New and Recently Released!
|
|
| Picnic in Provence: a memoir with recipes by Elizabeth BardIf you enjoyed Lunch in Paris, get ready for a Picnic in Provence. American author Elizabeth Bard's second memoir traces her and her French husband's impulsive move from Paris to a small town in Southern France... when she's six months pregnant. Having bought the charming former home of French Resistance leader and poet René Char, the couple settled in, met their new neighbors, enjoyed nature, savoured delicious foods, and opened an artisan ice cream shop. Oh, and they welcomed their new bébé! Bring both your literary and your gastronomic appetite - this delightful, food-centric book (recipes are included) will have you salivating. |
|
|
What I was doing while you were breeding: a memoir
by Kristin Newman
Part laugh-out-loud storytelling, part thoughtful self-reflection, this debut memoir from a television comedy writer follows her many adventures around the world in an attempt to escape her fear of commitment and settling down.
|
|
|
Jasmine and fire: a bittersweet year in Beirut
by Salma Abdelnour
As Beirut exploded with the bombs and violence of a ruthless civil war in the '80s, a nine-year-old Salma Abdelnour and her family fled Lebanon to start a new life in the States. Ever since then, even as she built a thriving career as a food and travel writer in New York City, Salma has had a hunch that Beirut was still her home. She kept dreaming of moving back and finally decided to do it. But could she resume her life in Beirut, so many years after her family moved away? Could she, or anyone for that matter, ever really go home again?
|
|
|
Slow road to Brownsville: a journey through the heart of the old West
by David Reynolds
In Slow Road to Brownsville, David Reynolds embarks on a road trip along Highway 83, a little-known two-lane highway built in 1926 that runs from Swan River, Manitoba, to the Mexican border at Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico. Growing up in a small town in England, Reynolds was enthralled by both the myth of the Wild West and the myth of the open road. This road trip is his exploration of the reality behind these myths as he makes his way from small town to small town, gas station to gas station, and motel to motel, hanging out in bars, drinking with the locals, and observing their sometimes-peculiar customs.
|
|
|
Enchanting Phuket, Samui & Krabi
by Mick Shippen
Phuket and Krabi Islands in the Andaman Sea and Samui in the Gulf of Thailand offer an idyllic combination of a sunny climate, stunning beaches, lively nightlife and extraordinary natural beauty.
|
|
|
A journey into Russia
by Jens Muhling
For the last ten years Mühling has been travelling through Russia in search of stories that appear unbelievable. He shows us a country whose customs, contradictions, absurdities, and attractions are still largely unknown beyond its borders.
|
|
|
Dreamstreets: a journey through Britain's village utopias
by Jacqueline Yallop
Twenty years ago, Jacqueline Yallop began her working life leading guided walks at a small village high in the fells of the North Pennines. Built by philanthropic employers for families working the lead mines, the isolated settlement was one of a network of 'model' villages which sprang up across Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Dreamstreets, Yallop visits, and re-visits, some of these utopian experiments to explore their rich histories and to understand the social, political and cultural contexts from which they emerged.
|
|
|
Riding sky high: a bicycle adventure around the world
by Pierre-Yves Tremblay
Many dream of dropping everything and just travelling around the world. It's a common dream, but few imagine embarking on that journey by bicycle. Pierre-Yves Tremblay travelled through Europe, past the deserts of the Middle East, then braved the Himalayas, and rode through Southeast Asia and the wilds of Australia, before finishing his journey biking across the United States and arriving back home in Canada. Besides the sheer physical effort, this epic adventure is about a person confronting himself, alone, with his bike, encountering life, its possibilities and limits, dealing with emotions and everything that compels him to keep going and persevere.
|
|
Focus on: Fathers and Sons
|
|
| When a crocodile eats the sun: a memoir of Africa by Peter GodwinArmchair travellers interested in visiting Africa will be fascinated by journalist Peter Godwin's memoir of life in his troubled homeland. Godwin, who returned to Zimbabwe when his father suffered a heart attack, watched his father's health decline as the country descended into social and political turmoil under the leadership of dictator Robert Mugabe in the late 1990s. Godwin's parents refused to leave their adopted land even as the danger to white landowners grew, and he learned that their dedication stemmed from a family secret, one which they finally shared with him. This well-written story is a compelling read and an intriguing look at adult sons and elderly fathers. |
|
| My father's paradise: a son's search for his family's past by Ariel SabarWhen his own first child was born, Los Angeles-raised journalist Ariel Sabar slowly began to better understand his father, Yona, with whom he had always clashed, and so he decided to explore his father's remarkable roots. Yona, a UCLA professor, was born into an enclave of Aramaic-speaking Kurdish Jews who were forced from their homes in the mountains of northern Iraq and moved to Israel in the 1950s. In 2005, Ariel visited Israel and Iraq in order to learn more about and reconnect with his family's ancestral past. While this National Book Critics Circle Award-winner isn't a standard travelogue, it is a "graceful and resonant" (The New York Times Book Review) memoir that fans of Jewish or Iraqi history will particularly enjoy. |
|
|
The setting sun: a memoir of empire and family secrets
by B. J. Moore-Gilbert
Setting Sun is the story of the dying days of an Empire, combined with gripping family history, in an extraordinary literary voyage across India. When a letter from an Indian historian arrives out of the blue and informs leading academic Bart Moore-Gilbert that his beloved, deceased father, a May member of the Indian Police before Independence, partook in the abuse of civilians his world is shaken as his cherished childhood memories are challenged. He sets out in search of the truth discovering much about the end of empire, the state of India today, and whether his father, as one of the many characters on his quest claims, really was a terrorist. Crisscrossing western India, and following leads from bustling Mumbai to remote rural scenes, Moore-Gilbert finally pieces together the truth, ultimately discovering that the same story links the past with the present, colonial India with its modern incarnation, terrorism through the ages and father with son.
|
|
|
The Bosnia list: a memoir of war, exile, and return
by Kenan Trebincevic
.A young survivor of the Bosnian War returns to his homeland to confront the people who betrayed his family. This poignant, searing memoir chronicles Kenan's miraculous escape from the brutal ethnic cleansing campaign that swept the former Yugoslavia. After two decades in the United States, Kenan honours his father's wish to visit their homeland, making a list of what he wants to do there. Kenan decides to confront the former next door neighbour who stole from his mother, see the concentration camp where his Dad and brother were imprisoned and stand on the grave of his first betrayer to make sure he's really dead. Back in the land of his birth, Kenan finds something more powerful - and shocking - than revenge.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|