Domestic life is beginning to take its toll until Meg is offered her dream assignment: to write a guidebook about French history. Unfortunately, there is a catch. Jean-Jacques, a scruffy and imperious photographer, has been assigned to the project. As the dueling pair visits each region in search of the past, what they find is the colorful, food-filled present—the festive bullfights in the Camargue, the sacred gypsy pilgrimage at Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the pictographs and lightning storms of Mount Bégo. And over the course of mouthwatering meals—of lamb daube, paella and rosé, bull steak and anchioade, Brebis and strawberries—their antagonistic collaboration turns into a fiery love affair. Meg's notions about history—about what we preserve and how we accept the new—evolve, and in the end, she must reconcile her two lives and decide what to hold on to, and what to let go.

    And definitely the sweariest.For over three years now, Esther Walker has been entertaining foodies with her hilarious Recipe Rifle blog. Charting her progress from bad cook to, well, not-so-bad cook, she is blistering honest about what works, and what doesn’t, in the kitchen. If a recipe works for her, it will probably work for you. If it doesn’t, she will swear quite a lot.Crammed full of recipes, tips for entertaining, stories of pregnancy and tales of her husband (restaurant critic Giles Coren) coming home drunk, The Bad Cook will make you laugh out loud. It will also make you want to start cooking.

    The graphic nature of the crime has sent shock waves throughout the country, gluing millions to the twenty-four hour rolling news coverage. Dean Baker, of Eltham in south London, is no different. Unbeknownst to him that evening spent in front of the telly with his wife and dog would be the last ordinary night of his life. Dean's world is turned upside down when he is attacked by his neighbour. Only then does he realise the true nature of what is happening to the world. Dead South is Dean's first person account of the life and death struggle he faces to protect his family from the zombies and the new world that they have brought with them.

    Dora Loveday is a harassed mother of four kids, grappling with a crazy menagerie of pets, an impervious and obstinate husband, and a relentless bombardment of trials and tribulations that would test a saint. In this wonderful sequel, this book does not fail to deliver a fabulous read, just as funny as the first.

    Her mission is to emotionally reunite them. She organises a festival to bring them together, during which an amazing story unfolds, often funny, sometimes sad, always compelling, and with a twist in the tail!

    Straightforward and simple. Everyone in their places, getting along, going along...Until everything goes wrong.When it does, Gillian, Stuart and Oliver decide that it's time to talk it all over. Because although they'd all agree that the orderliness of their lives has suddenly mutated into chaos - the alarming fluctuations of love being the chief culprit - that's about all they'd agree on ("One bit of information and people are immediately off into their theories," says Stuart, a bit pedantically). And each of them is determined to be heard.What we hear are three wonderfully realized voices telling three wildly different versions of one story - presenting the protean facts of disintegrating and escalating affections, laying blame, taking blame, talking about themselves, about each other, across each other, behind each other's backs, all in an attempt to get at the endlessly elusive truth. And what they reveal is the sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartrending process of selective memory that deeply colors the (more or less) fine art of eyewitnessing.Once again, the brilliant author of "Flaubert's Parrot", "Staring at the Sun" and "A History of the World in 10-and-1/2 Chapters" gives us a dazzling work of imagination: witty, wry, playful and, in the end, honed to a razor-sharp emotional edge.

    Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday. There, Dennis enters the fragile and bizarre world of Aimée, the naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr Joyboy, the master of the embalmer's art...A dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide, The Loved One depicts a world where love, reputation, and death cost a very great deal.This is an alternate cover edition: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3....

    But is their breeding sufficient to allow them to rise above their changed circumstance or deep down are they really just like everyone else?

    Aubyn's wonderful, wry, and profound Patrick Melrose Cycle, follows five-year-old Patrick through a single day, as the Melrose family awaits the arrival of guests. Bright and imaginative, young Patrick struggles daily to contend with the searing cruelty of his father and the resignation of his embattled mother. But on this day he must endure an unprecedented horror—one that splits his world in two. In Never Mind, St. Aubyn renders this vivid tragedy with profound grace and precision, and introduces us to the unforgettable, complex figure of Patrick Melrose.

    When the haughty Dona Constanza decides to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, the consequences are at once tragic, heroic, and outrageously funny.

    By night he prowls the stylish bars of Glasgow seducing women. Fuelled by art, drugs and fantasies of being an indie star, Charlie journeys further into hedonism, unable to see the destruction his desires are leading everyone towards...One of Scotland's dazzling young writing talents tackles the modern phenomenon of sex addiction. Dark, funny and deliciously erotic, DEATH OF A LADIES' MAN is an intense portrait of male vanity, written with verve and emotional rawness.

    Born into poverty, saddled with a born loser and parrot-strangler for a dad, short sighted and ungainly, young Henry Pratt doesn't exactly have a head start in life.But in David Nobbs's brilliantly funny evocation of a Yorkshire boyhood, unathletic and over-imaginative little Pratt proves he can stick up for himself with the stoic good nature of the great British underdog

    There she meets 97-year-old Cecily Finn. Cecily's tongue is as sharp as her mind, but she's fed up with pretty much everything.Having no patience for Kate's choices in life or love, Cecily prescribes her a self-help book...of sorts. She asks her to read Thought for Food: an unintentionally funny 1950s cookbook high on enthusiasm, featuring menus for anything life can throw at the "easily dismayed," such as:Breakfast with a HangoverTea for a Crotchety AuntDinner for a Charming StrangerAs she and Cecily break out of their ruts, Kate will learn far more than recipes.A feel-good summer read with a wicked sense of humor, Vicky Zimmerman's book will teach you that food is for feasting, friends are for savoring, and the way to a man's heart is...irrelevant.Fans of Jennifer Weiner, Elin Hildenbrand, and Sophie Kinsella will delight in this recipe for confidence, romance, and fun.

    And Lord knows we need it.Enter our new culinary Moses, the legendary restaurant critic Jay Rayner, with a new set of hand-tooled commandments for this food-obsessed age. He deals once and for all with questions like whether it is ever okay to covet thy neighbour's oxen (it is), eating with your hands (very important indeed) and if you should cut off the fat (no). Combining reportage and anecdotes with recipes worthy of adoration, Jay Rayner brings us the new foodie rules to live by.

    Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American, and Jones the confidence man—these are the “comedians” of Greene’s title. Hiding behind their actors’ masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. They are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself...