Cookbooks: Gordon Ramsay’s Maze by Gordon Ramsay and Jason Atherton

There are cookbooks that make you instantly want to rush to the kitchen and prepare your tools and there are those that make you want to curl into a comfy chair and peruse. Gordon Ramsay’s Maze (Key Porter Books) is of the latter type. To be honest, I can’t imagine anyone being inspired to actually cook from reading this book. But there’s plenty to look at and to be inspired by and perhaps even to envy.

My first hint that this would be the case came from the foreword: it’s written by Ferran Adriá, the mad genuis chef behind Barcelona’s El Bulli, possibly the most visible practitioner of molecular gastronomy in the world.

While the food in Gordon Ramsay’s Maze is not that, neither is it especially Gordon Ramsay. Maze is the Ramsay owned and backed London restaurant helmed by Ramsay and Adriá protégé, Jason Atherton. Maze has been one of those incredible restaurant industry success stories: people line up, book far in advance and pay vast prices for a peck at Atherton’s food. And a peck is all they’ll get, too. In many ways, it seems the antithesis of Ramsay’s hearty and gorgeous “keep it simple” fare. Atherton’s food is fussy and beautiful. Ramsay has called it “modern tapas” but it really seems much more than that: perhaps the place where tapas meets molecular gastronomy. Food that is fueled by imagination and technology as much as the desire to produce beautiful food from, say, local ingredients. I can not imagine, for instance, the circumstance that would lead me to try my hand at Asparagus with Quail’s Egg and Pink Grapefruit Hollandaise or Mango Soup with Lychee Granita. How about Pineapple Carpaccio with Fromage Frais and Lime Sorbet? Even the simple sounding things appear overworked and precious, but this is as much due to food styling as anything else: sweet little portions artistically arranged. For example, Perfect Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes on Toast is beautifully framed and shot. From an aesthetic stance, it’s a gorgeous photo. It also looks entirely unappetizing: a runny mess of yellowish material on toast that looks overdone.

Gordon Ramsay’s Maze is a beautiful, interesting book. It’s stunningly photographed, well organized and the recipes are sensibly put down and shared. I know this is entirely subjective -- the nature of review -- but there was little here I found inviting. I say this knowing full well that this may well be an early glimpse of the food that is to come.

Another thing: I know this is likely silly and it was something I tried to overcome but, ultimately, could not: though he owns the restaurant, sticking Gordon Ramsay’s name in this book’s title seems deliberately misleading. It may be Ramsay’s joint, but this is Jason Atherton’s book.

Cookbooks: The Foodie Handbook by Pim Techamuanvivit

The very first paragraph of The Foodie Handbook (Chronicle Books) describes the journey on which you’re about to embark:

Relationships that matter most in our lives are often complicated. Think of the one with your mother or your current love, and perhaps the most perplexing, food. These liaisons can be fraught with love, hate, joy, fear, trust, suspicion, and a whole lot of other emotions. Sometimes it is nearly enough to make us wish we were orphans, turn us celibate or, worse yet, vegan.

Many foodies have met Techamuanvivit through her food blog, Chez Pim, where the Silicon Valley dropout brings foodie stuff to many thousands of visitors every week. The Foodie Handbook is better. And why? Because it is the physical embodiment of Techamuanvivit’s passionate, knowledgeable spirit. Foodie lore, recipes, advice from Techamuanvivit and other, more famous, chefs: it’s all here, just as on Chez Pim. But the book stuffs the blog into the shade. You can hold the book in your hands, flip through it, bury yourself in it and learn. And enjoy. The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy is what the book is subtitled. And it’s that -- sure it is. But, oh, so much more.

Cookbooks: The Entertaining Encyclopedia by Denise Vivaldo

Today I dropped by my local Home Depot only to be met with a shock: the rows upon rows of barbecues I’d seen there just a few weeks ago had disappeared and been mysteriously replaced with ... fake Christmas trees and decorations. After I’d recovered and had gotten my too-hard-beating heart under control I stopped and took stock. After all, the time between when you see the first Home Depot Christmas tree of the season and when seasonal entertaining begins is not necessarily very long.

Upon my return home, I remembered the copy of The Entertaining Encyclopedia (Robert Rose) by Denise Vivaldo that I’d been perusing for the last few weeks. Suddenly its presence in my lair made sense.

Vivaldo is, after all, a sort of catering queen to the stars. Los Angeles-based, she’s catered the Academy Awards Governors Ball and she’s cooked for some of Hollywood’s top names. That being the case, it seems as though she’s a good person to look to advice for when it comes to holiday entertaining -- or any other kind, for that matter.

“It might sound too simple to be true,” she begins, “but the best way to ensure that your guests are having a great time is to have one yourself.” But it’s a big, fat book. Even in paperback. Loads of recipes, lots of advice: a lot of it, in the end, dedicated, to helping you be proficient enough with the idea of entertaining that you will have a good time, despite yourself.

The Entertaining Encyclopedia: Essential Tips and Recipes for Perfect Parties is a great primer on ... well, everything to do with entertaining. Identifying and choosing glassware. Stocking a bar. How to handle coffee service. How to garnish a plate. Choose a location. Get a hard-partying guest to leave when the party is over.

And then the food: which is fantastic. Even if you have no intention of ever hosting a party, you’ll find useful recipes here. Some very good versions of old standards -- chicken satay, cheese fondue, spare-ribs, barbecue sauce. Scones. Some sophisticated modern dishes and the thing that I found most arresting: Vivaldo’s casual approach to food. For example, an hors d’oeuvres party appears almost as magically as if it had been waved in by a wand. Several pages of elegant hors d’oeuvres that are so simple, they seem almost to make themselves. And hors d’oeuvres are, of course, just the very beginning. There are over 200 recipes in the book.

If you have questions about entertaining or planning a party, you’ll find sensible answers in Denise Vivaldo’s The Entertaining Encyclopedia.

New This Month: When Autumn Leaves by Amy S. Foster

You might not have heard her name before but, chances are, you’ve heard her words. Amy S. Foster has written lyrics for Josh Groban, Diana Krall, Eric Benet, Michael Bublé, Destiny’s Child and Andrea Bocelli. Even with that kind of star power and international coverage, When Autumn Leaves (Overlook Press) is Foster’s debut novel.

The magic in When Autumn Leaves is sweet and charming. Even, in an odd way, calming. The book takes place in a tiny Pacific Coast hamlet called Avening, where there is magic in the every day.

When Autumn Leaves is a gentle, intelligent book. Foster’s premise here provides opportunity for escape, but her lovely prose brings it right home. A lyricist’s touch, a poet’s heart and the gift for helping us delve into our own personal magic.

Biography: After the Falls by Catherine Gildiner

Ten years after the publication of Too Close to the Falls, the critically acclaimed biography of growing up Gildiner in Lewiston, New York, clinical psychologist -- and sometime writer -- Catherine Gildiner brings us another chunk of her life in After the Falls (Knopf Canada). This time out Gildiner explores her precocious coming-of-age in the 1960s.

Pretty much as After the Falls opens, Gildiner bridges her old life with the one that’s about to begin:

As the car chugged toward the top of the escarpment, I, like Lot’s wife, looked back at the town below me. I had no idea then that I was leaving behind the least-troubled years of my life. Strange, since I felt there was no way I could cause more trouble than I had in Lewiston.

On the surface of things, there’s not much here. Let’s face it: book one dealt with the childhood years of a non-celebrity. Someone who most of us probably would not be that interested in knowing more about. Book two deals with the same person’s teenage years. And a third book (one can only imagine the Falls allusions) is currently under Gildiner’s pen. But Gildiner’s successful telling of these tales is as much about her perspective as it is about her experience. That, of course, and charm. Is there sometimes too much charm? Maybe just a little. But she is an ordinary person doing -- mostly -- fairly ordinary things, but relating them in an extraordinarily skillful way. In the end, I think, she entertains us by reminding of us our own specialness. A fantastic gift.

Film rights have been optioned.

Cookbooks: Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source and How It All Vegan

If the idea of green food appeals, then Clean Food (Sterling Epicure) may well be for you.

Author Terry Walters is a certified holistic health counselor and it shows. Clean Food is a gorgeous book, beautifully produced and while it is long on intent and sustainability, the recipes are more serviceable than inspired. In truth, though, and considering the thrust, for this particular book, that may be enough.

At one point Walters writes that “a perfect diet alone will not fully nourish us. What we need is connection -- to our bodies, hearts and spirits, to our families, to community, to the environment, the land, the season and to a purpose.”

This spirit is echoed throughout the book, which is long on recipes that will help round out the repertoire of someone just begin to play with the idea of a vegan diet or who wants to add a few vegan and veganish dishes to their old standbys.

What Clean Food lacks in flights of foodie fancy it makes up for in sheer volume. As the subtitle says: “With More Than 200 Recipes for a Healthy and Sustainable You.” There are many options here and a lot of the bases are covered and covered well.

For pure and joyous vegan inspiration, try the tenth anniversary edition of How It All Vegan (Arsenal Pulp Press) by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer. Since the publication of the first edition in 1999, How It All Vegan has won numerous awards, inspired several sequels and been reprinted 14 times. This edition includes new recipes and, perhaps more importantly, has been updated to reflect a way of eating that has moved more firmly into the mainstream over the past decade.

As the title implies, How It All Vegan is a celebration of the vegan way of life. “Healthy lifestyles should begin by making conscious decisions about the food we eat and things we do to make it a better world.” For all of that, though, the recipes are great: easy-to-follow and potentially life-changing.

Cookbooks: The New Thanksgiving Table by Diane Morgan

Over the years, we’ve reviewed a number of Diane Morgan’s excellent cookbooks at January Magazine. And, in general, we like them quite a lot. Morgan’s approach to food is sensible. Though she stays aware of trends and her food is always modern, there is nothing of faddishness about a Morgan cookbook.

All of these things can also be said of The New Thanksgiving Table (Chronicle Books), the latest addition to the Morgan oeuvre. If I have a single quibble, it’s that the title is a bit misleading. One arrives expecting Thanksgiving-specific recipes. And while those are all there -- and then some -- there is so much more here, as well.

I’ll tell you what I mean. Of course there is turkey. And turkey. And then turkey. In fact, aside from basic turkey know-how (buying, defrosting, brining) Morgan has included eight ways to cook a turkey, including the very trendy -- and perhaps even slightly faddish -- Spatchcocked turkey. Some of the eight would seem to have a broader appeal than others. Perhaps that’s to be expected? But while I have no trouble at all imagining hordes of home chefs settling in to prepare Herb Butter-Rubbed Turkey with Giblet Gravy, thinking about the Roast Turkey with Vidalia Cream Gravy makes me feel a little queasy.

As impressive as a book with eight (eight!) turkey recipes might sound, to my mind, the most significant recipes in The New Thanksgiving Table would seem to me to have very little to do with Thanksgiving at all. Crostini with Fig and Calamata Olive Tapenade. Tex-Mex Honey Pecans. Sizzlin’ Corn and Jalapeño Bread with Bacon. Oyster Stew. Roasted Chestnut Soup. Forget Thanksgiving. In some ways, Morgan’s new book is autumn delivered straight to the table. Which is not a bad place to be come Thanksgiving.

The New Thanksgiving Table is another winner for Morgan.

Cookbooks: Slow Cooker Comfort Food and Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever

There’s certainly not much less cool than slow cooker cooking. A combination of things. First you start with the name. Crock pot. A brand name, sure, but one that’s stuck like a Xerox copy. Like Tampax. Like Coke. You show someone that deep, electric vessel -- especially if that someone is of a certain age -- and you can say “slow cooker” until your face is blue, but they’re gonna call it something else; that’s just how it will go.

“My concept of comfort food is warm and welcoming and provides a sense of sustenance,” writes Judith Finlayson in Slow Cooker Comfort Food (Robert Rose), “a kind of culinary haven in a heartless world.”

Finlayson is the slow cooker queen. She is the author of The Healthy Slow Cooker. 175 Essential Slow Cooker Classics, The 150 best Slow Cooker Recipes and others. Slow Cooker Comfort Food itself contains 275 “soul-satisfying recipes.” If it can be said about slow cooking, Finlayson has said it, maybe even a couple of times in different ways.

This latest book is large and friendly. A color guide on each page lets readers know if the recipe is “entertaining worthy,” “vegan friendly,” “vegetarian friendly” or suitable for halving. The type is large and the recipes are easy to follow. The food styling and photography is, unfortunately, not that great. In fact, some of this food looks awful: homogenous and bland in some places; too glossy and overly manipulated-looking in others. And while, yes: a lot of this food sounds comforting, some of it just has no business being done in a slow cooker. I don’t understand the sense of poaching quinces for eight hours when a similar effect could be accomplished in minutes -- and not a lot of them -- on top of the stove. Ditto all of the dips with shrimp and/or crab. Please: nothing with either of those delicate meats should be allowed anywhere near a slow cooker. Ever.

Many, many of these recipes, however, are of the type that slow cookers were intended for: the type of low maintenance, high return dishes working families most need. Just a few of these: Moroccan-Style Lemon Chicken with Olives; Simple Soy-Braised Chicken; Corned Beef and Cabbage; Old-Fashioned Beef Stew with Mushrooms; Pinto Bean Chili with Corn and Kale.

In Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever (Chronicle Books) veteran cookbook author Diane Phillips takes a different approach. “Whenever I look at my slow cooker,” Phillips writes, “I think of the lyrics to that old Sinatra standard, ‘I’m not much to look at, nothing to see,’ but upon closer inspection the slow cooker is like the girl in high school who everyone said had a nice personality.”

That said, Best Slow Cooker is by far the more attractive of this particular pair of books. The type is not as large, and the pages are not as shiny but the design is completely contemporary, as is the approach to recipe description. Instructions are not needlessly wordy. As a result, even complicated recipes appear more simple. That said, does anyone really need 400 slow cooker recipes? There are definitely some good ones here (I especially loved the Chicken, Artichoke, and Mushroom Casserole and the Pork Tenderloin Osso Bucco-Style is practically genius) but, as with Finlayson’s book, after a while it seems like a bit of a reach. An artichoke spinach dip that spends two to three hours in a slow cooker? Who would even want that? It just seems contrary to everything slow cookers excel at.

All of that said, if you have an interest in slow cooking or the kind of lifestyle that could benefit from this type of culinary intervention, either of these books would serve very well. Both books include many very good recipes along with the silly ones. And both books talk about slow cook rationale as well as why and how to do it. As well, both authors take a very different approach to their topics even if, in some ways, they end up at a similar place. In fact, the recipes are varied enough, if you’ve the means, you might reasonably opt not to make it a competition at all. Perhaps you don’t have to decide between them: in the end, you might decide you want both.

Children’s Books: By the Light of the Harvest Moon by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Mark Jones

It’s difficult to imagine a prettier fall book than By the Light of the Harvest Moon (Blue Apple Books) by veteran children’s author Harriet Ziefert. Mark Jones’ illustrations hold a luminous, full-bodied quality.

In some ways, the story is unremarkable: a farm in the midst of autumn’s hold. Yet there is a difference here in a special fall magic that sees the leaf people emerge from their sylvan retreats and get busy with their own fall fair-type celebrations.

The story is sweet and the illustrations, as previously stated, are luminous. If you’re looking for a book that will help you and your child celebrate autumn in charming style, you’d have a tough time going wrong with By the Light of the Harvest Moon.

New This Month: The Confessions of Edward Day by Valerie Martin

What is the price of success? That’s the unspoken question in Orange Prize-winning author Valerie Martin’s latest outing, The Confessions of Edward Day (Nan. A Talese/Doubleday). In a blurb, actor Blythe Danner notes that the book “reminded me of how exciting New York theater really was in the seventies.” It is that world that we come to know through Martin’s well drawn characters.

Though an actor’s New York in the 1970s provides the physical backdrop for The Confessions of Edward Day, a love triangle provides the emotional one. That triangle consists of Edward Day, the title character; the beautiful Madeline Delavergne and Guy Margate, an actor who saves Edward’s life on a fateful evening that alters the trio’s life.

The 13th novel by the author of Mary Reilly and the Orange Prize-winning Property, The Confessions of Edward Day reveals a journeyman storyteller exploring yet another new-to-her world. And aren’t we lucky to have such great seats for the ride?

Fiction: Godmother: The Cinderella Story by Carolyn Turgeon

In a season of reimaginings, Carolyn Turgeon (Rain Village) delivers Godmother: The Cinderella Story (Three Rivers Press). Turgeon’s retelling finds Cinderella’s fairy godmother banished from her fairy world and working as a bookseller in New York. For her fairy faux pas, she has been pulled away from her life, though if it seems to her that if she can contrive one selfless and beautiful act, all will be forgiven.

Godmother is exquisite: oddly chic, dark, sweet and elegant... and not a zombie in sight. Turgeon has a light but meaty touch. The author has said that after her challenging debut, she was determined to work on something simpler. “I just wanted to work with something wonderful -- a fairytale -- and play,” Turgeon has said.

Godmother is a delicious departure.

New This Week: Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

Clearly, a novel where the action focuses around life in a 16th century convent is not going to be a laugh riot and, in that regard, Sarah Dunant’s Sacred Hearts (Virago) delivers no surprise.

Over the last two decades, Dunant has been quietly building an international reputation as one of the most watch-worthy historical fictionists writing today. Sacred Hearts is Dunant’s ninth novel, but the third in a triptych set in the Italian Renaissance, after The Birth of Venus and The Company of the Courtesan. But Sacred Hearts is a jewel of a novel. Not a tiny, delicate one, either. But a big, robust, showy diamond that will hold its own with any going. Dunant is the whole package: trained historian, seasoned storyteller, fabulous writer.

“Before the screaming starts,” Sacred Hearts begins, “the night silence of the convent is alive with its own particular sounds.”

Sacred Hearts might be the very best of a the superior field of historical fiction published in the summer of 2009.

Fiction: The Best of Men by Claire Letemendia

Even in a season reasonably stuffed with weighty works of historical fiction, The Best of Men (McClelland & Stewart) stands out. Debut author Claire Letemendia has the right sort of academic pedigree to get the details right in her vast epic tale of England in the middle of the 17th century. But even with a doctorate in Political Theory, Letemendia doesn’t write like an academic. Rather, she drops us deftly right into the center of her story and we find ourselves in England in 1642, with Laurence Beaumont, newly returned from the wars that have changed the map of Europe.

For all of Letemendia’s knowledge and the intricacies of her plotting here, there are times when the reader is aware of every single one of the book’s nearly 700 pages. The reduction -- or even elimination -- of some of the less important storylines would have created a more tense, exciting read. As it stands, there are times when the action seems to come almost to a standstill.

Fortunately, the bogged down moments in The Best of Men are infrequent and, for the most part, the reader is swept away in the world Letemendia shares. And that’s a good thing as The Best of Men won’t be a one-off: the author has promised a trilogy.

Fiction: The Road to Jerusalem: Book One of the Crusades Trilogy by Jan Guillou

Though not at all well known in North America -- yet -- Jan Guillou is one of Sweden’s most popular literary personalities. A journalist and broadcaster, he is also the author of the Coq Rouge novels, one of the most popular series of Swedish spy novels ever created. Guillou’s Crusades Trilogy has been translated into 20 languages and has sold 2.5 million copies in Sweden alone.

The first book in the trilogy, The Road to Jerusalem (Harper), has just been released in English. Steven T. Murray did the skillful translation. Since it was Murray -- using a pseudonym -- who translated the first two of Stieg Larsson’s books to be published in English (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire), it seems a safe guess to call Murray the top Swedish translator working today. And in The Road to Jerusalem, once again, the translation is seamless. One never senses a falter or a misstep.

The Road to Jerusalem tells the story of a young Swedish nobleman who ends up conscripted into the Knights Templar. But this is a thick and engaging novel: I’ve taken a very short route to tell the story. Guillou’s path is much less direct, and far more exciting. And while details of a U.S. film production will likely be announced soon, Swedish film and television productions are at various stages, and have been for several years.

Fans of historical fiction -- particularly those with an interest in Crusades-era material -- simply must read The Road to Jerusalem. The huge international following this series has attracted will only continue to grow now that it’s available in English.

Selected Poems by Robert Bringhurst

A new book by Robert Bringhurst is always a noteworthy event. Bringhurst is an author, typographer, translator and award-winning poet and each of his books is a work of art on every level.

It seems to me there is something even more special about Selected Poems (Gaspereau Press), a single volume that brings together selections from several of Bringhurst’s collections including The Beauty of the Weapons and The Calling. It also includes a new series of poems called “The Living.”

The ear of language rests
On the breast of world,
Unable to know and unable to care
Whether it listens inward or outward.

Everything about Selected Poems is extraordinary. The first hint of it is in the plain black cover, no image. The title and the author’s name are printed in silver ink in a plain, serif font. This stark understatement is typical of Bringhurst. And the book’s deceptively simple production speaks volumes for the work itself. Just enough, always. A little less, perhaps, than another might give, but it’s the correct less. The right less. Somehow defining the work by what is not there as much as by what is.

Those who already enjoy Bringhurst’s work will want to add Selected Poems to their collections. And if you’ve never before encountered his sparse, elemental imagery will find this collection a perfect place to start.

Fiction: Fishing for Bacon by Michael Davie

I’m beginning to think that 2009 might well be remembered as the year that potential Canadian YA masterworks got lost in the waterfall of mainstream fiction.

First there was Alan Bradley’s lively but clearly juvenile The Sweetness of the Bottom the Pie (Doubleday Canada). Now comes Calgarian Michael Davies’ cheerfully abrupt Fishing for Bacon (Newest Press). The book features fresh-from-high school lost youth, Bacon Sobelowski who claims, almost from the very first, that he has bad timing. He gets stuck with the name “Bacon” during his birth, when his mother can think of nothing but her breakfast.

Afterward, when a nurse informed my mother that I was a boy, she curled around her pillow and sighed, “Bacon.” When the nurse asked her if she had a name for Baby Boy Sobelowski, my mother starred at the cold, grey wall and sniveled, “Bacon.”

The writing is crisp and sharp and though the story is somewhat thin, so is the book. While some of the theme’s are clearly adult, Bacon’s youthful verve would have been much tougher to resist in a slightly refocused package.

New This Month: The French Gardener Santa Montefiore

As I sniffled and sighed my way through The French Gardener (Touchstone Fireside), I longed for the beach. It’s just the sort of book that begs a quiet cottage on a rainy day, or a languid one on sand and under an umbrella.

The French Gardener has it all: an attractive mysterious Frenchman -- named Jean-Paul, of course -- arrives to repair both a garden and a damaged family. It’s not just romance, but also family drama traditionally done so well by fellow Brit Rosalind Pilcher, with whom Montefiore is often compared.

“Posh tosh,” said The Mirror when The French Gardener was published in the United Kingdom early in 2008, “but oddly gripping.” Just the thing to gnaw away at while under that umbrella.

Children’s Books: Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain by Diane Swanson

Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain (Annick Press) is a newly revised edition of a book that was initially published in 2001. This new edition is more-ish in every way: it’s longer, brighter and better realized, intended to provide children with a gentle foundation for scientific learning.

In a way, the book is based on the idea that a little science can take you quite a distance, especially when it comes to dispelling the myths that bad science spread around.

Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain is really quite good. Where non-fiction books aimed at this age group can be overly simplistic and facile, Swanson is expert at sharing information in a fashion that is both lucid and interesting. And, truth be told, she should be good at it: she’s over 70 books into a career of doing just that!

Subtitled The Good, The Bad and the Bogus in Science, Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain is the perfect primer to the way science works in our lives and the various roles it can play. In some ways, the book does even more than that: touching at times on ideas that are quite philosophical in nature, at others sharing skills crucial to critical thinking. Nibbling on Einstein’s Brain is a whimsically illustrated treasure trove of learning for young minds.

New this Week: East of the Sun by Julia Gregson

Julia Gregson’s debut novel puts one instantly in mind of The Far Pavilions, M.M. Kaye’s epic 1978 novel of mid-19th century India. While there are similarities, they are largely on the surface. As befits its early 20th century setting and the sharp, smart voice of its journalist author, East of the Sun (Touchstone Fireside) takes a grittier run at India during the time of the British Raj. It’s an enjoyable and transporting experience.

East of the Sun introduces us to Viva Holloway who travels to India in the fall of 1928 aboard the Kaisar-l-Hind as chaperone to a young bride on her way to marry a man she barely knows, and her two friends.

East of the Sun was a Richard and Judy pick in the UK last summer, where the book became an instant bestseller under the duo’s Oprah-like bounce. It seems likely that, now that the book is available in North America, it will continue to stun readers on the far side of the pond.

Gregson delivers 1928 India in livid, vivid color. East of the Sun is a fantastic book, one that endures in the mind long after the final page is turned.

New this Month: Sea Changes by Gail Graham

At the beginning of this journey, you think you’re heading off on a beach read. You know what I mean: standard issue relationship novel. A dead husband, a woman’s personal crisis, a lot of angst and wringing of hands. And, honestly, as wry as that assessment might sound, there’s nothing wrong with any of that (which is no doubt why so many books that vaguely fit that description are published every year) but that’s just wouldn’t describe Sea Changes (Jade Phoenix) at all.

When Sarah Andrews tries to kill herself (All that angst, remember?) by drowning, she discovers a civilization under the water. When she wakes up on the beach, alive, Sarah quite understandably thinks It Was All A Dream. Further developments convince her this was not the case.

Sea Changes is about transformation and rediscovery. Incredibly difficult to describe, it’s also very hard to put down. Sea Changes is about loss and rebirth and, in certain ways, it’s about resilience of spirit and of fact. It’s a magical book.

Fiction: Perfecting by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer just keeps getting better. And that’s saying something, because everything she’s offered thus far has been worthy of note.

Kuitenbrouwer’s debut novel, The Nettle Spinner, was included in January Magazine’s 2005 Best of the Year. “Here is a very clever tale that bites as much as the nettle,” said January’s reviewer at the time. “Kuitenbrouwer writes with such confidence and authority that discovering this is her first novel seems almost as astonishing as the feat of those nettle spinners, separated in time by centuries but joined by shared themes.”

Four years later, Kuitenbrouwer is back with an intensely ambitious tale that moves her readers over 30 years, from New Mexico to Ontario and from roadside crime to the community and machinations of a rural cult.

Perfecting (Goose Lane) is slender, but there are hints of the epic here and though Kuitenbrouwer’s style is muscular and spare, one gets the feeling that more would have been better. Perfecting is tight, certainly and it’s not that anything has been left out, but I found myself wanting more.

Still, that’s a quibble and, indeed, a high class complaint. Kuitenbrouwer has fulfilled the promise of The Nettle Spinner. This Toronto-based author continues to be one of the hot new Canadian voices to watch.

Non-Fiction: An American Trilogy by Steven M. Wise

I think it’s possible that the publication date of Steve M. Wise’s latest book was unfortunate. The best laid plans. An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery & Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River (Da Capo) was published about a week before the strain of influenza most popularly known as swine flu started getting a lot of ballyhoo from CNN and other experts in the art of the sensational. That is to say that the book was published at a time when even staunch animal activists aren’t feeling especially compassionate about the fate of pigs. And, really? That’s a shame because, once again, Wise has written a trenchant and important book.

Wise is a lawyer who has taught at Harvard, Lewis and Clark and other places. He is president of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights. And he cares very deeply about both human and animal rights, as he demonstrated in several previous books, including Though the Heavens May Fall and Rattling the Cage.

In An American Trilogy Wise trains his sharp eye on Tar Heel, North Carolina, home of the largest slaughterhouse in the world, once the site of atrocities to African American slaves and before that home to indigenous Americans.

At times, An American Trilogy is a difficult book to read. There are some things here a lot of people don’t really want to know. In the book’s prologue, Wise explains that he was deeply affected by the material that moved him to write the book and that passion shows up on every page though, as he tells us, “In this book, I do not recite the atrocities we perpetuate on pigs. Instead, I discuss why we think it’s okay to inflict them. And that discussion will bring us to the study of history.”

In that study, Wise examines why American accept the type of cruelty he shows us in Bladen County, North Carolina. More: he connects it with cruelty to native Americans as well as African American slaves. He does all of this with the style and grace that always marks his work. An American Trilogy is a remarkable book.

The Old Woman and the Hen by P.K. Page

Fans of the poet P.K. Page -- and I imagine there to be platoons of them -- will have to get their hands on a copy of The Old Woman and the Hen, a charming chapbook that would make a lovely gift, a sweet read to a child or even a nice self-indulgence for fans of 93-year-old Page, even though publisher Porcupine’s Quill advises that the book is “a small treasure intended to be shared by grandmothers, grandfathers -- or other doting adults -- with beloved youngsters between the ages of 5 to 8.”

Canadian poet Page won the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1957 and was appointed a Companion to the Order of Canada in 1999. In 2002 her collection, Planet Earth, was short listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is one of Canada’s most celebrated and beloved poets.

The Old Woman and the Hen is illustrated withy original woodcut engravings by Alberta artist Jim Westergard. It’s a tiny, special, lovely little book clearly intended to be cherished.

New this Month: Twilight of Avalon by Anna Elliott

How is it that the Arthurian legends never seem to run out of steam? Hemlines can rise and fall, hairlines can decline and cultural mores can change from generation to generation, but somehow we always come back to the comfort of the grudges, wounds and triumphs of King Arthur’s golden court.

In her debut novel, Anna Elliott focuses on the story of Trystan and Isolde, freshening things up by going back to the roots of the tale. Elliot has based Twilight of Avalon (Touchstone Fireside) on the earliest written versions of the story of a misunderstood queen and her unlikely love.

Twilight of Avalon is the first novel in an intended trilogy. Elliott is off to a great start here, with a sharp magic that rivals that found in Arthur’s court.

Young Adult: Fate by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I loved it when Publishers Weekly described Fate (Delacorte) as being in the “teens-with-special-powers-and-destinies genre” and that really doesn’t miss the mark. Let’s face it, between PC Cast and Stephanie Meyers, this a deliciously well followed part of “literature” these days.

Barnes’ offering is not worse than many others and, in many ways, it’s quite a bit better. I share PW’s issue with the author’s use (overuse?) of italics. Barnes uses them for protagonist Bailey’s trips into the otherworld when she moves beyond being a high school student and becomes the third fate, she who holds the destiny of the world in her slender hands.

Fulbright scholar Barnes writes intelligently and -- for the most part -- engagingly. Did the world actually need yet another ancient mystical being? Sales appear brisk so, apparently, it did. Fate is recommended for readers 12 and up. The book follows 2007’s Tattoo.

New This Month: The Secret Lives of Litterbugs by M.A.C. Farrant

Fans of west coast Canadian writer M.A.C. Farrant can be forgiven if they feel there’s a shadow of the familiar in her latest book, The Secret Lives of Litterbugs (Key Porter). That’s because she partly mines territory already covered in 2004’s My Turquoise Years, a memoir that takes place in 1960, Farrant’s 14th summer. But don’t let possible redundancy scare you away: it doesn’t happen here.

The Secret Lives of Litterbugs is a collection of personal essays about Farrant’s own youth in the 1960s, as well as some that reflect her own experiences as a mother: the coin, then, is viewed from both sides.

Where My Turquoise Years is bathed in a certain nostalgic light -- 14 in 1960, somehow those numbers seem to just want to add up to nostalgia -- Litterbugs deals with a broader spectrum in terms of both timeline and emotion. It seems to me there’s a sharpness here that was lacking in the earlier book. But, whatever it is, The Secret Lives of Litterbugs is bright and fresh and real, a deeply enjoyable slice of family life, then and now.

New This Month: Inferno by Robin Stevenson

Aside from being a name to watch in the world of young adult publishing, Robin Stevenson’s story is the type of overnight success that really is one. While on maternity leave from her job as a social worker and counselor in 2005, Stevenson began to write seriously. Four years later, she is the author of six books.

The most recent of these is Inferno (Orca), Stevenson’s take on the teen angst novel. She does a terrific job, capturing the impossibly large emotion and the power that propels teenage girls. I think back on that age and shudder. One gets the feeling that Stevenson is able to recreate that feeling for herself with ease. Or it feels like ease, at any rate though, admittedly, good writing almost always looks like that.

In Inferno we meet 16-year-old Emily, though we meet her as Dante, after a series of events have caused her to rethink herself. Having read The Divine Comedy, she recreates herself as Dante because, as she tells someone early on, she liked what the author said about “how we need to take responsibility for the world. As individuals, I mean.”

Clearly, Dante is intelligent and somewhat different. These things, together with Stevenson’s understanding of human nature and developmental behaviors, combine to create a character young readers will have no trouble relating to. We all feel different sometimes. We all feel a desire for reinvention on occasion and so we relate to Dante who seems, at times, hell-bent on creating a divine comedy of her own.

Are there elements of the story and aspects of Dante’s character that seem stereotypical to this subgenre? I think so. But where do stereotypes come from? Readers who are on the other side of Dante’s 16 will remember that age and identify with the character. This is skillful writing featuring a strong female protagonist. A good story well told.

Children’s Books: A World Full of Ghosts by Charis Cotter, illustrations by Marc Mongeau

A World Full of Ghosts (Annick Press) comes this close to being a really terrific book. Certainly, the idea is a good one: a catalog of ghost stories from around the world -- 25 of them in all -- skeleton spirits of Alaska, Jamaica’s rolling calf, the legless Yurei of Japan, background for Halloween and the Day of the Dead.

Presented in picture book form with luminous illustrations by Marc Mongeau, the information is good, the illos are great and there’s no problem at all with the idea.

How does A World Full of Ghosts fall short? In a way, it’s in the planning that it doesn’t quite come together. The stories are uneven, both in content and in the telling. For example, some of the stories are told in a straight-up, no nonsense non-fiction style. (“In Hawaii, the ghost gods are everywhere: in the trees, the roaring wind, the mighty volcanoes, and the pounding waves of the sea.”) Others are told from a more personal viewpoint. (“We had two cats: Loki, a white cat, and Bear, a beautiful Siamese.”) Was A World Full of Ghosts initially envisioned as two books that got blended into one? I’m not sure, but I think children might find this overlapping narrative voice somewhat confusing. I know I did.

That said, there is much here to recommend the A World Full of Ghosts, not the least of these are well told encounters with a dimension most children ages eight to 10 will find exciting.

New This Month: A Sandhills Ballad by Ladette Randolph

It strikes me that A Sandhills Ballad (University of New Mexico Press) is a nearly perfect book. The harsh Nebraska landscape is a complete character in its own right. Unforgiving. Somewhat distant. Aloof. Home. The human characters are more yielding, but only just. And the sum of what author Ladette Randolph creates here is unforgettable.

We meet Mary Rasmussen as she’s awakening from a six week coma after an accident in which the bride lost her husband.

In that deep sleep she dreamt about the wind. She heard it whistle under the windowsills and through the cracks of an empty house, heard it rattle the loose No Hunting sign on a weathered post, and slam open and shut again the sagging door of an old barn.

A husband is not all Mary lost in the accident and, over the fullness of A Sandhills Ballad, her emotional awakening is like a rebirth.

The most startling thing about A Sandhills Ballad is the fact that Randolph does not have a wider following. A winner of the Nebraska Book Award (for the collection, This Is Not the Tropics), she is also the recipient of a Norcroft fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and the Virginia Faulkner Award. With the publication of this exquisite novel, perhaps her name will become better known.

Fiction: In the Hands of Anubis by Ann Eriksson

Despite an epic canvas and a delicate touch that sears the heart, there’s something sweetly naive about In the Hands of Anubis (Brindle & Glass) a novel that looks at love and unhappiness in entirely new ways.

Trevor Wallace is a tractor salesman from Calgary on his way to Africa on business. In a German airport he has a chance encounter with a woman in her 70s, and they end up traveling together to Cairo. Constance is traveling the world with the ashes of her three husbands in plastic containers -- their names carefully lettered on the lids -- in her suitcase.

The pair end up stuck in Cairo, just long enough to tour the pyramids. Trevor returns home to Calgary not long after, but she’s touched him somehow -- or those ancient structures have -- emotionally, spiritually: it’s all the same. Only his world, his life are different.

In the Hands of Anubis is a lovely little book. It seems at times to touch on all the humor, the sadness, the joy of the human spirit.

Children’s Books: Loose Leashes by Amy and Ron Schmidt

The art in Loose Leashes (Random House) is all photo-based. The kind of charming, carefully set up and almost painfully clear photographs of dogs very popular in the 1990s. The big difference here is that each photo is paired with a little poem -- one that rhymes -- that turns the photo into a story.

Can you feel my eyes upon you, melting you with my stare?
I know we’re very different. We’d make an awkward pair.

This next to a photo of a very small champagne-colored dog -- perhaps a French bulldog? -- and a Great Dane of the same color, but 20 times larger.

Ron Schmidt is a photographer who once-upon-a-time focused on models and celebrities but who now specializes in “taking photos of man’s best friend.” Amy Schmidt, Ron’s wife, was responsible for the poems and her bio informs us that, as a couple, they advocate for “animal welfare and literacy.” Which means they’re hitting on all cylinders with Loose Leashes. And it really is a thoroughly charming book. Little readers aged three to eight should enjoy the wonderful photos and the happy prose.

Non-Fiction: Life in Color: Visual Therapy’s Guide to the Perfect Palette by Jesse Garza and Joe Lupo

Maybe it’s just me, but something about Oprah stylists Jesse Garza and Joe Lupo’s second book just struck me as perfectly 2007. It’s not that the book is dated, exactly. It’s just something about the enthusiastic and unapologetic hedonism in Life in Color: Visual Therapy’s Guide to the Perfect Palette (Chronicle Books) that puts one in mind of a time -- not that long ago in months and years, but perhaps long ago in spirit -- when the most important thing on all of our minds might reasonably have been to discover if our styletype was classic or whimsical or if your colortype was earth, sun, moon or star.

One of the first lines in the introduction sums my feelings up pretty well:

As you make your grand entrance, you can bet people notice the way that drop-dead red dress brings out the rosins in your cheeks -- or, conversely, the way that dreary mustard yellow sweater makes you look drawn and worn.

Here’s what else can make you look drawn and worn: losing your job. Losing your house. Politically losing your way.

I’m not saying Life in Color is a bad book. It probably isn’t. It’s me, really it is. Or it’s the world. I think I would have liked this book a lot a year ago. But times have changed. So many banks have failed. Heads of state have shifted. 401ks have gotten smaller, the endangered list has gotten longer. And those granite countertops I thought I wouldn’t be able to live without? I’m sort of thinking that I can. Realistically, I’m just not in the mood for a “two-man style SWAT team” right now. I’m wondering if anyone really is.

Children’s Books: The Devil’s Paintbox by Victoria McKernan

You can’t think what a relief it is. After wading through stacks of the sort of blood-soaked stories currently in vogue, it was delicious to settle in and enjoy Victoria McKernan’s latest historical adventure, The Devil’s Paintbox (Alfred A. Knopf). Surely kids are ready from a respite from all that unreality? I know I certainly was.

The Devil’s Paintbox is set in 1865. Orphaned brother and sister, Maddy and Aiden Lynch, must struggle through a 2000 mile journey along the Oregon Trail. McKernan captures the danger and beauty of the American West with time-traveling accuracy. Older children will enjoy this new adventure from the author of the award-winning Shackleton’s Stowaway.

The Devil’s Paintbox is a wonderfully crafted story rich in historical detail: you can almost smell the saddle leather; feel the pangs of hunger and the sharp bites of fear. And not a fang or a wand in sight.

New This Month: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Think 50 First Dates without all the zany antics or Memento without the buckets of blood and you have the central conceit of The Housekeeper and the Professor (Picador) the latest translation from contemporary Japanese literary icon Yoko Ogawa.

The title’s Professor is a brilliant mathematician whose mind is stuck in the 1970s and whose short-term memory is only 80 minutes long. The Professor shows the Housekeeper the poetry in numbers and the magic in the everyday.

While The Housekeeper and the Professor lacks some of the controlled madness that spiked Ogawa’s previous translation, the short story collection The Diving Pool, there is a certain sweet delicacy here -- a sure hand, a subtle touch -- that gives this novella more resonance than its slight stature would indicate.

The Housekeeper and the Professor was first published in 2003 in Japan where it has sold 2.5 million copies and been adapted into a feature film.

New This Month: Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief

Raising Freethinkers (AMACOM) by Dale McGowan, Amanda Metskas, Molleen Matsumara and Jan Devor is a newly revised edition of a popular 2007 book. It was published in a hailstorm of controversy. The very premise of the book invites it. As the authors say in the preface to the new edition:

The sound you heard upon opening this book was the other shoe dropping. Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief is just that -- a practical guide. You’ll find ideas and ponderings in these pages, but also specific answers to common questions and hundreds of activities and resources to make those ideas come alive.

Now, clearly, Raising Freethinkers is not a book for everyone. At all. However, those faced with raising children outside of organized religion and looking for answers on how to proceed will find them here. McGowan writes:

Even though we can and often do end up pursuing the same ends, religious and nonreligious parenting really aren’t the same. There is a profound difference in the context, the space in which religious parenting and nonreligious parenting happen.

A really active and simple example of this comes from one brief line in the book: “Skepticism -- the simple request for reasoning or evidence before accepting a proposition -- is a virtue to treasure and cultivate in our kids.”

Questions of community, ethics, religious literacy “without indoctrination” and other important matters are considered and discussed. Raising Freethinkers is dynamic, thought-provoking reading for anyone, but non-religious parents will discover they no longer need to feel quite so alone.

Cooking for Two by Jessica Strand

It’s not that the idea behind Cooking for Two: Perfect Meals for Pairs (Chronicle Books) is so unique. In fact, lots of cookbooks have been published on this theme. Author Jessica Strand hits her mark perfectly, though, creating a book that will meet the needs of chefs at many levels.

And when Strands says Cooking for Two, she means it. She doesn’t just mean dinner for two or recipes for two, but rather food that you can build together, right down to a list of tips to ease the way for couples cooking.

Strand’s food choices are perfect, as well. From the complicated and time-consuming (Two Pizzas with Two Toppings would qualify as one -- or two -- of these. And the Chicken Tagine isn’t complicated, but there’s a bit of work involved) to recipes so simple, they practically make themselves (Antipasti Dinner for one. Quesadillas for another.) For the most part, though, the recipes are about medium in the complicated department. Easy for the accomplished home chef, challenging but not impossible for those less experienced in the kitchen. For example, the Poached Eggs with Prosciutto and Heirloom Tomatoes, Drizzled with Basil Oil offer a fantastic and easy alternative to the classic eggs benedict. And the Split Broiled Lobster with Lime Butter and Celery Root Remoulade is wonderfully simple and appropriately elegant, a wonderful choice for a romantic dinner for two.

With the current economic dust-up going full force, I think a lot of people will be looking for reasonable alternatives to the big night out this year. Jessica Strand’s Cooking for Two is a great and romantic alternative. Rush down to your independent bookstore pronto and demand your copy while there’s still time to arm yourself for Valentine’s Day.

New Today: Mr. Darcy’s Dream by Elizabeth Aston

One of the most amazing things about Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is how, almost 200 years after the death of the author, her characters continue to inspire others to enter her world, sometimes in the most public of ways.

Some of the fanfic inspired by Austen’s work is the very worst of fanfic of any kind: weak little pastiches that barely captures the flavor of Austen’s work, let alone the comforting majesty.

And then there’s Elizabeth Aston. With Mr. Darcy’s Dream (Touchstone Fireside) she’s six novels into an internationally acclaimed series inspired by characters who first breathed in Jane Austen’s most famous work.

Aston describes herself as a “passionate Jane Austen fan” who also happened to have studied at Oxford with Austen biographer Lord David Cecil. But Aston is more than a studied fan: she’s also personally talented and assured, as a growing readership for her series will attest.

In Mr. Darcy’s Dream, Darcy’s niece Phoebe has returned to Pemberley after a failed romance... only to hook up with her uncle’s brilliant landscape designer.

Eighteenth century chicklit... Regency style, but man: this stuff has legs.

New Today: Evermore by Alyson Noel

Into the ever-increasing fray of books attempting to compete with Stephanie Meyer’s phenomenally successful Twilight series, Alyson Noel offers up her first paranormal romance for young adults, Evermore (St. Martin’s Griffin).

Sixteen-year-old Ever lost her parents, sister and even the family dog to an accident. Beyond the obvious tragedy, Ever is different than she was before. With a single touch she can get more deeply inside a person than she would ever want. She can hear their thoughts, sense their tragedies, even see their auras. And it sets her apart even more than she would otherwise be: she is different in so many ways.

As soon as she meets Damen, she senses a kindred spirit. But what, exactly, is beyond his gorgeous and exotic façade? And does Ever really even want to know?

Aside from the obvious metaphors of teen angst and separation (Oh, the pain!) Evermore is certainly no worse than some of the paranormal schlock the competition is churning out. In some ways, it’s much better. The writing here is clear, the story well-defined and narrator Ever has an engaging voice that teens should enjoy. And, anyway, schlock is in the eye of the beholder. One can not go anywhere teenagers can be seen right now, without seeing one of them clutching a Twilightish-looking book. Subtext: they’re reading when not so very long ago, they were not. That’s about as much as anyone buying books for teens can ever ask.

New next month: yet another offering from the mother-daughter team of P.C. and Kristin Cast. An embargo keeps us from mentioning anything much about the book at all just yet, but we will say it’s called Hunted and is part of the Cast’s House of Night Series. It is the fifth book in the series -- after 2008’s Untamed. Hunted goes on sale on March 10th and, properly shelved in a bookstore, you’ll find it not very far from Evermore and the same sophisticated young readership has definitely been kept in mind.

New in Paperback: The Lincolns: Portrait of A Marriage by Daniel Mark Epstein

As The New York Times’ Janet Maslin pointed out when The Lincolns: Portrait of A Marriage (Ballantine) was new in hardcover, Abraham Lincoln as a topic for biography is territory that is so well worn, there is even a book about the top 100 Lincoln books. One would think that, after all, so much ink has been spilled, there wouldn’t be much new to say. However, if anyone is going to mine new material from the Lincoln mother lode, veteran biographer and poet Daniel Mark Epstein would be the one to do it. More: almost everyone -- including Maslin -- agrees that with The Lincolns, he has.

Epstein approaches his material with a poet’s eye and heart and the award-winning biographer’s soul. You don’t have to get far into The Lincolns to understand this; Epstein entrances us from the very first page: “Walking east on Jefferson Street with the setting sun behind him, Abraham Lincoln followed his shadow toward the house on Sixth Street where he had arranged to meet his love in secret.”

Though Epstein here chronicles the 22 year marriage of Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln, this is territory not new to this author: he’s tackled aspects of Lincoln’s life before, including 2004’s Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington.

First published in mid-2008, The Lincolns is a fantastic book. Beautifully researched, wonderfully told. It would be a better book if it ended more happily -- there’s a lot of sturm und drang in the story of this couple: marital stress, the loss of a child, the pressures of a life lived in the spotlight and it’s probably not too much of a spoiler to tell you Mrs. Lincoln ends up alone. But, obviously, Epstein had no say in how it all turned out. What he brings us is the best imaginable window on a story as yet so fully untold. A happy ending for this particular tale is a little too much to ask.

New This Week: 3 Willows by Ann Brashares

It’s hard to take a book like 3 Willows (Delacorte) seriously. Not with a pedigree like this one. And not when it’s fallen off such a familiar tree.

Author Ann Brashares is the author of the mega-selling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books. The books have sold nine million copies and inspired a couple of movies. Read that: they’ve been super popular. And while fans seem fully prepared to love whatever Brashares thinks to follow them up with, it’s difficult to not wonder why she’s opted to follow such a familiar road.

At 14 Polly, Joe and Ama -- the girls in 3 Willows -- are younger than their Sisterhood counterparts, but one could argue that could just give them the opportunity to grow through more books before the author has no choice but to be done with them. Their adventure and their spirit here is not terribly different, either: they even live in the same time and have a pair of shared jeans.

That said, these three girls have their own personalities and their own problems and challenges: 3 Willows really is more than The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants recast. Readers who loved the Pants books will eat 3 Willows right up.

New This Month: Surfing the Menu by Curtis Stone and Ben O’Donoghue

You don’t have to have seen the television series or be Australian to understand the delights of Surfing the Menu (Key Porter Books), a book by the co-hosts of a FoodTV hit show. A decade after Jamie Oliver wowed the world with his “Naked” presence, Curtis Stone and Ben O’Donoghue bring a similar fresh-faced hunkiness into their kitchens. In the book -- as in the series -- there is a travelogue element to the project. Together they explore Australia -- the kitchens and the backroads -- and combine it with their own experiences as professional chefs in order to bring us a book that is every inch worthy of all the attention it’s been getting.

In so many ways, Surfing the Menu is like a loveletter to Australia, a country most of the world longs to visit, but about which most of us really know very little.

If this material looks familiar, it’s because the book was published in Australia and the UK a few years ago. However this new one from Key Porter is the first published for the North American market.

Holiday Gift Guide: Owls of North America by Frances Backhouse

Readers with an interest in owls will simply not find a better book than respected science and environmental writer Frances Backhouse’s Owls of North America (Firefly Books).

The book is large and handsome, suitable for coffee table adornment, but don’t let it spend too much time there. Backhouse hits just everything you’d want to see covered in a book of this nature: owls in history and mythology, their mating and flight habits, how they communicate, see rest.

A large chunk of the book is given over to profiles of 23 species of owls, intended to help owl buffs identify and observe their own neighborhood owls.

“From ancient myth to Harry Potter, owls hold an enduring place in the human imagination,” Backhouse writes. “In some cultures they are revered, in others, feared. And for every superstition that associates owls with good fortune, a dozen more link them to mortality, sickness or evil. A small sample of the hundreds of legends, beliefs and customs that invoke owls gives a sense of the prominent and diverse roles in which these birds have been cast.”

Owls of North America will be a fabulous gift for the naturalist of curious child on your list.

Cookbooks: The Best Casserole Cookbook Ever by Beatrice Ojakangas

“Casseroles are making a comeback,” writes Beatrice Ojakangas in her introduction to The Best Casserole Cookbook Ever (Chronicle Books). And no wonder: the casserole can be like nature’s perfect food. Perfect for busy lifestyles and budget conscious chefs, casseroles are about as 2008 as can be imagined.

Unfortunately, the author completely misses the mark on the history of the casserole and its ancient origins. However, most readers probably won’t mind this as The Best Casserole Cookbook Ever includes over 500 recipes for just about any type of casserole imaginable, as well as a few that are definitely not considered casseroles at all, but are nice to see included in any case.

Those looking for a way to use holiday leftovers will find inspiration here: recipes for Turkey and Curried Rice Casserole, Turkey and Mushroom Casserole, Turkey and Wild Rice au Gratin, Turkey Breast Mole and others are all waiting here to help turn your post-holiday frown upside down. More importantly, following some of the author’s advice for the making ahead and freezing of casseroles could be life-changing for would-be home chefs who seldom find themselves with enough time or energy to cook.

New this Week: Death With Interruptions by José Saramago

The following day, no one died. This fact, being absolutely contrary to life’s rules, provoked enormous and, in the circumstances, perfectly justifiable anxiety in people’s minds, for we have only to consider that in the entire forty volumes of universal history there is no mention, not even one exemplary case, of such a phenomenon ever having occurred, for a whole day to go by, with its generous allowance of twenty-four hours, diurnal and nocturnal, matutinal and vespertine, without one death from illness, a fatal fall, or a successful suicide, not one, not a single one.

So begins Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago’s most recent novel and though that may not be the longest second sentence in a book in history, it’s probably in the top ten. Yet somehow -- curiously, skillfully, exquisitely -- that seemingly meandering and overlong collection of words manages to sum up the main concern in Death With Interruptions (Harcourt) even while it sets the frenetic and relentless pace to come. And whatever else that sentence is, one thing is certain: like Death With Interruptions itself, it is pure Saramago.

It should perhaps not be astonishing that a writer in his 85th year takes a run at death. In fact, Death With Interruptions could just as easily be called Death Takes A Holiday. More: Saramago has been a self-described communist, atheist and pessimist since at least the 1960s. His work and views are so controversial that the writer and his family moved to the Canary Islands many years ago. This is perhaps why Saramago’s work is always so deeply original: with everything torn away, he comes to his thoughts from new angles and fresh perspectives. The resulting books are often mentally challenging, but they are always deeply interesting.

And, while we’re talking about Saramago, fans should take note: a large screen version of the author’s 1995 book, Blindness, and made under the direction of Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener) will be released this fall.

New This Week: The Song of Jonah: A Novel by Gene Guerin

Published to coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month, which began September 15th, The Song of Jonah (University of New Mexico Press) is the second novel for Denver author Gene Guerin. Guerin’s debut effort, Cottonwood Saints, won the 2006 Premio Aztlan Award for first-time Hispanic writers.

The Song of Jonah is a gentle retelling of the Jonah story against the backdrop of the contemporary Catholic church, where suspicion and accusation are frequent bedfellows.

A young priest finds himself in the middle of a mild sex scandal. In the aftermath, he is reassigned to a remote New Mexico village in a parish with a reputation for being hard on priests. But The Song of Jonah is a story of hope, of course. And redemption. And Guerin brings us there with a heady mix of magic realism, regional folklore and a good working knowledge of the political machinations of the Catholic church.

Children’s Books: Shadows in the Twilight by Henning Mankell

Swedish-born author Henning Mankell is best known for his Kurt Wallander mystery series. These are books that dominate bestseller charts all over Europe and are beginning to make inroads in the United States, as well. Mankell’s fans know he’s a wonderful storyteller -- a great wordsmith with a lot to say. However, many who are new to his work don’t know that, in his own country, Mankell is also esteemed as a teller of children’s tales. Even the first few lines of Shadows in the Twilight (Delacorte) tells one why:

I have another story to tell.

The story of what happened next, when summer was over. When the mosquitoes had stopped singing and the nights turned cold.

Autumn set in, and Joel Gustafson had other things to think about. He hardly ever went to his rock by the river, to gaze up at the sky.

It was as if the dog that had headed for its star no longer existed.

Though Shadows in the Twilight follows up an earlier book, A Bridge to the Stars, young readers who are coming to Mankell for the first time won’t feel as though they’ve missed anything. Mankell is a skillfull writer and each work stands alone. This time out, Joel is dealing with shades of truth and coming to understand that sometimes a few words make all the difference in the world.

Cookbooks: Everyday Raw by Matthew Kenney

Though a cookbook for raw foods might sound like an oxymoron -- or more -- the need for books with this particular bent are undeniable. Over the last decade, interest in raw food diets has increased a great deal. Proponents argue for a more pure, healthy lifestyle. That’s an argument we’re not going to get into: it’s outside the mandate of a review. However, clearly, if you are interested in a raw food diet and you don’t want to restrict yourself to a future filled with nothing but undressed salad greens, you’d better have a look around for a book by someone with some experience in preparing raw food diets and delivering them in a presentable and delectable way. Enter Matthew Kenney.

Kenney is a restaurateur and cookbook author whose burgeoning interest in the raw food diet has brought him an equal portion of growing fame. He’s appeared on the Today Show, on the Food Network and he has been nominated for the James Beard Rising Star Award. And though he hasn’t always cooked and written about raw food, it is in this area that he’s brewing up the largest part of his reputation.

Though I have an interest in alternative food lifestyles, I am not myself a raw food vegetarian, nor does the choice interest me greatly. (So much food, is what I’m more likely to say. So little time!) That said, if you were contemplating taking even part of your diet raw, Everyday Raw (Gibbs Smith) would not be an option: it would be a necessity. Kenney has gone to great lengths to develop raw food recipes that look and taste like “real” food. A cashew and lemon-based “sour cream” for instance, and a “feta cheese” made out of macadamia nuts. Those already embarked on their raw food journey will rejoice in Kenney’s creative desserts and starters.

A good book, filled with creative and well presented recipes. Everyday Raw is a must-have book for anyone interested in the raw foods vegetarian lifestyle.

New this Month: Untamed by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

With Stephanie Meyer’s supernaturally driven series continuing to dominate the teen bestseller charts, it’s unsurprising to find leagues of similarly constructed books nipping at the well-conceived heels of Meyer’s success. There’s nothing new in this. The extreme success of The Da Vinci Code earlier in the decade saw the publication of literally hundreds of books featuring thrilling religious themes -- with varying amounts of success. Likewise, we’ve not yet seen the end of magical boys attending magical schools and learning about magic. Some of these have been terrific. Others terrible. Readers take their chances; that’s just how it goes.

Meyer’s success with the Twilight series has been so huge and so fast, we’ve not yet had time to find ourselves completely enveloped in tales of supernatural teenage angst. But we will. One can almost hear the presses humming. However, young readers with a thirst for books with that sort of bent are ferreting out existing series whose themes run a similar course to those favored by Meyers and her characters.

Among the best of these is the House of Night series being written by P.C. and Kristin Cast. Later in September we’ll see the publication of the fourth paperback original in the series, Untamed (St. Martin’s Press). The success of this series is not difficult to understand. P.C. Cast is a successful veteran author of romantic fantasy and paranormal literature. This is a world she understands. Pushing her over the top are contributions from her daughter, Kristin, who attends Northeastern State University. Clearly, the teenage mindset is something she understands. Together the mother-daughter team are creating a strong brew with the House of Night books, a series that has been hitting bestseller lists hard pretty much since the publication of the first book, Marked, back in 2007.

The protagonist of the House of Night series is Zoey Redbird, a vampyre fledged to train at the House of Night, the school she must attend in order to become an adult vampyre. And thus you have a set up that feels a bit like X-Men meets Harry Potter meets Interview with the Vampire all told in a voice as engaging and spirited as anything recounted by Meg Cabot. And that means good stuff for young adult readers who like a bit of strangeness with their brew.

New This Month: Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot

Dark and funny and dangerously nuanced, in Exit Lines (Knopf Canada) Joan Barfoot manages another notch on an already impressive double bandolier of high impact Canadian novels.

At three o’clock in the morning, that defenceless hour when anything feels possible and nothing human or inhuman out of the question, the Idyll Inn’s only sounds are the low hum and thrum a complicated building makes to keep itself going. Like any living body, even a sleeping or unconscious one, a building has to sustain its versions of blood and breath, so there’s a perpetual buzz to it, white noise in the night.

Four new guests a retirement home form a pact of “pleasurable rebellion.” The concept is funny and, on the surface of things, the approach is lighthearted. However, Barfoot deals here with topics most of us would much rather skate past: mortality, morality and a diminished twilight as a footnote to a vibrantly lived life.

Like her previous novel, the Giller-finalist Luck, Barfoot captures humanity in a way that both resonates and makes one wonder at a world slightly askew. Barfoot’s vision is always worth watching, and there’s no exception to that rule in sight in Exit Lines.

Children’s Books: The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum

Quite often, the flap material on a book does little to bring clarity to the material within. This is not, however, the case with The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum (Schwartz Wade Books). This single line tells the story absolutely:

Here is an original fairy tale that feels like a dream -- haunting, beautiful, and completely unforgettable.

This is one of those rare children’s picture books that just works on every level. Though Kate Bernheimer has never before written for children, her writing is well known and respected and as the editor of Fairy Tale Review, she’s certainly never out of depth with the material she’s chosen here.

On the other hand, Nicoletta Ceccoli is a highly regarded illustrator of children’s books. It’s not difficult to see why. In 2006 she was awarded the silver medal by the Society of Illustrators. In 2001 she won the Anderson Prize, awarded annually to Italy’s top children’s book illustrator. Her illustrations for The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum are wonderful. This is work so luminous, it seems backlit even on the page. The details are splendid, as are the colors and the otherwordly quality you see throughout works very well with Bernheimer’s story about a girl trapped within her magical world.

The book is recommended for children aged four to eight, but this is a stunning book: it’s my guess many of this edition will end up in the hands of collectors.

Biography: Shopping for Porcupine by Seth Kantner

Darkness -- huge and boundless, with only my one scoop of light, which thins across snow to gray, grayer, blackness. No assurance out there of another human, not on this planet anyway. I shovel my cave by headlight. Pitch in twin sleeping bags, a caribou hide, food. It’s small inside; big out here, and silent, a few flakes coming down, and a few stars blurry up there and not sharing their hard-traveling light. The air is not cold, only sixteen below, but a north breeze sears my cheeks.

There are times in Seth Kantner’s memoir of growing up Arctic that we encounter this sort of cold, Northern poetry. A kind of love song to the harsh land that fed -- perhaps nurtured -- the talent in his young soul.

Through Kantner’s sharp eye we see not only his own coming-of-age, but the transformation of the land he so obviously loves. Not all of the transformations are good.

This carefully wrought memoir is his first book-length work of non-fiction. Kantner’s fiction debut, Ordinary Wolves, brought the author wide acclaim in 2004. Shopping for Porcupine (Milkweed Editions) will bring him still more.

Non-Fiction: Wake Up to Your Weight Loss by Alyson Mead

Though I’m not, at this point in my life, especially interested in dieting, this line on the back of Wake Up to Your Weight Loss: Using the Art of Personal Narrative to Achieve Your Best Body by Alyson Mead caught my eye:

“What if the Buddha dieted?”

How could that not pique someone’s interest? A whiff of blasphemy and a hint of fun leads potential readers to think endless quantities of both might be found between these covers. And the fact is… well…. not so much. At the same time, Wake Up to Your Weight Loss is anything but stodgy. It begs us to find and reinforce the things inside us that are good, while letting go of much that is bad, including extra pounds.

When we want to say that someone or something is serious or dignified, we say it has gravitas, meaning substance …. So when did weight become synonymous with fast, lazy and dissolute?

I suspect that, like all self-help books, how much you manage to pull out of Mead’s latest book will depend entirely on you. However, her message of empowered self-acceptance and self-love that can lead to physical change is a positive one. Change your mind, she seems to say. And, in order to change you body, change your heart.

Children’s Books: The Dragon in the Sock Drawer by Kate Klimo

I don’t remember the last time I encountered a children’s book with a premise as clever as the one Kate Klimo’s The Dragon in the Sock Drawer (Random House) is based upon.

Here’s the idea: when an ordinary rock -- a thunder egg -- tucked into a 10-year-old’s sock drawer hatches into baby dragon, there are a few challenges. For one thing, it turns out that baby dragons are extremely noisy. For another, as cousins Daisy and Jesse discover, finding out what to feed an infant dragon is nearly impossible.

The Dragon in the Sock Drawer is the whole package: smart, sometimes wise, thoughtful and funny. Klimo’s debut effort has the feel of an instant classic.

New This Week: Serve the People by Jen Lin-Liu

“In cooking class, I learned a startling array of things. Eating fish head will repair your brain cells. Spicy food is good for your complexion. Monosodium glutamate is best thrown in a dish just before it comes off the wok. Americans are fat because they eat bread, while Chinese are slim because they eat rice. If you work as a cook in America for three years, you can come back to China and buy a house.”

Jen Lin-Liu was a Fullbright scholar and is a food critic and the co-author of Frommer’s Beijing. And though Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China (Harcourt) would be engaging at any time, with the Olympics just moments away, it moves from interesting foody travel book to one of the must-reads of the season.

Even if you plan to get no closer to Beijing than your television, Serve the People will fill in some of the blanks with a great deal of style. Not only does Lin-Liu know this material, she can cook and she can write.

Serve the People is terrific. It might change your view of China, in a good way. And just in the nick of time.

Fiction: Asylum by André Alexis

No book in recent memory has filled me with anticipation as much as André Alexis’ Asylum (McClelland & Stewart). How could it be otherwise? Alexis’ debut novel, Childhood was published in 1998. (And even the Trinidadian-Canadian author’s debut novel was sharply awaited, following as it did on the highly acclaimed collection, 1994’s Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa.)

The excitement that the wonderful Childhood invited was memorable: the Chapter/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Prize, the shortlist for the Giller. And then there was the long decade in between. A children’s book, Ingrid and the Wolf, was published in 2005 but it wasn’t the same. How could it be? It was the novel, the wonderful follow up novel, so many of us were keeping our eyes out for. And then the announcement, last year, for the publication of Asylum for 2008.

And now here we are. And the last page has been turned. Was it worth the wait? It was. It was. It took my breath away.

Ottawa and Tuscany in the 1980s with a cast of characters we would perhaps only believe in that time period; the intertwined lives of a half dozen characters so memorable, I anticipate I’ll be thinking about them for a long time to come. The idealist Franklin Dupuis; Paul Dylan, consumed by his jealousy; Professor Walter Barnes, who provides the source. The novel unwraps slowly and, just when you’re about to give up on lines connecting, Asylum’s disparate parts comes together in unexpected ways.

Asylum is deeply layered, beautifully imagined and realized and it satisfies to the core. Only one thing concerns me now: please, Mr. Alexis, don’t make me wait another decade for the next novel.

Martin Yan’s China

With the summer Olympics bearing down on us with lightening speed, there’s just enough time to get our culinary ducks in a row -- and not crispy duck, either -- in order to have local favorites at our fingertips while watching the Beijing games on television.

I understand that this is not the point of Martin Yan’s China (Chronicle Books), a wonderful and complete book by a well known author and television personality. If regional Chinese cooking expertly parsed for western markets and kitchens is what you’re after, you’d have a tough time going wrong with one of Yan’s many books. But this one, even more than the others I’ve seen, seems to embrace the fierce simplicity that characterizes the best of Chinese cooking. Bold flavors and colors, fresh ingredients and straight-forward explanations of techniques and foods that may be unfamiliar to some western chefs.

This is a really wonderful book. One of my favorite cookbooks thus far this year. Very good photographs are included throughout: not just great food and food styling, either but National Geographic-quality photos of a country currently undergoing great change. In all ways, Martin Yan’s China seems an important companion for those two weeks this summer when you’ll be glued to your television.

The Battle for Wine and Love by Alice Feiring

While the book is ostensibly about how wine writer Alice Feiring has been fighting back against the Robert Parker’s of the wine world (“How I saved the world from Parkerization,”) there’s more to The Battle For Wine and Love (Harcourt) than meets the eye. Most important of these is the fact that this is the memoir of a fabulously talented writer.

“When my world was still innocent,” Feiring tells us at the very beginning of chapter one, “I was drinking Manischewitz mixed with seltzer, but by the time my father ran off after a neighbor’s wife, I was drinking the partially fizzy Mateus.”

Earlier still, in the introduction, she lets us know about her mission. “When it comes to wine and love, I get attached. So when I realized that certain wines I had relied on and lusted after were disappearing from the universe, I lost sleep. In ingested. I sulked …. I could always find a different shade of lipstick, but there is no substitute for real wine or profound love.”

If, like Feiring , you view the world through taste-studded lenses, you’ll like The Battle For Wine and Love. It’s a beautiful journey with strong motivations and some great sub-plots.

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

We tend to think of the writing gift as something that can wear out. Even if we’re not conscious of thinking about it, it seems that one of the things we value most highly in an author is youth, and then we lower our expectations as authors age, force deadlines, disappoint us.

I wasn’t even really aware of any of these feelings until I was reading Lavinia (Harcourt), and was transported by the vibrance of the story as well as that of the voice that tells it. Le Guin, bless her, has been around a long, long time. And, for perspective, she was born in 1929 and thus is even older than John McCain. For some reason -- perhaps nothing more than Le Guin’s name -- Lavinia keeps getting shelved (and sometimes dismissed) as SF/F. It’s not. In certain significant ways, this is a historical novel of the highest order or, as Le Guin herself puts it in an afterword, Lavinia is “a meditative interpretation suggested by a minor character in [Vergil’s] story -- the unfolding of a hint.”

Essentially, Le Guin lends her voice to the character Lavinia, Vergil’s creation from Aeneid. Lavinia is a dreamy, contemplative work. I am tempted to call it Le Guin’s best, but considering the consistently remarkable qualities of Le Guin’s writing, that might be an overstatement. After all, over the years Le Guin has been awarded the Hugo and the Nebula Awards -- actually, five of each. She’s been given the Kafka Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Howard Vursell Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. And the National Book Award. That’s a lot of celebration for a single career. But Lavinia is wonderful. I’m betting that the next award lands not far from this remarkable book.

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall

It is not difficult to work out why Jeanne Birdsall’s Penderwicks have made such a strong impression on all who have encountered them. At a time when books for children can be incredibly complicated and sophisticated and packed full of moral and mental heavy lifting, it really seems as though Birdsall has just set out to tell a story in classic, old school-style. Kids everywhere seem relieved.

Birdsall’s debut novel, The Penderwicks, was published in 2005 to wide acclaim that would eventually include the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Fans of that book will be happy to see that the sequel, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street (Knopf), possesses all the charm of the original.

The Penderwicks are now back from vacation and Mr. Penderwicks’ sister -- Skye, Batty, Jane and Rosaline’s Aunt Claire -- has come for a visit and not without an agenda: she declares that its time for their father to start dating again. The girls don’t agree, and wholesome high-jinx ensues.

Cookbooks: Betty’s Best by Betty Rohde

In the steam-ahead 1990s, Betty Rohde gained her reputation writing low fat cookbooks for body conscious home chefs. Now, as the turbulent first decade of the 21st century head towards its close, Rohde delivers a book that is in some ways exactly opposite those low fat books, but that capture the cookbook zeitgeist just as precisely.

The back cover of Betty’s Best: Simple Comfort Food from Grandma’s Kitchen (Gibbs Smith) sums it up so finely, there is no mistaking the direction we’re being led: “Bake, fry, and roast your way to childhood dinners spent around the table with family.”

The subtext seems clear: Yes, there is a war on. Yes, we’ve never paid so much for gasoline. And, yes, people are losing their homes even while politicos prepare themselves for the ultimate dance. But look: Ham and Cheese Breakfast Casserole. Candied Sweet Potatoes. Chicken and Dumplings. Meatloaf. Pot Roast. Mock Apple Pie.

If you’re going to call it anything, call it what it is: American food that would be recognizable as such by almost anyone you served it to, anywhere in the world.

It seems to me that Betty’s Best is not without a message, quite beyond all the simple and easy-to-prepare food: the world may be going to hell in a hand basket, but comfort can be had right here.

New Yesterday: Notes on a Life by Eleanor Coppola

Squint your eyes a bit and this is a book by any talented writer musing on her well-spent life thus far. Connecting characters from her distant past with figures from her near past and drawing them with a steady hand and a poetic heart. It’s all good stuff.

Many lives are rich and hold deep wells of experience and emotion to mine, and often it’s enough. However Eleanor Coppola’s Notes on a Life (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) adds another layer because, with your eyes out of their squint, you see this isn’t just any ol’ garden variety talented writer. This is Eleanor Coppola -- yes, that Coppola -- and thus her internal mining is studded with encounters with people and faces we already know. Marlon said this. Frank said that. Wasn’t Sofia darling when she did that? All of these things add to the book. Take it to another even richer place.

An artist’s view of life. A filmmaker’s view of a life spent in film. A mother’s comment, joy and lament. Notes on a Life could easily have been just another celebrity bio but it is so, so much more. In fact, it’s never that at all.

Cookbooks: Grill Every Day and Patio Daddy-O at the Grill

For the busy household with no extra time for fussing in the kitchen, the importance of grilling food can not be overstated. Though it’s possible to spend a lot of time preparing the food that will end up on your grill, as Diane Morgan shows us in Grill Every Day (Chronicle Books), quite often the very best foods are the simplest to prepare.

Take, for example, Lemongrass-Grilled Lamb Loin Chops. Basically, you get the grill hot, massage the chops with pre-prepared lemongrass paste, grill four minutes per side for medium-rare and -- voila -- a meat course for four.

But wait: man (and woman) does not live by meat course alone. There are loads of great vegetable and starch recipes for the grill here, as well. Some of them just as simple. Asparagus Spears would be a natural with those lamb chops. The book has us grab 28 spears, prep as instructed, toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper, grill and -- voila again! -- dinner is served.

Grill Every Day is a great book. Subtitled 125 Fast-Track Recipes for Weeknights at the Grill, the recipes here range from super easy to super, duper impressive and accommodate every taste and food restriction. I’ve seen a lot of grilling books in my time. Grill Every Day ranks with the best of them.

The same can not be said for Patio Daddy-O at the Grill (Chronicle Books) by Gideon Bosker, Karen Brooks and Tanya Supina. A sequel to a seminal food and lifestyle book published in the mid-1990s, Patio Daddy-O at the Grill offers up the same self-conscious cool that the original Patio Daddy-O brought to the table, only now it feels like more of the same: only with fire.

Lines like, “At heart, every guy is a pyromaniac, and the outdoor pit is where you get away with it,” seemed funny in 1996. Now it just seems tired. “Don’t get hung up on designer grills. A grill is just a grill.” Yeah, yeah. You see what I mean?

Ditto the art, which is sharp, well done, yet seems not to have evolved very far from the original. Most painful, I think, is that there has been a cookbook revolution over the last dozen years but you can’t tell from Patio Daddy-O at the Grill. Recipes seem overly wordy and even simple things are much more complicated then they need to be.

If you can work your way through all of that, a few of these recipes are absolutely top-notch. I really love the Tropical Fruit Salsa Tuna Sticks: and they’re not as difficult to prepare as would first appear to be the case. And the Emergency Grilled Pound Cake Extravaganza is very good… you can just call it something else.

Cookbooks: Postcards from Portugal by Tessa Kiros

If I were going to dream up a an author of rich and gorgeous cookbooks with international flair, her background would look just like this: I’d have her born in London, for the flavors you can find there. (So many. And from everywhere.) I’d stick needles in a globe and say her mother should be from Finland and her father? Let’s make him a Greek-Cypriot. Then, when she was just a little kid, I’d have the whole family pack and move to… let’s say South Africa, just to blend still more flavors into the mix.

Tessa Kiros is, of course, the author described. She is at an early point in her career. Three previous books have been well received and widely acclaimed: Twelve, Falling Cloudberries and Apples for Jam. But Postcards from Portugal (Whitecap) is showstopping and though we’re only in the four month of 2008, I can’t imagine that it won’t be one of my picks for best of the year.

This is the whole package: a literary visit to a country via wonderful photos, a talented author’s carefully crafted musings and -- most important in a cookbook -- well considered recipes across the full table spectrum -- from essential basics of the cuisine to appetizers to dessert after a wonderful meal -- brilliantly photographed and shared with us in a way that is clear and easy to follow.

Highlights for me: the Coffee Steak is so simple, anyone could prepare it. But the balance of flavors make for a memorable meal, especially with Batatas A Murro (squashed potatoes) on the side. I adored the Gratineed Mussels and think they may well become one of my cocktail party standards. (Elegant, relatively easy and inexpensive, even for a crowd.) And the Tuna or Sardine Pate, which I initially thought fairly bizarre, but now can’t get enough of.

In all ways, Tessa Kiros’ Postcards from Portugal meets my criteria for a truly successful cookbook.

New Next Week: Someday When My Cat Can Talk by Caroline Lazo

Someday When My Cat Can Talk (Schwartz & Wade) is one of those children’s books that are so beautiful, they make a lasting impression. This is due in no small part to the award-winning duo who wrote and illustrated the book. Caroline Lazo’s books for children have included F. Scott Fitzgerald: Voice of the Jazz Age which was a Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book. Illustrator Kyrsten Brooker’s many books have won armloads of awards including an ALA Notable Book (for Precious and the Boo Hag), a School Library Journal of the Year Award (for Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street) and many others.

What those books have and have not done doesn’t matter: Someday When My Cat Can Talk stands alone. This is one of those children’s picture books where you know all elements are working as soon as you touch it. Dig in a bit further and there’s just no looking back.

By itself, the story is engaging. A little girl’s cat has a secret life no one else knows about or can hope to understand. He travels the world, enjoying everything that a globe-trotting kitty might expect to enjoy, then comes home and doesn’t tell his young mistress about his adventures because -- of course -- cats can’t talk.

It’s a sweet and charming story, told in enchanting rhyme. The book even includes a brief but sharp section called “Facts Behind the Story” for readers intrigued by the fun locations who want to learn just a little bit more. Brooker’s skillfully whimsical paintings with strong elements of collage steal the spotlight, though.

Someday When My Cat Can Talk is a lovely book, sure to delight young children, as well as collectors of this type of work.