A delightful celebration of French life & the cooks who turn even the simplest meals into an occasion Even before Susan Herrmann Loomis wrote her now-classic memoir, ” On Rue Tatin, ” American readers have been compelled by books about the French s ease with cooking. With ” In a French Kitchen, ” Loomis an expat who long ago traded her American grocery store for a bustling French farmer s market demystifies in lively prose the seemingly effortless je ne sais quoi behind a simple French meal. One by one, readers are invited to meet the busy people of Louviers & surrounding villages & towns of Loomis s adopted home, from runway-chic Edith, who has zero passion for cooking but a love of food that inspires her to whip up an array of mouthwatering dishes to Nathalie, who becomes misty-eyed as she talks about her mother s Breton cooking, then goes on to reproduce it. Through friends & neighbors like these, Loomis learns that delicious, even decadent meals don t have to be complicated. Are French cooks better organized when planning & shopping? Do they have a greater ability to improvise with whatever they have on hand when unexpected guests arrive? The answer to both is: Yes. But they also have an innate understanding of food & cooking, are instinctively knowledgeable about seasonal produce, & understand what combination of simple ingredients will bring out the best of their gardens or local markets. Thankfully for American readers, ” In a French Kitchen ”shares the everyday French tips, secrets, & eighty-five recipes that allow them to turn every meal into a sumptuous occasion.” ...

The iconic Ian Rankin returns with a new Detective John Rebus novel
- this year`s essential must-read bestseller.* * * * *IN A
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Jiangxi Province, China, 1941 Atop the fabled mountain of Lushan, celebrated for its temples, capricious mists & plunging ravines, perches a boarding school for the children of British missionaries. As her parents pursue their calling to bring the gospel to China`s most remote provinces, ten-year-old Henrietta S. Robertson discovers that she has been singled out for a divine calling of her own. Etta is quick to share the news with her dorm mates, & soon even Big Bum Eileen is enlisted in the Prophetess Club, which busies itself looking for signs of the Lord`s intent. (Hark.) As rumours of war grow more insistent, so the girls` quest takes on a new urgency
- & in such a mystical landscape, the prophetesses find that lines between make believe & reality, good & bad, become dangerously blurred. So Etta`s pilgrimage begins. A story of a child far from home & caught between two cultures, In A Land of Paper Gods marries exuberant imagination with sharp pathos, & introduces Rebecca Mackenzie as a striking & original new voice.
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A brilliantly distinctive debut, told from the perspective of one of the most unforgettable child narrators in recent fiction, IN A LAND OF PAPER GODS by Rebecca Mackenzie will appeal to readers who loved Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit or The Light Between Oceans. Jiangxi Province, China, 1941. Atop the fabled mountain of Lushan perches a boarding school for the children of British missionaries. While her parents pursue their calling, ten-year-old Henrietta S. Robertson discovers that she, too, has been singled out by the Lord. As Japanese invaders draw closer, Etta & her dorm mates retreat into a world where boundaries between make believe & reality become dangerously blurred. So begins a remarkable journey, through a mystical landscape & to the heart of a war. ...

A young man takes three journeys, through Greece, India & Africa. He travels with little purpose, letting the chance encounters of the road dictate his path. But although he knows that he is drifting, he is unable to settle. It is as if, without these encounters, the person he is cannot exist. & yet each journey ends in disaster. A novel of longing & thwarted desire, rage & compassion, In a Strange Room is an extraordinary evocation of one man's search for love, & a place to call home. ...

A young man takes three journeys, through Greece, India & Africa. He travels with little purpose, letting the chance encounters of the road dictate his path. But although he knows that he is drifting, he is unable to settle. It is as if, without these encounters, the person he is cannot exist. & yet each journey ends in disaster. A novel of longing & thwarted desire, rage & compassion, In a Strange Room is an extraordinary evocation of one man`s search for love, & a place to call home. ...

The Amazon is not what it seems. As Hugh Raffles shows us in this captivating & innovative book, the world`s last great wilderness has been transformed again & again by human activity. In Amazonia brings to life an Amazon whose allure & reality lie as much, or more, in what people have made from it as in what nature has wrought. It casts new light on centuries of encounter while describing the dramatic remaking of a sweeping landscape by residents of one small community in the Brazilian Amazon. Combining richly textured ethnographic research & lively historical analysis, Raffles weaves a fascinating story that changes our understanding of this region & challenges us to rethink what we mean by ”nature.” Raffles draws from a wide range of material to demonstrate--in contrast to the tendency to downplay human agency in the Amazon--that the region is an outcome of the intimately intertwined histories of humans & nonhumans. He moves between a detailed narrative that analyzes the production of scientific knowledge about Amazonia over the centuries & an absorbing account of the extraordinary transformations to the fluvial landscape carried out over the past forty years by the inhabitants of Igarap Guariba, four hours downstream from the nearest city. Engagingly written, theoretically inventive, & vividly illustrated, the book introduces a diverse range of characters--from sixteenth-century explorers & their native rivals to nineteenth-century naturalists & contemporary ecologists, logging company executives, & river-traders. A natural history of a different kind, In Amazonia shows how humans, animals, rivers, & forests all participate in the making of a region that remains today at the center of debates in environmental politics. ...

A true modern classic, Susan Sontag`s ” In America” is inspired by the emigration to America in 1876 of Helena Modrzejewska, Poland`s most celebrated actress, accompanied by her husb&, Count Karol Chlapowski, her fifteen-year-old son, Rudolf, the young journalist & future author of Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz, & a few friends; their brief sojourn in Anaheim, California; & Modrzejewska`s subsequent triumphant career on the American stage under the name Helena Modjeska. ...

In 1960 John Steinbeck & his dog Charley set out in their green pickup truck to rediscover the soul of America, visiting small towns & cities from New York to New Orleans. As Steinbeck said to a friend: `I must see how the country looks & smells & sounds.` The trip became Travels With Charley, one of his best-loved books. Half a century on, Geert Mak sets off from Steinbeck`s home with his wife & his sat-nav Sandy. Mile after mile, as he retraces Steinbeck`s footsteps through the potato fields of Maine to the endless prairies of the Midwest, sits down to eat with farmers, workers, fishermen & teachers, stumbles across glistening suburbs & boarded-up stores, he searches for the roots of America & what remains of the world Steinbeck describes. Part biography, part cultural history, In America asks how America has changed in the last fifty years; what`s happened to Main Street, USA, & the American dream; & what do we, Europe & America, have in common in the twenty-first century? ...

In an Antique Land is a wonderfully subversive biography of Egypt from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm. In the 1980s Amitav Ghosh moved into a converted chicken coop. It was on the roof of a house in Lataifa, a tiny village in Egypt. During the day he poured over medieval letters sent to India from Cairo by Arab merchants. In the evenings he shut out the bellowing of his fat landlord by turning up the volume of his transistor radio & wrote stories based on what he had seen in the village. The story of Khamees the Rat, the notorious impotent (already twice married); of Zaghloul the weaver determined to travel to India on a donkey; of one-eyed Mohammad, so obsessed with a girl that he spent nights kneeling outside her window to listen to the sound of her breathing; of Amm ' Taha, part-time witch, always ready to cast a spell for a little extra money; &, of course, the story of Amitav Ghosh himself, known in the village as the Indian doctor, the uncircumcised, cow-worshipping kaffir who would not convert to Islam. This book is the story of Amitav Ghosh's decade of intimacy with the village community. Mixing conversation & research, imagination & scholarship, it is also a charged, eccentric history of the special relationship between two countires, Egypt & India, through nearly ten centuries of parochialism & sympathy, bigotry & affection. ...