What is "reality"? Tawnya Cooke reveals the real story behind the scenes of the controversial FOX reality show; The Swan. Utilizing the day to day journal she compiled in the many months of filming while she was a contestant on the The Swan, you will follow the day to day "routine" she encountered, along with the often times exciting world of reality TV! When 40 year old financial industry Compliance Officer Tawnya Cooke was chosen out of 250,000 women nationwide to be a "Swan" on the FOX Reality Show, THE SWAN, little did she know how very UNreal reality TV was. This book is her day to day journal and process from so called ugly duckling to becoming a beautiful "Swan." Throughout the often times surreal process she kept both her dignity and sense of humor. Tawnya was up against plastic surgeons who wanted to flex their Frankenstein muscles on her face and body, as well as executive producers of the show, who had no boundaries set up for these potential Reality stars. However, she stood her ground and in the end did things her way. This is Tawnya's widely anticipated memoir regarding a reality star's rise and fall and rise again, and the men and women who after five years still are an intricate part of her life!

In-depth biography of James Gilcrest Swan, the first to teach, and live among, the Makah Indians of Neah Bay, record their culture, and collect their artifacts for the Smithsonian Institution. Based largely on his previously unpublished diaries. -- Amazon.

The world is big. Anna is small. The snow is everywhere and all around. But one night . . . One night, her mother takes her to the ballet, and everything is changed. Anna finds a beauty inside herself that she cannot contain. So begins the journey of a girl who will one day grow up to be the most famous prima ballerina of all time, inspiring legions of dancers after her: the brave, the generous, the transcendently gifted Anna Pavlova. Beautiful, inspirational, and triumphant, Anna Pavlova's life is masterfully captured in this exquisite picture book.

Originally published: Australia: Giramondo, 2013.

A seventeen-year-old girl in 1940's England spends an unchaperoned summer at a cottage in a seaside village, where a series of diaries by the cottage's most recent inhabitant, together with some intense personal experiences, open up her life to reveal her true wants and priorities.

Ever since she was a small child, Helma Swan, the daughter of a Northwest Coast chief, loved and learned the music of her people. As an adult she began to sing, even though traditionally Makah singers had been men. How did such a situation develop? In her own words, Helma Swan tells the unusual story of her life, her music, and how she became a singer. An excellent storyteller, she speaks of both musical and non-musical activities and events. In addition to discussing song ownership and other Makah musical concepts, she describes songs, dances, and potlatch ceremonies; proper care of masks and costumes; and changing views of Native music education. More generally, she speaks of cultural changes that have had profound effects on contemporary Makah life. Drawing on more than twenty years of research and oral history interviews, Linda J. Goodman in Singing the Songs of My Ancestors presents a somewhat different point of view-that of the anthropologist/ethnomusicologist interested in Makah culture and history as well as the changing musical and ceremonial roles of Makah men and women. Her information provides a context for Helma Swan’s stories and songs. Taken together, the two perspectives allow the reader to embark on a vivid and absorbing journey through Makah life, music, and ceremony spanning most of the twentieth century. Studies of American Indian women musicians are rare; this is the first to focus on a Northwest Coast woman who is an outstanding singer and storyteller as well as a conservator of her tribe’s cultural traditions.

Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours A poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A Wild Swan and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away—the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder—are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation. Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is broken, the rapturous instant of a miracle unexpectedly realized, or the fate of a prince only half cured of a curse. The Beast stands ahead of you in line at the convenience store, buying smokes and a Slim Jim, his devouring smile aimed at the cashier. A malformed little man with a knack for minor acts of wizardry goes to disastrous lengths to procure a child. A loutish and lazy Jack prefers living in his mother's basement to getting a job, until the day he trades a cow for a handful of magic beans. Reimagined by one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation, and exquisitely illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, rarely have our bedtime stories been this dark, this perverse, or this true.