She is similarly skilful at conjuring up the world of two-up two-down houses, struggling removal businesses and lively, working-class characters, so the emotional entanglements always have the salty tang of authenticity. Dream a Little Dream is no exception, with all the human understanding that the author's fans look for. Edie and Bob grow up in the same Liverpool street. After their marriage, Bob succeeds in his removal business, and the family moves up the social ladder. But Edie and her eldest daughter have lost touch with their roots, and their social climbing begins to alienate Bob. With his two youngest children and their down-to-earth housekeeper, they create a little world of escape in the kitchen--and it's here that they begin to make plans to regain their happiness. The observation of social niceties is absolutely spot-on, with all the humour and warmth coming from a clash between class pretension and the realities of life. Bob and Edie are brilliantly drawn, and this one will acquire new readers for the talented Jonker. --Barry Forshaw

    José, a taciturn shepherd, sees his happiness crumble when “the devil” tells him he is being cuckolded. Old Gabriel offers wise counsel, while a different kind of love story develops concerning Moisés and Elias, conjoined twins attached at the tips of their little fingers. Unable to live without each other, they find their tender communion shattered when Moisés falls in love with the local cook. And, of course, there is the Devil himself. Love may be a luxury, but there are moments of the greatest tenderness among even the most unlikely lovers.Written with subtle prose and powerful imagery, The Implacable Order of Things draws us into this unique and richly textured world. It is a novel of haunting beauty and heralds the arrival of an astoundingly gifted and poetic writer.

    This book is part recipe collection, part history, and part travelogue. There are more than 130 authentic recipes, all beautifully photographed.

    This book provides essential reference to the world's greatest fortified wine and its region of origin. Richard Mayson is the first author to place port in context by recounting the intruiging history of port wine and the Douro region up to the present day. There is indepth information on the region's topography and its vineyards and grape varieties, and an assessment of the key quintas of the Douro. All aspects of port production and the range of styles - from white to ruby to vintage - are described and discussed in full. Also included is a directory of port producers and shippers and an assessment of vintages back to 1896. Mayson concludes with a valuable insight into the prospects for port and the Douro in the twenty-first century.

    Readers unfamiliar with the work of this Portuguese Nobel Prize winner would do well to begin with The Cave, a novel of ideas, shaded with suspense. Spare and pensive, The Cave follows the fortunes of an aging potter, Cipriano Algor, beginning with his weekly delivery of plates to the Center, a high-walled, windowless shopping complex, residential community, and nerve center that dominates the region. What sells at the Center will sell everywhere else, and what the Center rejects can barely be given away in the surrounding towns and villages. The news for Cipriano that morning isn't good. Half of his regular pottery shipment is rejected, and he is told that the consumers now prefer plastic tableware. Over the next week, he and his grown daughter Marta grieve for their lost craft, but they gradually open their eyes to the strange bounty of their new condition: a stray dog adopts them, and a lovely widow enters Cipriano's life. When they are invited to live at the Center, it seems ungracious to refuse, but there are some strange developments under the complex, and a troubling increase in security, and Cipriano changes all their fates by deciding to investigate. In Saramago's able hands, what might have become a dry social allegory is a delicately elaborated story of individualism and unexpected love. --Regina Marler

    Considered along with Columbus to be one of the progenitors of modernity, Prince Henry challenged the scientific assumptions of his age and was responsible for liberating Europeans from geographical restraints that had bound them since the Roman Empire’s collapse. In this enthralling account of Henry’s life—the first biography of “The Navigator” in more than a century—Peter Russell reaps the harvest of a lifelong study of Prince Henry. Making full use of documentary evidence only recently available, Russell reevaluates Henry and his role in Portuguese and European history.Examining the full range of Prince Henry’s activities, Russell discusses the explorer’s image as an imperialist and as a maritime, mathematical, and navigational pioneer. He considers Henry’s voyages of discovery in the African Atlantic, their economic and cultural consequences, and the difficult questions they generated regarding international law and papal jurisdiction. Russell demonstrates the degree to which Henry was motivated by the predictions of his astrologer—an aspect of his career little known until now—and explains how this innovator, though firmly rooted in medieval ways of thinking and behaving, set in motion a current of change that altered European history.