Winner of the 1992 Glenfiddich Award for Food Book of the Year, this is a cookery book with a strong travel bias, dealing with each of Andalucia`s eight provinces in turn to provide a personal, geographical & culinary survey of the area. It shows how the land itself & historical events have influenced the culinary tradition of the region, with its intriguing combination of hearty peasant fare & the delicate seasonings that are a legacy of the Moorish invasions. Each province draws on its own magnificent natural larder, & the recipes, such as hot gazpacho from Huelva, salt cod with potatoes & peppers from Jaen, pork & beans with chard from Seville & chickpea & wheat soup from Almeria, reflect this diversity. The author lived in the area for several years. Her personal reminiscences are interwoven with a wealth of cultural & historical information, & the text is accompanied by the author`s own watercolours of dishes, places & scenes of Andalucian life. ...

Far more than just a cook book, this richly illustrated volume not only features more than eighty recipes, but also provides a survey of the culinary customs, traditions & history of eight Islamic countries. Insights into everyday eating habits, the use of spices & herbs, coffee houses, restaurants & bazaars, & the famous hospitality of Arabia make this book both pleasurable & practical. ...

For those who loved The Alchemist, Siddhartha, & Jonathan Livingston Seagull, This Flawless Place Between is a mesmerising & uplifting story about death & dying. Interweaving themes from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Portier takes us to Tibet & the scene of a motorcycle accident. Anne`s life is over, but with the help of a stranger her spirit begins a cathartic voyage that carries her back through the traumas & ecstasies of her life. As she revisits her past, & the futures of those she will leave behind, Anne begins to accept not only her death but also her life
- & that what happens next will be up to her.
...

Shortlisted for the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Elif Shafak`s The Flea Palace is a moving & highly original novel about a group of individuals who live in the same building & who together become embroiled in a mystery. By turns comic & tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice. Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals & their families. There`s a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a `clean freak` & her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; & a charmingly naive mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the rubbish at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth. ” Picaresque.” (Guardian). ” Hyperactive & hilarious.” (Independent). ...

This is a new translation of this chilling novel, set on the Belgian border. Book fourteen in the new Penguin Maigret series. She wasn`t an ordinary supplicant. She didn`t lower her eyes. There was nothing humble about her bearing. She spoke frankly, looking straight ahead, as if to claim what was rightfully hers. ` If you don`t agree to look at our case, my parents & I will be lost, & it will be the most hateful legal error...` Maigret is asked to the windswept, rainy border town of Givet by a young woman desperate to clear her family of murder. But their well-kept shop, the sleepy community & its raging river all hide their own mysteries. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels. ” Compelling, remorseless, brilliant”. (John Gray). ” One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century... Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories”. (Guardian). ”A supreme writer.. .unforgettable vividness”. (Independent). Georges Simenon was born in Liege, Belgium, in 1903. Best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret books, his prolific output of over 400 novels & short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerl&, where he had lived for the latter part of his life. ...

It is the bitterly cold winter of 1944/45. The Red Army is advancing on Eastern Prussia, the easternmost province of Germany, at the start of its inexorable advance towards Berlin. Millions of East Prussians are desperate to flee, but the Nazis order them to stay & fight. Finally, with the Russian guns in earshot, they are allowed to leave. They soon realise that they are surrounded, cut of f from the rest of Germany. Many of them take the perilous route over a frozen lagoon, the only route left open. With them are thousands of the most superb horses in the world, the Trakehner, bred over the past two centuries in East Prussia. They flee in large herds or are harnessed to wagons or sleighs & face the same dangers as their guardians & owners. With little to eat, the target of Soviet bombers & tanks, many of them die on the way. Only a few hundred reached the West. They had saved their owners, & their owners had saved them rarely has there been such a bond between men & horses. But the story is not over. Given the harsh conditions, the hunger, deprivation & poverty of the immediate post-war years, can the breed be built up again? ...

Mr Finch leads a quiet life with his best friend, a small red bird. Nothing very exciting ever happens to them & that suits Mr Finch very well. Until one day, when his one & only friend disappears! Terribly worried Mr Finch heads off in search of the bird into the heart of a jungle that has recently invaded the city... Suddenly, Mr Finch finds himself on an extraordinary journey that teaches him far more than he realised about himself. Will this journey allow the two friends to take flight & finally find true happiness?A tender & magical picture book that shows happiness is sometimes very close at hand just waiting to be found! ...

Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton & nine other writers from the legendary Detection Club collaborate in this fiendishly clever but forgotten crime novel first published 80 years ago. Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the Inspector`s investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vicar, whose boat the body was found in, is clearly withholding information, & the victim`s niece has disappeared. There is clearly more to this case than meets the eye
- even the identity of the victim is called into doubt. Inspector Rudge begins to wonder just how many people have contributed to this extraordinary crime & whether he will ever unravel it... In 1931, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers & ten other crime writers from the newly-formed ` Detection Club` collaborated in publishing a unique crime novel. In a literary game of consequences, each author would write one chapter, leaving G.K. Chesterton to write a typically paradoxical prologue & Anthony Berkeley to tie up all the loose ends. In addition, each of the authors provided their own solution in a sealed envelope, all of which appeared at the end of the book, with Agatha Christie`s ingenious conclusion acknowledged at the time to be `enough to make the book worth buying on its own`. The authors of this novel are: G. K. Chesterton, Canon Victor Whitechurch, G. D. H. Cole & Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane & Anthony Berkeley.
...

With an introduction by Alan Hollinghurst At the fantastical court of King Willie & Her Dreaminess the Queen of Pisuerga, maid of honour Laura de Nazianzi & His Weariness Prince Yousef whisper promises to each other in the palace gardens. But Laura is destined for disappointment. The King & Queen have plans for a royal wedding for their Prince, & the young woman in their sights is none other than Princess Elsie of Engl&. The court is all aflutter... First published in 1923, Ronald Firbank`s The Flower Beneath the Foot is a flamboyant court satire & lyrical tour de force of innuendo & eccentricity. Read by many as a subversive celebration of homosexuality, this is a classic of modernist literature from a stylist like no other. ...

Set in December 1937, the Japanese have taken over the city of Nanking. Sixteen school girls take shelter in a church run by an American priest, Father Engelmann. As the soldiers pass through the city, a group of courtesans from a local brothel arrive at the church seeking refuge further endangering the children. Based on true events, The Flowers of War is a powerful story about the impact of war on prejudices & how love can flourish even amidst death & war. ...