New books on display at Hurunui District Library from 8 Dec – 15 Dec

 

 

 

 

 “Riverstone kitchen : recipes from a chef’s garden” by Bevan Smith

Riverstone Kitchen, the Cuisine New Zealand Restaurant of the Year in 2010, embodies seasonal cooking, with simplicity the key, using the best produce available. The restaurant is located on the Waitaki Plains, 12 km north of Oamaru in North Otago, where cold, crisp winters and hot, dry summers make it the perfect place for cultivating a good range of produce. Riverstone Kitchen is organized along seasonal lines and is designed to inspire both cooks and gardeners to make the most of their local seasonal produce. Short of booking a table at Riverstone Kitchen, the Riverstone Kitchen cookbook offers the next best way of sharing in the unique Riverstone experience. [Cover]

 

 

 

“Ghastly business” by Louise Levene

1929. A girl is strangled in a London alley, the mangled corpse of a peeping Tom is found in a railway tunnel and the juicy details of the latest trunk murder are updated hourly in fresh editions of the evening papers. Into this insalubrious world steps Dora Strang, a doctor’s daughter with an unmaidenly passion for anatomy. Denied her own medical career, she moves into lodgings with a hilarious, insecticidal landlady and begins life as filing clerk to the country’s pre-eminent pathologist, Alfred Kemble. Dora is thrilled by the grisly post-mortems and the headline-grabbing court cases and more fascinated still by the pathologist himself: an enigmatic war hero with bottle-green eyes and an air of sardonic glamour – the embodiment of all her girlish fantasies. But Dora’s job holds more than a few surprises, not least of which is finding herself frequently under the watchful gaze – and occasionally wandering hands – of the distinguished Dr Kemble. As things take a distinctly ghastly turn, both in one of the department’s major cases and in Dora’s own life, the newspaper reporters sharpen their pencils in morbid anticipation …But can the impressionable Miss Strang emerge unscathed? “Ghastly Business” conjures the world of interwarLondonwith gleeful vigour: a time when a woman’s body was only mentioned if someone had dismembered it; when the scars of the Great War were still fresh and when a pretty young bluestocking needed to tread very carefully in order to avoid becoming yet another of its casualties. [Cover]

 

 

 

“The kiwi man cave” by Steve Hale 

Every Kiwi bloke either has a man cave, or craves one. And there are all kinds of man caves out there – from large sheds, full of tools or memorabilia, to blokes-only private enclaves, to nothing more than an armchair in the corner of a room. This books invites you in, in full colour, to over 50 man caves from all around New Zealand. [Cover]

 

 

 

“The litigators” by John Grisham

The Partners at Finley & Figg – all two of them – often refer to themselves as “a boutique law firm.” “Boutique,” as in chic, selective and prosperous. They are, of course, none of these things. What they are is a two-bit operation always in search of their big break, ambulance chasers who’ve been in the trenches much too long making much too little. Their specialties, so to speak, are quickie divorces and DUIs, with the occasional jackpot of an actual car wreck thrown in. After twenty plus years together Oscar Finley and Wally Figg bicker like an old married couple, but somehow continue to scratch out a half-decent living from their seedy offices in southwest Chicago. And then change comes their way. More accurately, it stumbles in. David Zinc, a young but already burned-out attorney, walks out of his fast-track career at a fancy downtown firm, goes on a serious bender and finds himself literally at the doorstep of our “boutique firm”. Once David sobers up and comes to grips with the fact that he’s suddenly unemployed, any job – even one with Finley & Figg – looks OK to him. With their new junior partner on board, F&F are ready to tackle a really big case, a case that could make them rich without requiring them to actually practice much law. An extremely popular drug, Krayoxx , the  no. 1 cholesterol reducer for the dangerously overweight, produced by Varrick Labs, a giant pharmaceutical company with annual sales of $25 billion, has recently come under fire as several patients taking it have suffered heart attacks. Wally smells money. A little online research confirms Wally’s suspicions – a huge plaintiff’s firm inFloridais putting together a class action suit against Varrick. All Finley & Figg have to do is find a handful of people who had a heart attack while taking Krayoxx, convince them to become clients, join the class action, and ride along to fame and fortune. With any luck, they won’t even have to enter a courtroom! It almost seems too good to be true. And it is. [Cover]

 

 

 

“Lady Almina and the real Downton Abbey” by Fiona Lady Carnarvon

Lady Fiona Carnarvon became the chatelaine of Highclere Castle – the setting of the hit series Downton Abbey – eight years ago. In that time she’s become fascinated by the rich history of Highclere, and by the extraordinary people who lived there over the centuries. One person particularly captured Fiona’s imagination – Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon. Almina was the illegitimate daughter of banking tycoon Alfred de Rothschild. She was his only daughter and he doted on her. She married George, the Earl of Carnarvon, at 19 with an enormous dowry. At first, life at Highclere was a dizzying mix of sumptuous banquets for 500 and even the occasional royal visitor.  Almina oversaw 80 members of staff – many of whom came from families who had worked at Highclere for generations. But when the First World War broke out, life at Highclere changed forever. History intervened and Almina and the staff of Highclere were thrown into one of the most turbulent times of the last century. Almina was forced to draw on her deepest reserves of courage in order to ensure her family, the staff and the castle survived. This is the remarkable story of a lost time. But Highclere remains and in this book, Fiona weaves Almina’s journey into the heritage and history of one of England’s most exquisite Victorian castles. [Cover]

Other titles on display this week :

“Devil’s gate” by Clive Cussler

“Daughters of Erebus” by Paul Holmes

“Horncastle’s suitcase” by Graeme Horncastle

“Absolutely” by Joanna Lumley

“Second nature” by Jacquelyn Mitchard

“The price to pay” by Lynda Page

“Hereward” by James Wilde

To reserve any of these items please contact your local library or email info@hurunuilibraries.govt.nz

 Avril