with a foster family. Desperate not to lose her son, Ella kidnaps Alex and flees to the seaside town in northern Denmark where she was born. Her grandmother’s abandoned house is in grave disrepair, but she can live there for free until she can figure out how to convince social services that despite everything, she is the best parent for her child. But being back in the small town forces Ella to confront the demons of her childhood—the monsters her memory has tried so hard to obscure. What really happened that night her mother died? Was her grandmother right—was Ella’s father unjustly convicted? What other secrets were her parents hiding from each other? If Ella can start to remember, maybe her scars will begin to heal—or maybe the truth will put her in even greater danger.