Like Eloise growing up in the Plaza Hotel, Charlotte Silver grew up in her mother's restaurant. Located in Harvard Square, Upstairs at the Pudding was a confection of pink linen tablecloths and twinkling chandeliers, a decadent backdrop for childhood. Over dinners of foie gras and Dover sole, always served with a Shirley Temple, Charlotte kept company with a rotating cast of eccentric staff members. After dinner, in her frilly party dress, she often caught a nap under the bar until closing time. Her one constant was her glamorous, indomitable mother, nicknamed "Patton in Pumps," a wasp-waisted woman in cocktail dress and stilettos who shouldered the burden of raising a family and running a kitchen. Charlotte's unconventional upbringing takes its toll, and as she grows up she wishes her increasingly busy mother were more of a presence in her life. But when the restaurant-forever teetering on the brink of financial collapse-looks as if it may finally be closing, Charlotte comes to realize the sacrifices her mother has made to keep the family and restaurant afloat and gains a new appreciation of the world her mother has built.

Infectious, charming, and at times wistful, Charlotte au Chocolat is a celebration of the magic of a beautiful presentation and the virtues of good manners, as well as a loving tribute to the author's mother-a woman who always showed her best face to the world.

Resist temptation…

It seems as though Belinda Drayson-Jones has it all together. Smart and attractive, she is one of the most talented bakers at Lillian's, her family's famed Chicago patisserie. Belinda is one of those women who never shows up late, never makes a faux pas, never does anything that would raise someone's eyebrows. Yet perfection has its price, and the beautiful Ms. Drayson-Jones feels that something is missing from her life. And no one would ever guess the secret she's keeping.

…or give in to love?

Malik Anthony knows plenty about keeping secrets. He has worked with Belinda for years and has been fighting his feelings just as long. Malik always considered her to be unattainable, until one night when their simmering desire suddenly reaches the boiling point. And if he isn't mistaken, Belinda is now coming on to him.

What could be more irresistible than being seduced by the boss's granddaughter? What could be more perfect than giving in?

The fiery and enigmatic masterpiece―one of the greatest novels of the Modernist era.

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (Times Literary Supplement). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna―a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous.

The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction―there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another persona woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature.

Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest single work of the twentieth century. Since the original prewar translation there has been no completely new rendering of the original French. Now Viking makes Proust's masterpiece accessible to a whole new generation, beginning with Lydia Davis's new translation of the first volume, Swann's Way. 

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust : A New Translation by Lydia Davis - Hardcover FIRST EDITION/First Printing

Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood-a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the famous taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel Swann's Love, an incomparable study of sexual jealousy, which becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the book that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age-satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in his response to the human condition-Swann's Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past re-created through memory.

From Publishers Weekly

Relax: it's fantastic. There's no question that Davis's American English is thinner and more literal than C.K. Scott Montcrieff's archaically inflected turns of phrase and idioms, at least as revised by Terence Kilmartin and later by D.J. Enright. The removal of some of the familiar layers of the past in this all-new translation gives one a feeling similar to that of encountering an old master painting that has just been cleaned: the colors seem sharper and momentarily disorienting. Yet many readers will find it exhilarating, allowing the text to shed slight airs that were not quite Proust's and making many of the jokes much more immediate (as when he implies that sense-organ atrophy in the bourgeois is a defense mechanism and the result of hardening unarticulated feelings). As accomplished translator and novelist Davis (The End of the Story) notes in her foreword, she has followed Proust's sentence structure as closely as possible "in its every aspect," including punctuation, word order and word choice. To take just one case, where Montcrieff/Kilmartin describe Mlle. Vinteuil finding it pleasant to metaphorically "sojourn" in sadism, Davis has the much more definitive "emigrate." Proust's psychological inquiry generally feels much sharper, giving a much more palpable sense of Freud and Bergson-and of the young Marcel's willful (if not malefic) manipulations of those around him. For first-timers who don't have French and are allergic to the slightest whiff of euphemism, this is the best means for traveling the way by Swann's.--Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust : A New Translation by James Grieve - Hardcover FIRST EDITION/First Printing

A definitive new translation of the second volume of In Search of Lost Time captures the intricacies and challenges of male and female adolescence and awakening love, based on the narrator's reminiscences about Paris and the Normandy coast. 17,500 first printing.

"A triumph . . . will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world." -- Malcolm Bowie, Sunday Telegraph (London)

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust : A New Translation by Mark Treharne - Hardcover FIRST EDITION/First Printing

A new translation of the esteemed twentieth-century French writer's work on fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century takes readers into the vivid and shallow sides of the period's literary and aristocratic salons, where a young man is initiated into the insidious ways of the world. 17,500 first printing.

Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust : A New Translation by John Sturrock - Hardcover FIRST EDITION/First Printing

Set against the backdrop of decadent Parisian high society and the rise of a conservative bourgeoisie that will supplant it, an all-new translation of the fourth volume in In Search of Lost Time explores the theme of homosexual love and the destructive influence of sexual jealousy.

"Poetic, even transcendant . . . John Sturrock is pitch-perfect… equally at home with its intimacies and its bitter comedy."--Frank Wynne, The Irish Times

Following Perdido Street Station and The Scar, acclaimed author China Miéville returns with his hugely anticipated Del Rey hardcover debut. With a fresh and fantastical band of characters, he carries us back to the decadent squalor of New Crobuzon—this time, decades later.

It is a time of wars and revolutions, conflict and intrigue. New Crobuzon is being ripped apart from without and within. War with the shadowy city-state of Tesh and rioting on the streets at home are pushing the teeming city to the brink. A mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion, while treachery and violence incubate in unexpected places.

In desperation, a small group of renegades escapes from the city and crosses strange and alien continents in the search for a lost hope.

In the blood and violence of New Crobuzon’s most dangerous hour, there are whispers. It is the time of the iron council. . . .

The bold originality that broke Miéville out as a new force of the genre is here once more in Iron Council: the voluminous, lyrical novel that is destined to seal his reputation as perhaps the edgiest mythmaker of the day.

Terry Brooks is one of a handful of writers whose work defines modern fantasy fiction. His twenty-three international bestsellers have ranged from the beloved Shannara series to stories that tread a much darker path. Armageddon’s Children is a new creation– the perfect opportunity for readers unfamiliar with Brooks’s previous work to experience an author at the height of his considerable storytelling powers. It is a gripping chronicle of a once-familiar world now spun shockingly out of control, in which an extraordinary few struggle to salvage hope in the face of terrifying chaos. 

Logan Tom is doomed to remember the past and determined to rescue the future. Far behind him lies a boyhood cut violently short by his family’s slaughter, when the forces of madness and hate swept our world after decadent excesses led to civilization’s downfall. Somewhere ahead of him rests the only chance to beat back the minions of evil that are systematically killing and enslaving the last remnants of humanity. Navigating the scarred and poisoned landscape that once was America and guided by a powerful talisman, Logan has sworn an oath to seek out a remarkable being born of magic, possessed of untold abilities, and destined to lead the final fight against darkness.

Across the country, Angel Perez, herself a survivor of the malevolent, death-dealing forces combing the land, has also been chosen for an uncanny mission in the name of her ruined world’s salvation. From the devastated streets of Los Angeles, she will journey to find a place–and a people–shrouded in mystery, celebrated in legend, and vital to the cause of humankind . . . even as a relentless foe follows close behind, bent on her extermination. While in the nearly forsaken city of Seattle, a makeshift family of refugees has carved out a tenuous existence among the street gangs, mutants, and marauders fighting to stay alive against mounting odds–and something unspeakable that has come from the shadows in search of prey. 

In time, all their paths will cross. Their common purpose will draw them together. Their courage and convictions will be tested and their fates will be decided, as their singular crusade begins: to take back, or lose forever, the only world they have.

In Armageddon’ s Children, Brooks brings his gifts as a mythmaker to the timeless theme of the unending, essential conflict between darkness and light–and carries his unique imaginative vision to a stunning new level. Prepare for a breathtaking tour de force. To those who are new to Terry Brooks, welcome. And to those who have read him for many years: prepare for a dramatic surprise.

Among the masters of modern French literature, André Gide (1869–1951) concerned himself with the motivation and function of the will, with self-cultivation, and the conduct of the individual in the modern world. His perception, integrity, and purity of style brought him much acclaim, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947.

The Immoralist (written in 1901, published in 1902), one of his best-known works, deals with the unhappy consequences of amoral hedonism. Filled with similarities of Gide's own life, it is the story of Michel, who, during three years of travel in Europe and North Africa, tries to rise above good and evil and allow his passions (including his attraction to young Arab boys) free rein; in doing so, he neglects his wife, Marceline, who eventually dies of tuberculosis. The book is in the form of Michel's attempt to justify his conduct to his friends.

Notable for its fusion of autobiographical elements with both biblical and classical clarity and lack of clutter, The Immoralist marks a decided shift in Gide's prose style and a somewhat decadent floweriness to his later classical clarity and lack of clutter. This nobility and simplicity of style is skillfully retained in this excellent new translation by Stanley Appelbaum, which also preserves the passion and intensity of the original.

Homemade meals made easy. Low maintenance, highly nutritious meals in minutes.  

Pressure Cookers have been treasured for years by home cooks for creating delicious and nutritious meals in a fraction of the time it takes to cook them conventionally. With this book as your guide, you'll learn how to use these indispensable devices to put a warm, satisfying meal on the table in under an hour. Dishes with long cooking times, such as large cuts of meat, dried beans, stews, and risottos, are produced in less than half of their usual time in these handy devices.

The amazing pressure cooker does it all, from savory to sweet, and you’ll find a recipe in these pages for any occasion. Beautifully photographed, this book also covers all the basics of pressure cooking, including choosing a stovetop or electric model, and features tips and tricks for using your cooker.

Using the recipes in this book, you’ll discover over 25 recipes using the pressure cooker. Dive into Sunday favorites that are now suitable for busy weeknights, such as Chipotle-Honey Short Ribs; Shrimp Risotto with Lemon & Basil; Bolognese with Red Wine & Sage; and Green Chile & Tomatillo Carnitas. You’ll also find healthy appetizers and sides, such as Artichokes Stuffed with Garlicky Bread Crumbs & Pancetta and Eggplant Spread with Olives & Fresh Thyme. Save room for dessert—there are recipes for decadent Salted Dark Chocolate & Amaretto Pots de Crème, Lemon-Vanilla Cheesecake with Berry Compote, and more.

This compact, yet comprehensive guide to pressure cooking is a go-to-guide for pressure cookers.