Author: Adam de Ath (New Holland, $29.95)
Enjoy delicious Warm Tomato Tart with Three Cheeses, Savoury Mushroom Pancakes with English Spinach Sauce, Goats Cheese Roulade and Chocolate & Hazelnut Torte – no longer do you need to cook separate meals just because a vegetarian is coming to dinner! Easy to prepare, these recipes will suit meat eaters and vegetarians alike.
Author: Chuck Palahniuk (Random House, $32.95rrp)
Tell-All is many things: a Sunset Boulevard-inflected homage to Old Hollywood when grand dames like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost. A Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama full of big gestures and muted psychic torment. A veritable Tourette’s Syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list. A merciless send-up of of Lillian Hellman’s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond.
A dark reimagining of All About Eve and an hilarious assault on celebrity, Tell-All is vintage Palahniuk.
Author: Louis Sacher (Allen & Unwin, $25rrp) Young Adult title
When Alton is asked by his ageing, blind uncle to attend bridge games with him, he does as he’s told. After all, it’s better than a boring summer job in the local shopping mall, and Alton’s mother thinks it might secure their way to a good inheritance sometime in the future.
But, like all apparently casual choices in any of Louis Sachar’s wonderful books, this choice soon turns out to be a lot more complex than Alton could ever have imagined. As his relationship with his uncle develops, and he meets the very attractive Toni, deeply buried secrets are uncovered and a romance that spans decades is finally brought to a conclusion. Alton’s mother is in for a surprise!
Author: David Mitchell (Hachette, $33.00rrp)
Imagine a nation banishing the outside world for two centuries, crushing all vestiges of Christianity, forbidding its subjects to leave its shores on pain of death, and harbouring a deep mistrust of European ideas. The narrow window onto this nation-fortress is a walled, artificial island attached to the mainland port and manned by a handful of traders. Locked as the land-gate may be, however, it cannot prevent the meeting of minds or hearts.The nation was Japan, the port was Nagasaki and the island was Dejima, to where David Mitchell’s panoramic novel transports us in the year 1799. For one young Dutch clerk, Jacob de Zoet, a strage adventure of duplicity, love, guilt, faith and murder is about to begin and all the while, unbeknownst to the men confined on Dejima, the axis of global power is turning…
A love-struck young ranch hand, an aging Argentine lover, a trusted confidante who isn’t a friend and two hitchhikers named Bonnie and Clyde.
Caught between opposing forces—fidelity and desire, impulse and security, innocence and experience—Meloy’s unforgettable characters have each reached a fork in the road. But what kind of fool wants it only one way?
These eleven stories are funny, sly and sparkling with energy. Both ways is the only way I want it is a joyous read.
