In the tradition of his beloved previous novel, Little Bee, Chris Cleave again gives us an elegant, funny, passionate story about friendship, marriage, parenthood, tragedy, and redemption. This time, the setting is the upcoming London Olympics. Gold is the story of two women, Zoe and Kate, world-class cyclists who have been friends and rivals since their first day of elite training years ago. They have loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, lost, consoled, triumphed, and grown up together. Now, on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, the two must compete for the one remaining spot on their team. In doing so, the women will be tested to their physical, mental and emotional limits. They will confront each other and their own mortality, and be asked to decide: What will you sacrifice for the people you love?

1. How would you summarize your book in one sentence?

Gold is a celebration of the human heart’s capacity to do more than just pump blood.

2. How long did it take you to write this book?

It took three years because, as ever, I place the greatest importance on the work of researching and even inhabiting my character’s lives. I try to live their lives for long enough so that by the time I begin writing I feel their reactions by instinct rather than by conscious deliberation. Gold concerns the zenith of athletic achievement and the nadir of grave illness, and I researched both. In order to understand athletes’ lives, for several months I trained on a bicycle with the same schedule that professional riders typically use – though not, I hasten to add, at the same speed. This taught me a little about the pain that top athletes go through and the extremity of the obsession that they need to have. And then, to research illness, I shadowed a pediatric hematologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. I was in the room while the doctor gave serious diagnoses to parents, and I was able to observe their reactions and to witness what happens to children during treatment for leukemia. The whole research process was an education for me, and a humbling process. I learned that the strongest, bravest, most admirable people in society are often the ones we have never seen or heard of.

3. Where is your favorite place to write?

I work in a library in central London, hidden away at a little desk high in the stacks. I don’t do email, admin or anything else there – I just write. When I need a break I walk around town and watch people. The whole of life is on display in London. It’s frequently funny, occasionally shocking, and always inspiring.

4. How do you choose your characters’ names?

I have a lot of history with names. In my first novel, Incendiary, I didn’t give my heroine a name at all because I wanted the reader to relate to her and to find her voice within themselves. I wanted her to be more than Everywoman: I wanted her to be you. And that was easier to achieve if she was nameless. If I were to call her, for the sake of argument, Persephone, then it might be harder to feel her voice as your own. In my second novel, Little Bee, the protagonist has a given name and also a name that she adopts in order to disguise her identity. In a story which is all about identity, the name she chooses and the name she was given are both significant. And then in my third novel, Gold, I’ve deliberately given my characters everyday names – Jack, Kate, Zoe, Sophie, Tom – because it is their deeds, rather than their identities, which are important.

5. How many drafts do you go through?

Gold went through six drafts. I don’t stop until I think it’s right. I am lucky enough to have some very adventurous and committed readers, and my response is that I must show them the same level of commitment. I aim to push myself harder and take more risks each time, so that each novel is worth the wait for the reader. I am also very fortunate that my publishers share my view that the reader deserves something from the heart. They have never put pressure on me to release a story before it was ready. Kudos to them for that, because it takes guts and conviction to resist the commercial pressure to bang out half-baked books.

6. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be?

I don’t really think that way about books. There are novels I can lose myself in again and again – like Virginia Woolf’s – precisely because they are so unlike anything I could have written myself. I think that’s the astonishing thing about fiction: it shows us how startlingly different we are from one another in our ways of seeing the single life we share. This is why readers of novels tend to be such open-minded and interesting people – because they enjoy the experience of seeing the world from angles oblique to their own.

7. If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it?

Actors. That would definitely be best.

8. What’s your favourite city in the world?

London. It’s as big as life is, and often a little weirder.

9. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask?

In a sense we can talk to any writer, living or dead. Writers reveal themselves completely – much more than the people we know in real life do, I sometimes think. You can ask a question of a great novel and get some kind of a response, even if that response is as cryptic as the Magic 8-Ball. That’s a somewhat eccentric reply, though, I’ll freely admit. Okay, I’d like to take John Steinbeck to the pub and ask him if he fancied a beer milkshake.

10. Do you listen to music while you write? If so,what kind?

I never listen to music while I write. That would be like playing computer games while you drove, or eating while you kissed.

11. Who is the first person who gets to read your manuscript?

My agents and editors are always the first to read my stuff. I have warm and enduring relationships with them and I trust their judgment absolutely. I don’t ever ask my family or my other friends for their opinion, because I don’t think it’s fair on them. If they were to like my stuff, then great, but if they didn’t then it would put them in an awkward position. I think it’s an abdication of personal responsibility when a writer asks his friends for their opinion. My doctor friends don’t give me their diagnoses to check, after all.

12. Do you have a guilty pleasure read?

I don’t think I’d ever feel guilty about enjoying reading. I like any piece of work where the artist has turned themselves inside out to produce something true and compelling. That’s as true of the Batman comics as it is of Finnegans Wake.

13. What’s on your nightstand right now?

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, In The Shadow Of The Banyan by Vaddey Ratner, The Waves by Virginia Woolf, Plateforme by Michel Houellebecq, two issues of Cycling Weekly, a packet of a French cold-and-flu remedy called Humex, my Garmin cycling GPS, £3.47 and $82, a key to a friend’s flat, one of my kids’ drawings and a pink sticky note I wrote in the night that says: PROTAG MUST NOT REVEAL GENDER UNTIL AFTER (POSS YEARS AFTER) H HAS GONE. What’s mysterious about it is that I can’t work out who (or what) “H” could possibly be.

14. What is the first book you remember reading?

Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. I used to love the Narnia books and disappear for days at a time into their magical world, although when I recently bought the books for my children and began to re-read them, I realized that they were the most appalling pieces of crap. It was strange and upsetting.

15. Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes, since I was eight. I used to write ‘novels’ that were six pages long, staple the pages together and draw the jackets with felt-tip pens. I feel that the six-page hand-stapled novel with jam and hot chocolate stains is a particularly neglected art-form.

16. What do you drink or eat while you write?

I drink a lot of coffee. You have to crank your brain up to a pretty high pitch. Indeed it’s a fine line for a novelist between being sufficiently caffeinated and being hospitalized with palpitations.

17. Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper?

MacBook Air. It’s the tool of choice because it’s soundless and small. You want to feel bigger and more vocal than the thing you’re writing on. I have a rather ascetic one with the logos blanked out, wifi disabled and everything stripped off it except Word. So many writers aren’t doing their best work because the tool they write with has more built-in distractions than Soho.

18. What did you do immediately after hearing that you were being published for the very first time?

Cried.

19. How do you decide which narrative point of view to write from?

I make carefully-argued logical plot summaries where I analyze which characters will be closest to the main arcs of the story, and which will be able to hide and reveal elements of history as appropriate. Then I ceremonially burn those summaries and just write from the point of view of the character I like best.

20. What is the best gift someone could give a writer?

Well, you know the old adage: Give a novelist a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a novelist to fish and he writes Moby-Dick.

Excerpted from Gold by Chris Cleave. Copyright © 2012 by Chris Cleave. Excerpted by permission of Bond Street Books, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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It’s almost forty years after the events of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island: Jim Hawkins now runs an inn called the Hispaniola on the English coast with his son, Jim, and Long John Silver has returned to England to live in obscurity with his daughter, Natty. Their lives are quiet and unremarkable; their adventures have seemingly ended.

But for Jim and Natty, the adventure is just beginning.

1. How would you summarize your book in one sentence?

An adventure story, a love story: serious fun.

2. How long did it take you to write this book?

All my life.

3. Where is your favorite place to write?

The only place I write is at home at my desk.

4. How do you choose your characters’ names?

They chose themselves.

5. How many drafts do you go through?

Somewhere between 25 and 30.

6. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be?

Great Expectations.

7. If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it?

My son Lucas.

8. What’s your favourite city in the world?

London.

9. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask?

Keats. What are you going to write next?

10. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what kind?

Absolutely not.

11. Who is the first person who gets to you read your manuscript?

My wife, swiftly followed by my friend Alan Hollinghurst.

12. Do you have a guilty pleasure read?

No.

13. What’s on your nightstand right now?

My what? We don’t have them in England.

14. What is the first book you remember reading?

The Wind in the Willows.

15. Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes.

16. What do you drink or eat while you write?

Peppermint tea.

17. Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper?

Pen and paper, then the beloved Apple.

18. What did you do immediately after hearing that you were being published for the very first time?

Bought a picture.

19. How do you decide which narrative point of view to write from?

Voices in my head tell me.

20. What is the best gift someone could give a writer?

Time and quiet.

Excerpted from Silver by Andrew Motion. Copyright © 2012 by Andrew Motion. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Antigonick, a translation of Sophokles’ Antigone, is worth a trek to your local bookstore just to see in person. Bianca Stone’s illustrations are set on translucent vellum stock, creating intruiging effects when overlapped with the hand-lettered text below.

Carson’s work is entrenched with a sense of play and wonder that seems almost childlike at times, and the sarcastic tone of the chorus feels wonderfully adolescent and indulgent. “You’re late to learn what’s what aren’t you” they tell Theban king Kreon, in a moment of “I told you so” that had me laughing out loud. The playfulness of Carson’s work almost tricks you into having fun with Antigone the way she does, and in Antigonick Carson brings you into a world that feels current, even though the story dates back nearly three thousand years. Her playful energy is not limited to the comic, as she easily captures moments that seem to luxuriate in cynicism — “Look here comes hope/wandering in/to tickle your feet/then you notice the soles are on fire”. These tonal peaks and valleys are what gives Antigonick its unsettling resonance.

As Carson writes of Aphrodite “you play with us, you play deeply”, I’d suggest that, Anne Carson, so do you — you play deeply. And your readers thank you!

Magnified World

Toronto, late 1990s

The first time it happened, I didn’t open the store on time. I found myself standing on the sidewalk outside the locked door at noon, the Queen streetcar going by behind me in a baritone of metal complaints. It was two hours after I was supposed to have opened and I had no memory of anything after going to bed the night before. The brown canvas shoes I had on were pinching my toes. I’d never seen the shoes before in my life and it seemed obvious that I was dreaming. If I was dreaming, my mother would be there like she always had been. But when I let myself in, there was no one.

Then my father was running down the stairs from our apartment on the second floor and I knew I was awake.

“Where have you been?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“What? Where have you been?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

His mouth opened and I knew he was going to ask me again.

I was lying on the floor. I could see that the bottom shelf of the Fortune and Foretelling section was filthy with dust. It took me a moment to realize I had fainted. My mother was the one who fainted. Who used to faint. I’d never fainted before.

My father picked me up—he actually lifted me up onto my feet, which I didn’t realize he was capable of doing. When I wobbled he set me back down again and knelt beside me and all I could think was that it must hurt his knees to be like that. I could see into the collar of his shirt. His chest was that of an old man, an older man than him: a dull red unrelated to the colour of his face, a lattice of grey hair. I didn’t want to look.

“Where were you? Are you sick? Where were you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t remember.”

He seemed to bite down very hard; I could see a tendon in his neck jump. My head ached.

“You don’t remember.”

“I went to bed. After A Bit of Fry & Laurie.” My boyfriend Andrew had come over to the apartment where I lived with my father above the store. He had rented the show at Queen Video and we watched it together after dinner, curled up on the couch. My father walked by in his pyjamas at one point, holding a cup of tea, and said, “That’s a good one. That British humour. Funny stuff .” Near the end of the video, with my father in bed in his room, Andrew started to kiss the back of my neck. He slid his arms around me and ran his spidery hands over my breasts. His lips on my earlobe sent fizzing little darts of pleasure all over. Then the shush of water running came from my father’s washroom, over our shoulders, and we moved apart.

We sat in silence while the credits ran, and then I walked him down to the street. It was completely still, without the slightest trace of wind. Andrew unlocked his bicycle from the drainpipe beside the store.

“I’ve got a tutorial tomorrow at ten and they’re turning in their papers, so I’ll be a hermit for a while,” he said. “I’m sorry. If you really need me, you can call.” He looked down and away, fiddled with his light. He’d felt guilty about working since my mother died, about being away from me.

I tucked my hair behind my ear. “No problem,” I said.

He looked at me again for a moment, kissed me, then got on his bike and pedalled away. I locked up and went back upstairs, where I washed my face and got into bed.

The next thing I knew I was outside the store in blazing daylight. And now I was on the floor beside my father.

“You don’t remember anything after going to bed?” My father’s face had gone oddly flat and the redness had drained away, but all he said was, “I’ll stay in the store until you’re feeling better.”

I went upstairs to my room and closed the door. On the windowsill was a card, just sitting there without an envelope. When I picked it up, it was slightly warm.

I’m so sorry to hear of your loss, it said. With love, Gil.

I didn’t remember putting the card there. I didn’t even remember a Gil—was he a customer? A friend of my father’s? It sounded like an old man’s name. Dozens of cards had arrived after my mother’s funeral, mostly politely worded watery-toned notes from my father’s colleagues at the university. This card looked no different except for the pained and jerky handwriting.

The canvas shoes had straps that pinched at the top of my instep. They fit so badly it felt like they’d been worn in by someone else altogether. I sat down on the edge of my bed and slid my feet out, wincing when the skin pulled away from the fabric. I carried the shoes to the hallway mat. The foyer was open to the kitchen, and through the windows, the light was unbearably bright.

Excerpted from Magnified World by Grace O’Connell Copyright © 2012 by Grace O’Connell. Excerpted by permission of Random House Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Check out a few sample recipes including The Most Interesting Sandwich: The Dos XX Equis Brickwich. Oh, and don’t forget dessert: The Beerlicious BBQ Cake (a recipe like this can only come from a night of drinking, according to Ted.)

We’re delighted to offer a copy of Beerlicious to 3 lucky winners! Enter below, and prepare to learn the art of grillin’ and chillin’!

“Ted is so good, he’s the only Canadian chef we’ve ever had on our show.”
—Regis Philbin, Live! With Regis and Kelly

Ted Reader is an award-winning chef and food entertainer, who’s parlayed his passion for food into a culinary tour de force that includes more than a dozen cookbooks, shelves of food products, live culinary performances, TV and radio cooking shows and appearances as well as culinary demonstrations, a catering company, and teaching. Known for his pyrotechnic charm and fearless culinary spirit, it’s no surprise that GQ magazine labeled him the “Crazy Canuck Barbecue Kingpin.” The dude just loves to cook!

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As a reader who’s been in this relationship with thrillers for a while, I want what the wife wants: I want a book to take me somewhere I’ve never been before; I want to have no clue where I’m going; and I want to be surprised by what I find when I get there.

That’s why I loved William Landay’s Defending Jacob. It succeeds on all fronts. Andy Barber is a respected district attorney in suburban Massachusetts, but his world is shattered when his own teenage son becomes the main suspect in the murder of a local kid. From that starting point, nothing goes where you think it will. What results is a sophisticated, deeply disturbing and morally challenging novel that pits a father’s loyalty to his son against his core beliefs in justice and the rule of law.

Not every writer prompts the literary community to offer up praise on a platter, but Landay’s novel has, eliciting advance quotes from Lee Child, Nicholas Sparks, Chevy Stevens and Linwood Barclay (from whom I first heard a rave about this book).

That’s all I’m going to say about it. Pick it up. I can promise that you’ll be led somewhere different, that you’ll never know where you’re heading, and that in the end, you’ll be surprised. What could be more thrilling than that?

The Chemistry of Tears

Catherine

Dead, and no one told me. I walked past his office and his assistant was bawling.

“What is it Felicia?”
“Oh haven’t you heard? Mr. Tindall’s dead.”

What I heard was: “Mr. Tindall hurt his head.” I thought, for God’s sake, pull yourself together.

“Where is he, Felicia?” That was a reckless thing to ask. Matthew Tindall and I had been lovers for thirteen years, but he was my secret and I was his. In real life I avoided his assistant.

Now her lipstick was smeared and her mouth folded like an ugly sock. “Where is he?” she sobbed. “What an awful, awful question.”

I did not understand. I asked again.

“Catherine, he is dead,” and thus set herself off into a second fit of bawling.

I marched into his office, as if to prove her wrong. This was not the sort of thing one did. My secret darling was a big deal—the Head Curator of Metals. There was the photo of his two sons on the desk. His silly soft tweed hat was lying on the shelf. I snatched it. I don’t know why.

Of course she saw me steal it. I no longer cared. I fled down the Philips stairs into the main floor. On that April afternoon in the Georgian halls of the Swinburne Museum, amongst the thousand daily visitors, the eighty employees, there was not one single soul who had any idea of what had just happened.

Everything looked the same as usual. It was impossible Matthew was not there, waiting to surprise me. He was very distinctive, my lovely. There was a vertical frown mark just to the left of his big high nose. His hair was thick. His mouth was large, soft and always tender. Of course he was married. Of course. Of course. He was forty when I first noticed him, and it was seven years before we became lovers. I was by then just under thirty and still something of a freak, that is, the first female horologist the museum had ever seen.

Thirteen years. My whole life. It was a beautiful world we lived in all that time, sw1, the Swinburne Museum, one of London’s almost secret treasure houses. It had a considerable horological department, a world-famous collection of clocks and watches, automata and other wind-up engines. If you had been there on 21 April 2010, you may have seen me, the oddly elegant tall woman with the tweed hat scrunched up in her hand. I may have looked mad, but perhaps I was not so different from my colleagues—the various curators and conservators—pounding through the public galleries on their way to a meeting or a studio or a store room where they would soon interrogate an ancient object, a sword, a quilt, or perhaps an Islamic water clock.

We were museum people, scholars, priests, repairers, sand-paperers, scientists, plumbers, mechanics—train-spotters really—with narrow specialities in metals and glass and textiles and ceramics. We were of all sorts, we insisted, even while we were secretly confident that the stereotypes held true. A horologist, for instance, could never be a young woman with good legs, but a slightly nerdy man of less than five foot six—cautious, a little strange, with fine blond hair and some difficulty in looking you in the eye. You might see him scurrying like a mouse through the ground-floor galleries, with his ever- present jangling keys, looking as if he was the keeper of the mysteries. In fact no one in the Swinburne knew any more than a part of the labyrinth. We had reduced our territories to rat runs—the routes we knew would always take us where we wanted to go. This made it an extraordinarily easy place to live a secret life, and to enjoy the perverse pleasure that such a life can give.

In death it was a total horror. That is, the same, but brighter, more in focus. Everything was both crisper and further away. How had he died? How could he die?

I rushed back to my studio and Googled “Matthew Tindall,” but there was no news of any accident. However my inbox had an email which lifted my heart until I realized he had sent it at 4 p.m the day before. “I kiss your toes.” I marked it unread.

There was no one I dared turn to. I thought, I will work. It was what I had always done in crisis. It is what clocks were good for, their intricacy, their peculiar puzzles. I sat at the bench in the workroom trying to resolve an exceedingly whimsical eighteenth-century French “clock.” My tools lay on a soft grey chamois. Twenty minutes previously I had liked this French clock but now it seemed vain and preening. I buried my nose inside Matthew’s hat. “Snuffle” we would have said. “I snuffle you.” “I snuffle your neck.”

I could have gone to Sandra, the line manager. She was always a very kind woman but I could not bear anyone, not even Sandra, handling my private business, putting it out on the table and pushing it around like so many broken necklace beads.

Hello Sandra, what happened to Mr. Tindall, do you know?

My German grandfather and my very English father were clockmakers, nothing too spectacular—first Clerkenwell, then the city, then Clerkenwell again—mostly good solid English five-wheel clocks—but it was an item of faith for me, even as a little girl, that this was a very soothing, satisfying occupation. For years I thought clockmaking must still any turmoil in one’s breast. I was so confident of my opinion, so completely wrong.

The tea lady provided her depressive offering. I observed the anticlockwise motion of the slightly curdled milk, just waiting for him, I suppose. So when a hand did touch me, my whole body came unstitched. It felt like Matthew, but Matthew was dead, and in his place was Eric Croft, the Head Curator of Horology. I began to howl and could not stop.

He was the worst possible witness in the world.

Crafty Crofty was, to put it very crudely, the master of all that ticked and tocked. He was a scholar, a historian, a connoisseur. I, in comparison, was a well-educated mechanic. Crofty was famous for his scholarly work on “Sing-songs” by which is meant those perfect imperial misunderstandings of oriental culture we so successfully exported to China in the eighteenth century, highly elaborate music boxes encased in the most fanciful compositions of exotic beasts and buildings, often placed on elaborate stands. That was what it was like for members of our caste. We built our teetering lives on this sort of thing. The beasts moved their eyes, ears and tails. Pagodas rose and fell. Jewelled stars spun and revolving glass rods provided a very credible impression of water.

I bawled and bawled and now I was the one whose mouth became a sock puppet.

Like a large chairman of a rugger club who has a chihuahua as a pet, Eric did not at all resemble his Sing-songs, which one might expect to be the passion of a slim fastidious homosexual. He had a sort of hetero gung-ho quality “metals” people are expected to have.

“No, no,” he cried. “Hush.”

Hush? He was not rough with me but he got his big hard arm around my shoulder and compelled me into a fume cupboard and then turned on the extractor fan which roared like twenty hairdryers all at once. I thought, I have let the cat out of the bag.

“No,” he said. “Don’t.”

The cupboard was awfully small, built solely so that one conservator might clean an ancient object with toxic solvent. He was stroking my shoulder as if I were a horse.

“We will look after you,” he said.

In the midst of bawling, I finally understood that Crofty knew my secret.

“Go home for now,” he said quietly.

I thought, I’ve betrayed us. I thought, Matthew will be pissed off.

“Meet me at the greasy spoon,” he said. “Ten o’clock tomorrow?

Across the road from the Annexe. Do you think you can manage that? Do you mind?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking, so that’s it—they are going to kick me out of the main museum. They are going to lock me in the Annexe. I had spilled the beans.

“Good.” He beamed and the creases around his mouth gave him a rather catlike appearance. He turned off the extractor fan and suddenly I could smell his aftershave. “First we’ll get you sick leave. We’ll get through this together—I’ve got something for you to sort out,” he said. “A really lovely object.” That’s how people talk at the Swinburne. They say object instead of clock.

I thought, he is exiling me, burying me. The Annexe was situated behind Olympia where my grief might be as private as my love. So he was being kind to me, strange macho Crofty. I kissed him on his rough sandalwood-smelling cheek. We both looked at each other with astonishment, and then I fled, out onto the humid street, pounding down towards the Albert Hall with Matthew’s lovely silly hat crushed inside my hand.

Excerpted from The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey Copyright © 2012 by Peter Carey. Excerpted by permission of Random House Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Makes about 3 cups

1/2 cup crispy fried onion pieces
1/4 cup powdered beef stock base
1/4 cup dehydrated onion flakes
3 Tbsp dehydrated granulated onion
2 Tbsp dehydrated granulated garlic
2 Tbsp Cream of Wheat powder
1 Tbsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 Tbsp butcher’s ground black pepper
1 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

• In a bowl, combine onion pieces, beef base, onion flakes, granulated onion and garlic, Cream of Wheat, kosher salt, sugar, black pepper, mustard, coriander, and cayenne.

• Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry, dark place.

• Keeps up to 3 months.

Excerpted from Beerlicious by Ted Reader. Copyright © 2012 by Ted Reader. All rights reserved.

World Famous BBQ chef Ted Reader combines his favourite passions—beer & BBQ—and launches his most daring collection of grilling recipes yet!

In this cookbook you will find recipes from Ted Reader, his family, friends and fans. Each recipe is made with a different beer that Teddy chose for unique reasons and flavours. He believes that the essence of great backyard grilling and smoking comes from having fun and if you know Ted, you know that he lives to have fun.

We all have favourite childhood memories of mom’s chicken pot pie, mac & cheese, and grilled sandwiches. And we all know that if we were to ask anyone what their favourite childhood meal is, their response would often start with “My mother’s” and end with “tuna casserole,” “meatloaf,” or “apple pie.” The six cookbooks below combine all these crowd-pleasers with a twist. Whether it’s about making a recipe healthier, or introducing a new cooking method to speed up the process, your mom will love the beautiful food styling, the personal stories from each author, and the opportunity to give her family-favourite recipes a shake-up. Pairing any of these cookbooks with a helpful kitchen gadget will not only save mom time and energy, it will make her smile every time she chops, sautés, minces, and whisks.

	The Canadian Living Complete Preserving Book by Canadian Living Test Kitchen Whether you’re a novice or an expert at the art of preserving, this book has something to offer you. An in-depth introduction covers the most up-to-date canning techniques and offers a visual guide to the equipment you’ll need. Helpful advice on selecting and preparing fruits and vegetables is sprinkled throughout to help you make the best of the harvest. The Canadian Living Complete Preserving Book is full of a broad selection of recipes – both sweet and savoury – such as traditional jams, jellies, marmalades and conserves, good old-fashioned pickles, relishes and chutneys; and to keep things interesting, there are also plenty of modern takes on these and other classic preserves, including salsas, sauces, syrups and flavoured vinegars.
	Unquenchable by Natalie MacLean From the author of the bestselling Red, White and Drunk All Over, this book will amuse and enthrall with its character sketches of obsessive personalities, travel to lovely settings, mouth-watering descriptions, of food and wine, “hidden” wine education and neurotic humor. Standing firmly against wine snobbery by insisting that good wine doesn’t have to be expensive, award-winning wine writer Natalie MacLean travels the globe on an uncompromising quest to find fabulous wine bargains.
	Martha’s American Food by Martha Stewart In this beautiful volume, a love letter to American food, Martha Stewart, who has so significantly influenced the American table, collects her most favorite national dishes, as well as the stories and traditions behind them. These are recipes that will delight you with nostalgia, inspire you, and teach you about our nation by way of its regions and their distinctive flavors. Above all, these are time-honored recipes that you will turn to again and again. Dishes such as comforting Chicken Pot Pies, easy Grilled Fish Tacos, irresistible Barbecued Ribs, and hearty New England Clam Chowder, are paired with thoroughly modern starters, sides, and one-dish meals such as Hot Crab Dip, Tequila-Grilled Shrimp, Indiana Succotash, Chicken and Andouille Gumbo, Grilled Bacon-Wrapped Whitefish, and Whole-Wheat Spaghetti with Meyer Lemon, Arugula, and Pistachios. And you will want to leave room for dessert, with dozens of treats such as Chocolate-Bourbon Pecan Pie, New York Cheesecake, and Peach and Berry Cobbler.
	Rob Rainford’s Born to Grill by Rob Rainford Rob Rainford was born to grill, and now he’s taking grilling to a whole new level! In Born to Grill he brings his barbeque prowess to over 100 recipes and 20 complete menus from around the world– designed for hosting family and friends around your backyard barbeque. For Rob, grilling is about entertaining; it’s about spending time together, cooking and eating outdoors. It’s also about pushing the boundaries of what you think you can do on the grill. In Born to Grill he shares his unique slant on grilling with 20 menus for you to mix and match, for both charcoal or gas grills. Born to Grill’s recipes are international, influenced by Rob’s travels and experiences in different countries and cultures. There are plenty of great grill classics (with a Rainford twist) but he really pushes BBQ boundaries with some true grilling originals and expert techniques, like cold smoking. Born to Grill takes you where no barbeque book has gone before, because Rob knows the grill can handle so much more than burgers and steaks. There’s still plenty of beef in here, but also lamb, chicken, fish, seafood, veal, duck, a huge range of vegetables, plenty of sides, and even salads! All cooked on the grill.
	Weeknights with Giada by Giada De Laurentiis After a full day, Giada, like most parents, wants nothing more than to sit down for a home-cooked dinner with her husband, Todd, and their daughter, Jade. Weeknights with Giada rises to the challenge, delivering soups, sandwiches, pizzas, pastas, and meat and fish dishes that come together quickly as stand-alone main courses—most in half an hour or less: Rustic Vegetable and Polenta Soup, a hearty soul-warming one-pot dish, cooks in under twenty minutes; Lemony White Bean, Tuna, and Arugula Salad is a great meal that’s quickly assembled from pantry and fridge essentials; Spicy Linguini with Clams and Mussels is a fifteen-minute-or-less spectacular pasta; and you can’t beat Grilled Sirloin Steaks with Pepper and Caper Salsa, which are also ready in just fifteen minutes. From inventive breakfast-for-dinner dishes and meatless Monday vegetarian recipes—both weekly traditions in Giada’s house—to picnic sandwiches and hearty salad recipes for reinventing leftovers, Weeknights with Giada reveals every secret in her repertoire. Even the desserts are quick to mix and bake, should a craving—or a last-minute school bake sale—strike.
	La Tartine Gourmande by Beatrice Peltre La Tartine Gourmande takes you on a journey, not only through the meals of the day but around the world, as Béatrice Peltre revisits her inspiration for each dish. Though her style is largely inspired by her native France, you’ll find a wide array of influences as she brings creative twists to classic recipes—all while remaining effortlessly healthful and balanced. The gluten-free recipes use whole grains like quinoa, millet, buckwheat, and nut flours, lending surprising depth of flavor and nutrients, even to desserts. You’ll taste the best of her adventures abroad from Denmark to New Zealand, her childhood in the French countryside, and the simple wholesomeness of her charmed life at home in Boston. Your mouth will water as Béa recalls the oeufs en cocotte (“baked eggs”) that she ate as a child after collecting fresh eggs from her grandmother’s hen house. Her recipe for this classic dish now includes leeks, spinach, smoked salmon, and cumin. Or try the buttermilk, lemon, and poppyseed pancakes she made every morning in Crete when she was pregnant—they’re now her little daughter Lulu’s favorite. Warm up with a bowl of celeriac, white sweet potato, and apple soup, a dish inspired by a chilly day of horseback riding in New Zealand. You’ll love sharing the saffron-flavored crab and watercress soufflé, a delicious homage to one of her mother’s best-loved Christmas traditions. And since most would agree that “a meal without dessert is like wearing only one shoe,” try the apple, rhubarb, and strawberry nutty crumble, served with vanilla-flavored custard, just the way her husband’s Irish grandfather preferred.

Charles Maddox was an up-and-coming officer for the Metropolitan police until a charge of insubordination abruptly ended his career. Now he works alone, struggling to eke out a living by tracking down criminals. Whenever he needs it, he has the help of his great-uncle Maddox, a legendary “thief taker,” a detective as brilliant and intuitive as they come.

He’s approached by Edward Tulkinghorn, the shadowy and feared attorney, who offers him a handsome price to do some sleuthing for a client. Powerful financier Sir Julius Cremorne has been receiving threatening letters, and Tulkinghorn wants Charles to—discreetly—find and stop whoever is responsible. What starts as a relatively straight forward case soon spirals out of control, and is further complicated when uncle Maddox shows signs of forgetfulness and anger, symptoms of an age-related ailment that has yet to be named. (To further confuse matters, this book is published in UK under another title – Tom-All-Alone’s.)