Neuss, 2032 to 2040. In his retirement, the Neuss merchant Dieter Winter stakes everything on an honest espresso machine and the small brand omaneo. But sales pressure, investors, and his own impatience drive him to sell what he built. The brand is ruined, the name becomes a commodity, the coffee grows cold. A quiet, elegiac crime novel about greed, betrayal, and whether the real thing survives when everything is sold, and about the spark that lives on. The third volume of the omaneo Saga....

Neuss on the Rhine, 1583. The cities of the north do not yet know coffee. Cornelius von Rheydt, a patrician son with too much longing and too little patience, sets out south with his Neapolitan companion Giacomo Fontana, to where a black, forbidden bean is brewed into a wakeful, singing drink. In the alleys of Mokka he finds more than he sought: the secret of coffee and his love for Zaida. A historical novel about longing, distant shores, and the first cup of coffee.

Neuss, today. At seventy, Dieter Winter stakes everything he has left on an honest espresso machine from China and names his little brand after a soft, singing word he takes for a greeting to his mother: omaneo. Neuss, 1954. A young man from Naples brings an espresso machine and color into a grey café on the market square. In his song he calls Hanna, the innkeeper's daughter, omaneo and vanishes before spring comes. Seventy years, two people, the same truth: The world is cold enough. What ...

Five hundred years, three families, one bean. In 1583 a merchant's son from Neuss sets out for Arabia to fetch the real thing, and brings back more than he sought. In 1954 a Neapolitan carries the craft to the same grey river, and a word he takes for his own invention. In 2032 it becomes a brand that is sold. The three novels The Coffee Journey, Omaneo and The Cold Cup, for the first time as one book: continuously numbered, with the bridges between the epochs, in the order in which they ha...

"Twelve gates, and at every one somebody decides." A journalist follows the cup that stands on his kitchen counter every morning: into a forest in Kaffa, onto a slope beneath shade trees, into a fermentation tank, onto a drying bed, into a container, a roastery — and back again to his kitchen. What he learns on the way is not how to make coffee. It is how little of it depends on him. Botany, growing, harvest, processing — from the forest to the sack. Price, seals, trade: where the nine eur...

You have a good espresso machine – now get the best out of it. The Barista Course takes you step by step from the first mindful sip to your own rosetta, without jargon and without expensive detours. The common thread is the five M's: blend, dose, grind, machine and the person behind it. Ten chapters explain what really happens in the cup – why the same coffee tastes different on two days, how a puck is built cleanly, what dialing in means, how milk turns silky instead of foamy, and which c...

The latest instalment of the Tom Swan adventures - the fast-paced serialised novel set in the turbulent Europe of the fifteenth century.

Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due—a quest which has the tendency to go hilariously astray.In Portuguese Irregular Verbs, Professor Dr von Igelfeld learns to play tennis, and forces a college chum to enter into a duel that results in a nipped nose. He also takes a field trip to Ireland ...

The discovery subsequently steers a course to a very different way of life. A Tuscan wedding follows together with a glimpse into the everyday life of the local Italians encountered along the way. An unfortunate accident causes a life threatening illness but the warmth, generosity and kindness shown by the Italian people comes to the fore. All this is combined with an insight into some of the highs and lows of purchasing renovating and living in an old ruin nestled deep in the forest of th...

“Christopher de Bellaigue has a magic talent for writing history. It is as if we are there as the era of Suleyman the Magnificent unfolds.” —Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureNarrated through the eyes of the intimates of Suleyman the Magnificent, the sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Lion House animates with stunning immediacy the fears and stratagems of those brought into orbit around him: the Greek slave who becomes hi...

The diary of Thomas Dallam. Finally published 400 years late!A fascinating glimpse of the clash of Western and Muslim cultures. Translated into modern English, it reads as if its Elizabethan author were alive today.In 1598 merchants of the City of London paid for a present to be given by Queen Elizabeth to Sultan Mehmet III of Turkey. She hoped to turn the Sultan's military might on her Spanish enemies. The merchants hoped to secure trading concessions.The present w...

Follow Pimpa through the streets of Milan. Toghether with her friens she'll accompany you in discovering the city and its wonders: the church of Sant'Ambrogio, the Navigli district, the secrets of Duomo...In the streets of this big city you'll meet an extaordinary man, Leonardo da Vinci, and the memories of the grandfathers will unveil little curiosities.The recipe of a traditional dish will make your journey sweeter.