Natasha's Dance


Book Description

History on a grand scale--an enchanting masterpiece that explores the making of one of the world's most vibrant civilizations A People's Tragedy, wrote Eric Hobsbawm, did "more to help us understand the Russian Revolution than any other book I know." Now, in Natasha's Dance, internationally renowned historian Orlando Figes does the same for Russian culture, summoning the myriad elements that formed a nation and held it together. Beginning in the eighteenth century with the building of St. Petersburg--a "window on the West"--and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself--its character, spiritual essence, and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works--by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall--with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons, and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world. Figes's characters range high and low: the revered Tolstoy, who left his deathbed to search for the Kingdom of God, as well as the serf girl Praskovya, who became Russian opera's first superstar and shocked society by becoming her owner's wife. Like the European-schooled countess Natasha performing an impromptu folk dance in Tolstoy's War and Peace, the spirit of "Russianness" is revealed by Figes as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictory--a powerful force that unified a vast country and proved more lasting than any Russian ruler or state.




Dancing With Natasha


Book Description

In this engaging, witty, and poignant memoir, Greg and his wife Joan make the frightening trek to the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Dayton, Ohio, for a few lessons to better enjoy the professional formal functions they attend. What they find is nothing short of miraculous.




Dance with Me


Book Description

The second book in Alexis Daria's Dance Off series finds one playboy charmer falling for his new roommate. Natasha Díaz is having a day. She’s trying to prove she can make it as a professional dancer, but she’s overworked, out of cash, and her roommate has just moved out. When she comes home to find a hole in her ceiling and her bedroom flooded, she’s desperate enough to crash with the one guy she can’t quit. She accepts his offer with one condition: no sleeping together while she’s living with him. Dimitri Kovalenko has never lived with a woman before. But when Tasha’s in need of a place to stay, he suggests she move in without a second thought. He accepts her condition, hoping she won’t stick to it. They’re good together, both in the ballroom and the bedroom. Since their first dance, she’s never been far from his thoughts. Sure, she’s a pro and he’s one of her show’s judges, but they’re not currently filming, so no one needs to know. Living in close quarters shows Dimitri a side of Natasha he’s never seen before, and he likes it. A lot. Too bad she’s doing everything in her power to keep him at arm’s length. When an injury forces Natasha to take it easy or risk her ability to dance, it’s his chance to show her that the rules have changed, and she can trust him with her heart.




Spice Health Heroes


Book Description

Spices are celebrated the world over for the depth of flavor that they bring to the dishes to which they are added. The alchemy of roasting and blending the perfect spice mix is a careful balance of sweet, sour, bitter and spicy that can elevate a dish to something truly special. But beyond their remarkable taste, many spices have huge benefits to health and nutrition that are only now beginning to be recognized in the Western world. This beautiful cook book includes a detailed study of the history, myths and traditional uses of spices. Spice Health Heroes examines the culinary, nutritional and medical applications of the everyday and more exotic spices found in your pantry. Medical and nutritional claims are backed by contributions from an impressive team of international medical professionals and institutions. With more than 80 recipes, including contributions from some 20 internationally renowned chefs from around the world, such as Yotam Ottolenghi, April Bloomfield and 2016 James Beard winners Lidia Bastianich and Ragahavan Iyer, Spice Health Heroes takes you on a journey through the spice cabinet and will inspire you to add a fragrant spice to every meal.




Vanilla Table


Book Description

You may think there are only so many ways vanilla can be used in cooking - surprise! International Chef Natasha MacAller will change your mind by taking you on a journey to discover the many wonders of one of the most amazingly versatile ingredients in your pantry. Vanilla Table is a culinary celebration of all things vanilla. With its fragrant and captivating scent, it can be creatively used in an endless array of delicious dishes. From sweet to savoury, the more than 100 recipes-including 32 dishes carefully curated from 33 internationally acclaimed chefs worldwide- show how to make the most of this magical ingredient. For instance, this cookbook demonstrates the delights of vanilla and trout pairing; how just a vanilla pinch deliciously wakes up a pork chop; and of course, countless ways to make desserts sparkle. Natasha MacAller also provides tips, tricks, and expert knowledge to make you a vanilla connoisseur, too. With advice ranging from how to recognize the best product, to proper storing, Vanilla Table will encourage you to use this incredible ingredient in ways never imagined. Joining Natasha MacAller and other famed chefs in this vanilla tribute are UK superstars Yotam Ottolenghi, Peter Gordon, William Curley, and Galton Blackiston; each contributed dazzling recipes to this landmark cookbook.




Just Send Me Word


Book Description

From Orlando Figes, international bestselling author of A People's Tragedy, Just Send Me Word is the moving true story of two young Russians whose love survived Stalin's Gulag. Lev and Svetlana, kept apart for fourteen years by the Second World War and the Gulag, stayed true to each other and exchanged thousands of secret letters as Lev battled to survive in Stalin's camps. Using this remarkable cache of smuggled correspondence, Orlando Figes tells the tale of two incredible people who, swept along in the very worst of times, kept their devotion alive. Orlando Figes was granted exclusive access to the thousands of letters between Lev and Sveta that form the foundation of Just Send Me Word, and he was able to interview the couple in person, then in their nineties. These real-time and largely uncensored letters form the largest cache of Gulag letters ever found. Reviews: 'One is overcome with admiration for the kindness, bravery and generosity of people in terrible peril ... It is impossible to read without shedding tears' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Financial Times 'This powerful narrative by a distinguished historian will take its place not just in history but in literature' Robert Massie 'Electrifying, passionate, devoted, despairing, exhilarating ... a tale of hope, resilience, grit and love' The Times 'Moving ... a remarkable discovery' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'The gulag story lacks individuals for us to sympathise with: a Primo Levi, an Anne Frank or even an Oskar Schindler. Just Send Me Word may well be the book to change that' Oliver Bullough, Independent 'Immensely touching ... [a] heartening gem of a book' Anna Reid, Literary Review 'The remarkable true story of a love affair between two Soviet citizens ... as much a literary challenge as a historical one: the book can be read as a non-fiction novel' Telegraph 'Remarkable ... Figes, selecting and then interpreting this mass of letters, makes them tell two kinds of story. The first is a uniquely detailed narrative of the gulag, of the callous, slatternly universe which consumed millions of lives ... The second is about two people determined not to lose each other' Neal Ascherson, Guardian 'A quiet, moving and memorable account of life in a totalitarian state ... The book often reads like a novel ... captivating' Evening Standard 'Orlando Figes has wrought something beautiful from dark times' Ian Thomson, Observer 'A heart-rending record of extraordinary human endurance' Kirkus Reviews '[A] remarkable tale of love and devotion during the worst years of the USSR ... [Figes's] fine narrative pacing enhances this moving, memorable story' Publishers Weekly About the author: Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Peasant Russia, Civil War, A People's Tragedy, Natasha's Dance, The Whisperers and Crimea. He lives in Cambridge and London. His books have been translated into over twenty languages.




Dance with Me


Book Description

Rumba music starts and a floor full of dancers alternate clinging to one another and turning away. Here, Julia Ericksen, a competitive ballroom dancer herself, takes the reader onto the competition floor exploring the allure of this hyper-competitive, difficult, and often expensive activity.




Our First Dance


Book Description

Natasha Carter is committed to becoming a prima ballerina. So can she resist bad-boy Damien Johnson who's been burned by love before and who doesn't want a new relationship?




Nijinsky's Feeling Mind


Book Description

Nijinsky's Feeling Mind: The Dancer Writes, The Writer Dances is the first in-depth literary study of Vaslav Nijinsky's life-writing. Through close textual analysis combined with intellectual biography and literary theory, Nicole Svobodny puts the spotlight on Nijinsky as reader. She elucidates Nijinsky's riffs on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche, equating these intertextual connections to "marking" a dance, whereby the dancer uses a reduction strategy situated between thinking and doing. By exploring the intersections of bodily movement with verbal language, this book addresses broader questions of how we sense and make sense of our worlds. Drawing on archival research, along with studies in psychology and philosophy, Svobodny emphasizes the modernist contexts from which the dancer-writer emerged at the end of World War I. Nijinsky began his life-writing—a book he titled Feeling—the day after the Paris Peace Conference opened, and the same day he performed his "last dance." Nijinsky's Feeling Mind begins with the dancer on stage and concludes as he invites readers into his private room. Illuminating the structure, plot, medium, and mode of Feeling, this study calls on readers to grapple with a paradox: the more the dancer insists on his writing as a live performance, the more he points to the material object that entombs it.




The Gypsy Dance


Book Description

Natasha is a very attractive woman who knows how to seduce men with sex and dance. Natasha grew up getting her way and will not let anyone get between her and money, not even family. After a brutal rape and beating, Natasha changed and became a woman on a mission. Her filter became so damaged that she had no remorse for those she sought to destroy by leaving them penniless or dead.