Algonquin Books - Böcker

The third Charleston Junior League cookbook reveals more secrets of the city's legendary hospitality.

Claire Louise and Macy Rose Richards are sisters and best enemies--fierce adversaries in a lifelong rivalry by turns bitter and hilarious. But their rivalry hides a terrible secret buried somewhere in the past. As each sister tells her story in DAUGHTERS OF MEMORY, pieces of the puzzle begin falling into place and a shocking and tragically familiar picture begins to emerge. A LITERARY GUILD SELECTION.

Deborah Joy Corey captures the voice of rural poverty and the voice of a single, struggling family in southeastern Canada. The voice belongs to an innocent nine-year-old girl, who, throughout this startling novel, remains a nameless, silent outsider in a family whose troubles don't leave much energy for paying attention to someone who isn't in desperate need."Deborah Joy Corey makes a stunning debut with her first novel." -Maclean's

A New York Times Notable Book; Spitball Award for Best Baseball Book of 1994; Basis for a major Hollywood motion picture. Now in paperback, the biography that baseball fans all across the country have been talking about. Al Stump redefined America's perception of one of its most famous sports heroes with this gripping look at a man who walked the line between greatness and psychosis. Based on Stump's interviews with Ty Cobb while ghostwriting the Hall-of-Famer's 1961 autobiography, this award-winning new account of Cobb's life and times reveals both the darkness and the brilliance of the "Georgia Peach." "The most powerful baseball biography I have read."--Roger Kahn, author of THE BOYS OF SUMMER

The Tall Poppies--a few days ago, they were just another Aussie band watching their fame ebb faster than a nitrous high. Then Stuart, the drummer, is gunned down by Australian drug lords, and the band is suddenly news in Australia, America, and even on CNN. Rachel, a chatty twenty-seven-year-old New Yorker, is the band's housemate. She digs Colin, the bassist, who has commitment issues. After witnessing the murder, she flees to the safety of family in NYC, where she bumps into Stuart, the "corpse," ordering tuna salad on rye at Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop. This is a story about sex, rock 'n' roll, the pressures of hipness, making it big, and reconciling family ties. And Colin and Rachel's own unlikely story of true love is the best unexpected salami of them all. "Full of fresh characters and crazy coincidences."--Library Journal; "An engagingly breezy first novel . . . has commendable energy and marches along smartly to its own arrhythmic, offbeat beat."--Kirkus Reviews; "The language is as crisp and dead-on as the movie Clueless, and the action as picaresque as Moll Flanders."--Frank McCourt, author of ANGELA'S ASHES.

A story about dirt—and about sun, water, work, elation, and defeat. And about the sublime pleasure of having a little piece of French land all to oneself to till. Richard Goodman saw the ad in the paper: "SOUTHERN FRANCE: Stone house in Village near Nimes/Avignon/Uzes. 4 BR, 2 baths, fireplace, books, desk, bikes. Perfect for writing, painting, exploring & experiencing la France profonde. $450 mo. plus utilities." And, with his girlfriend, he left New York City to spend a year in Southern France. The village was small—no shops, no gas station, no post office, only a café and a school. St. Sebastien de Caisson was home to farmers and vintners. Every evening Goodman watched the villagers congregate and longed to be a part of their camaraderie. But they weren't interested in him: he was just another American, come to visit and soon to leave. So Goodman laced up his work boots and ventured out into the vineyards to work among them. He met them first as a hired worker, and then as a farmer of his own small plot of land.French Dirt is a love story between a man and his garden. It's about plowing, planting, watering, and tending. It's about cabbage, tomatoes, parsley, and eggplant. Most of all, it's about the growing friendship between an American outsider and a close-knit community of French farmers. "There's a genuine sweetness about the way the cucumbers and tomatoes bridge the divide of nationality." —The New York Times Book Review "One of the most charming, perceptive and subtle books ever written about the French by an American." —San Francisco Chronicle

A man miraculously survives a fall from the eighth floor of a drilling rig but is ever after plagued by an unwillingness to live. A preacher loses his ability to speak in tongues and begins to fake it. A young man is intent on suppressing his sinful love for his best friend even though he can think of nothing else. A teenage boy struggles with the temptation of a young girl. A grandmother will stop at nothing to make her grandson famous. These are some of the good citizens of Perser, Oklahoma. And in Aaron Gwyn's debut collection, the people of Perser are unpredictable and unforgettable as they struggle with lapses into sin during the week a young faith healer comes to town. In his careful articulation of faith and doubt, sin and self-delusion, allegiance to the church and self-glorification, Gwyn reveals himself as a writer of great heart and complexity, creating a world that burns with pain, love, and an odd kind of devotion.

A perfect leek from France. Flavorful zucchini from Italy. An infamous potato from Ireland, and a humble lentil from Ethiopia. 100 Vegetables offers a veritable cornucopia of vegetables and stories from around the world--from Argentina to Zimbabwe, from Australia to the United States. William Woys Weaver--veggie connoisseur, gardener, and historian--guides us through a range of peppers, potatoes, peas, gourds, onions, tomatoes, greens, and a whole lot more. Not every carrot is the same. All beans aren't equal. Take the Petaluma Gold Rush bean, a rugged legume, grown for over 150 years and brought to California by an American whaler from Peru. Or the violet carrot, which the Greeks brought back from India following the conquests of Alexander the Great.Mixing history, culinary suggestions, practical information, and personal anecdotes, Weaver introduces us to unusual heirloom vegetables as well as to common favorites. He provides answers to general questions, such as the difference between a yam and a sweet potato, and presents lively portraits of one hundred vegetable varieties, which he's grown and harvested in his own kitchen garden.Organized alphabetically by common name, 100 Vegetables includes beautifully detailed drawings throughout and a helpful appendix of seed resources.

In 1869 Japan, a young woman escapes the confines of her arranged marriage by painting memories of her lover on mulberry paper. She secretly wraps the painting around a ceramic pot that's bound for Europe. In France, a disenchanted young man works as a clerk at an import shop. When he opens the box from Japan, he discovers the brilliant watercolor of two lovers locked in an embrace under a plum tree. He steals the painting and hides it in his room. With each viewing, he sees something different, and gradually the painting transforms him.Set outside the new capital of Tokyo during the Meiji Restoration and in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, The Painting is a richly imagined story of four characters whose lives are delicately and powerfully entwined: Ayoshi, the painter, pines for her lover as she dutifully attends to her husband; Ayoshi's husband, Hayashi, a government official who's been disfigured in a deadly fire, has his own well of secret yearnings; Jorgen, wounded by the war and by life, buries himself in work at the Paris shop; and the shop owner's sister, Natalia, who shows Jorgen the true message of the painting.Exquisitely written and utterly spellbinding, The Painting reveals the enduring effect of art in ordinary life and marks the debut of a skilled stylist and first-rate storyteller.