Dancing Home

Life is harsh in Chennai's teeming streets, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, 11-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter - and friendship - on an abandoned bridge. With two homeless boys, Muthi and Arul, the group forms a family of sorts. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.

The Particulars of Peter is a funny exploration of the joy found in loving a dog so much it makes you feel like you're going to combust, and the author's potentially codependent relationship with her own sweet dog, Peter. Listeners will follow Peter and his owner to Woofstock, "the largest outdoor festival for dogs in North America," and accompany them to lessons in Canine Freestyle, a sport where dogs perform a routine set to music, creating the illusion that they're dancing with their owners.

Cece Camden has a plan - for work, for love, for life - and she believes she's right on track. But on her 29th birthday, her grand plan unravels. Crushed to discover that she and her boyfriend are not on the same page, Cece heads to her hometown in Northern California wine country hoping to heal her broken heart. As old wounds are opened and secrets revealed, long-held beliefs about her childhood are challenged, leading her to question everything she thought she knew about her family and herself.

When Cora Wintle goes to pick up her orphaned niece, Rachel, she discovers that Rachel's adopted sister, Hilary, would be perfect for her dancing troupe! The only problem is that Hilary might be as good as her own precious daughter, Dulcie. Still, she's determined to take sulky Rachel and sprightly Hilary and make them into Little Wonders!

Jade returns home to Chapel Springs after years of protecting her fragile heart. Then along comes Daniel, making her long to dance again.

In Dancing with a Porcupine, Jennie Owens shares the compelling story of her struggle to save her own life while caring for three troubled children she and her husband adopted from foster care. How could she stay loving, giving, and forgiving in the midst of a daily battle with children acting out the rage, resentment, and pain of their own traumatic pasts? Is there such a thing as secondary trauma, and if so, what do you do about it? When faith, endurance, and creativity are not enough, what’s next?

Why do we dance together? What does dancing tells us about ourselves, individually and collectively? And what can it do for us? Whether it be at home, '80s club nights, Irish dancehalls or reggae dances, jungle raves or volunteer-run spaces and youth centres, Emma Warren has sought the answers to these questions her entire life. At the intersection of memoir, social and cultural history, Dance Your Way Home is an intimate foray onto the dancefloor - wherever and whenever it may be - that speaks to the heart of what it is that makes us move.

London, Autumn 1916. When he slips out of a house in the early hours, Simon Wilder is too preoccupied to realise that he is being stalked. As he walks along the street, lights begin to dim as a warning that there's another Zeppelin attack. British aeroplanes attack the Zeppelin. Suddenly, it bursts into flame and lights up the whole sky. The crowds cheer as the great fireball drops slowly down and crashes in a field but the one person unable to watch is Simon Wilder.

Everything has changed since the war started. Nanea had hoped that going back to school would make life seem normal again. But it hasn’t. There are still curfews and blackouts and constant reminders of war. Nanea’s dear friend Donna had to leave Hawaii, and Nanea’s big brother won’t stop talking about joining the Army. In the swirl of changes, Nanea turns to hula. Dancing makes her feel better, and soon she learns how much it lifts the spirits of the soldiers, too. When a surprising hula partner boosts everyone’s morale, Nanea gets a big idea.

She came looking for her father…Bessie felt more secure and safer than she had in all the months since her mother died. There was always lots of food in the resort’s main kitchen and she had her choice of any room she wanted. John was almost as good at her favorite video games as she was and while she wasn’t certain whether to believe him or not, he’d told her that her father was even better. She would have really liked to play video games with him and found out for herself. There was so much she wanted to know about her father. So many questions that bubbled around in her head. And...

In this captivating memoir, Duke recounts his adventures and ass-inine misadventures with mules, donkeys and horses as he introduces listeners to the complexity and variety of personalities among these intelligent creatures. Through prose and poetry, he shows the deep bond that can form between humans and equines.

Single mom Peyton Sinclair came to the town of Sweet Water to raise her son away from the influence of her ex-husband’s mother. She’s happy with her bookstore and bake shop and is not interested in doing anything but making a living and raising her son. Bryce Shaker had been baseball’s highest paid athlete at one point in his career.

This self-help guide to cattitude will teach you about the connection between cats and man. It is a self indulgent adventure into the feline psyche and an emotional roller coaster of epic proportions as we delve into the intrinsic, innate complexity of the grimalkin universe.

One winter morning, in contemporary Dublin, a middle-class woman wakes up next to her husband in her suburban home, and without conscious purpose, walks out the front door to begin a journey that ultimately leads to profound transfiguration. She travels first by car and then train to Rosslare, from where she takes a ferry to Fishguard in Wales. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations, shopping centres, train stations, ferry terminals; recalling her youth, earlier fantasies of suicide and reminiscing about those people who have come in and out of her life.

One Christmas, a little horse learned a valuable lesson; that not all people who have so much, have anything at all; and those who seem to have little, often have so much more than we can imagine. Theodore the Dancing Horse must survive pouring rain, mucky mud, unfriendly dogs, and rejection by his beloved owner before he can find a new life; a life he had given up all hope of ever finding.

In 1960s rural America two siblings grow up in a place of love and turmoil. Rene is the apple of her father’s eye: an overachiever, athletic, clever, the best brain in class and the best dancer in school. Her older brother, Leon, doted on by his mother, is shy, a stutterer, but also a brilliant dancer. Rene and Leon share a talent, but it is a gift their father adores in his daughter and loathes in his son, and that could make all the difference. These two children may be best friends, but life promises to take them down very different paths....

Lillian is a girl of mixed Indigenous and white ancestry who is in the process of being shuffled to her seventh foster home. At school, she doesn’t fit in with the white kids and she doesn’t fit in with the Indigenous kids either. Lillian is a complex and not-always-lovable hero but she eventually finds a sense of peace and belonging from a surprising spirit that returns her to traditional ways.