Part love story, part wine-splattered cookbook, LUNCH IN PARIS, by Elizabeth Bard is a deliciously tart, forthright and funny story of falling in love with a Frenchman and moving to the world′s most romantic city – not the Hollywood version, but the real Paris, a heady mix of blood sausage and irregular verbs.
From gutting her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen) and battling bad-tempered butchers to discovering heavenly chocolate shops, Elizabeth Bard finds that learning to cook and building a new life as a stranger in an even stranger land have a lot in common. Along the way she learns the true meaning of home – and the real reason French women don′t get fat …
Peppered with recipes to die for, this mouth-watering love story is the perfect treat for any woman who has ever suspected that lunch in Paris could change her life. RRP 35.00
Makes me want to pack up Book and Paper and go to live in Paris….”Sue (Only joking!?)
THE LONG SONG, by Andrea Levy
‘You d
o not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed.’
July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity and it is her life that is the subject of this tale. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831, and she was also present when slavery was declared no more. My son says I must convey how the story tells also of July’s mama Kitty, of the negroes that worked the plantation land, of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation and many more persons besides – far too many for me to list here. But what befalls them all is carefully chronicled upon these pages for you to peruse. Perhaps, my son suggests, I might write that it is a thrilling journey through that time in the company of people who lived it. All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a book they might care to consider... RRP $32.99
Could not put it down, I also read ‘Small Island’ by the same author and equally enjoyed the issues it raised. Wenche
MAJOR PETTIGREW’S LAST STAND by Helen Simonson
Honour, duty and a properly brewed cup of tea … get ready for the Major to steal your heart in the sweet, moving and uplifting story of a highly unlikely relationship between a very proper English gentleman and a widowed Pakistani shopkeeper. RRP $32.99
Heart warming and humorous… If you liked ‘The ‘Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Society’ you are sure to enjoy this one. Wenche
BOMBPROOF, by Michael Robotham
Sami Macbeth is not a master criminal. He’s not even a minor one. He’s not a jewel thief. He’s not a safe-cracker. He’s not an expert in explosives. Sami plays guitar and wants to be a rock god but keeps getting side-tracked by unforeseen circumstances. Fifty-four hours ago Sami was released from prison. Thirty-six hours ago he slept with the woman of his dreams at the Savoy. An hour ago his train blew up. Now he’s carrying a rucksack through London’s West End and has turned himself into the most wanted terrorist in the country. Sami Macbeth – the man with the uncanny ability to turn a desperate situation into a hopeless one. RRP $19.99
If you stayed up all night reading Robotham’s ‘Shatter’, you are not likely to get much sleep with this one either….
A DARK MATTER, by Peter Straub
The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, demanding both devotion and sexual favours of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual in a local meadow, the only thing that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body and the shattered souls of all who were present. Years later, one man attempts to understand what happened to his wife and to his friends by writing a book about this horrible night and it’s through this process that they begin to examine the unspeakable events that have bound them in ways they cannot fathom, but that have haunted every one of them through their lives. As each of the old friends tries to come to grips with the darkness of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil triggered so many years earlier. RRP $32.99
THE POSTMISTRESS, by Sarah Blake
It is 1940 and half the world is living through the horror of the Second World War, but America still believes it is safe from the bloodshed. In Franklin, a small town on Cape Cod, Iris James is the postmistress and she firmly believes that her job is to keep and deliver people’s secrets, to pass along the news of love and sorrow that letters carry. But one day she does the unthinkable: she doesn’t deliver a letter and instead slips it into her pocket…
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story of love or war is about looking left when we should have been looking right. RRP $32.99
salty sailor who swallows a krill which makes him ill, and who cures his terrible bellyache by eating each animal in the sea, one after another. An hilarious new twist on There was an Old Woman who Swallowed a Fly, delightfully brought to life by Cassandra Allen.
A reissue of the classic Australian fantasy counting picture book which follows one dragon’s dream about a very strange and unique court case.
Discover, or rediscover, a ‘time machine’ which takes the reader back into the past. It depicts the history of one particular piece of land in Sydney from 1788 to 1988 through the stories of the various children who have lived there.
