An Amazon 2013 Best of the Year PickThe French, sans doute,love their fromages. And there’s much to love: hundreds of gloriously pungent varieties—crumbly, creamy, buttery, even shot through with bottle-green mold. So many varieties, in fact, that the aspiring gourmand may wonder: How does one make sense of it all?In The Whole Fromage, Kathe Lison sets out to learn what makes French cheese so remarkable—why France...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs.He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Y...

In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman -- and never went home again.Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? Lunch in Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs -- one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life...

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Paris Kitchen and L'Appart, a deliciously funny, offbeat, and irreverent look at the city of lights, cheese, chocolate, and other confections.Like so many others, David Lebovitz dreamed about living in Paris ever since he first visited the city and after a nearly two-decade career as a pastry chef and cookbook author, he finally moved to Paris to start a new life. Having crammed all his wor...

A collection of stories and 100 sweet and savory French-inspired recipes that reflect the way Parisians eat today, featuring lush Parisian photography“David Lebovitz is a rare specimen: both a terrific storyteller and a brilliant, uncompromising recipe writer.”—Yotam OttolenghiIn 2004, David Lebovitz packed up his most treasured cookbooks, a well-worn cast-iron skillet, and his laptop and moved to Paris. In that time, the culinary culture o...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERTaking up where his beloved A Year in Provence leaves off, Peter Mayle offers us another funny, beautifully (and deliciously) evocative book about life in Provence. With tales only one who lives there could know—of finding gold coins while digging in the garden, of indulging in sumptuous feasts at truck stops—and with characters introduced with great affection and wit—the gendarme fallen from grace, the summer visitors ever trying the patience of even th...

In his most delightful foray into the wonders of Provençal life, Peter Mayle returns to France and puts behind him cholesterol worries, shopping by phone, California wines, and other concerns that plagued him after too much time away.In Encore Provence, Mayle gives us a glimpse into the secrets of the truffle trade, a parfumerie lesson on the delicacies of scent, an exploration of the genetic effects of 2,000 years of foie gras, and a small-town murder mystery tha...

The memoir of a young diplomat’s wife who must reinvent her dream of living in Paris—one dish at a timeWhen journalist Ann Mah’s diplomat husband is given a three-year assignment in Paris, Ann is overjoyed. A lifelong foodie and Francophile, she immediately begins plotting gastronomic adventures à deux. Then her husband is called away to Iraq on a year-long post—alone. Suddenly, Ann’s vision of a romantic sojourn in the City of Light is turned upside down.S...

Clotilde Dusoulier, a native Parisian and passionate explorer of the city’s food scene, has won a tremendous following online with her insider reports and wonderful recipes on her blog, chocolateandzucchinidotcom. Her book, Chocolate and Zucchini, introduced her to a wider, equally enthusiastic audience.Now in Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, Clotilde reveals her all-time favorite food experiences in her native city. She takes us on a mouthwatering ...

A glorious, edible tour of Paris through six decades of writing from Gourmet magazine, edited and introduced by Ruth ReichlFor sixty years the best food writers have been sending dispatches from Paris to Gourmet. Collected here for the first time, their essays create a unique and timeless portrait of the world capital of love and food. When the book begins, just after the war, we are in a hungry city whose chefs struggle to find the eggs and cream they need to re-...

The ultimate “dictionary” for lovers of Provence: Peter Mayle's personal selection of the foods, customs and words he finds most fascinating, curious, delicious, or just plain fun.Though organized from A to Z, this is hardly a conventional work of reference. In more than 170 entries, Peter Mayle—bestselling author of A Year in Provence—writes about subjects as wide-ranging as architecture and zingue-zingue-zoun (in the local patois, a word meant to describe the so...

France is in a rut, and so is French cuisine. Twenty-five years ago it was hard to have a bad meal in France; now, in some cities and towns, it is a challenge to find a good one. For the first time in the annals of modern cuisine, the most influential chefs and the most talked-about restaurants in the world are not French. Within France, large segments of the wine industry are in crisis, cherished artisanal cheeses are threatened with extinction, and bistros and brasseries are disappearing...