Cézanne's Provence - October 10-16, 2010

This superb collection of 175 recipes will make readers feel as comfortable in their kitchens as its accomplished author is at Chanteduc, her 18th-century farmhouse in northern Provence. Wells is not the first to underscore the appeal of simple, fresh food, but she coaxes new tiers of flavor from many of the dishes here by her creative arrangements of basic ingredients. Wells is sensible in her use of oils and fats, calling, for example, for whole milk and cream in judicious amounts. The diner's delight flows from the wisely prepared ingredients; the cook gets the added pleasure of reading Wells's warm, intelligent prose and serving up excellence.

All roads led to Provence after Mary Roblee and her French husband, Paul-Marc Henry, found a forsaken ruin on a hilltop near Avignon. In one afternoon they bought all twelve acres, launching into the pitfalls and pleasures of restoring their pile of stones and gnarled landscape into a farmhouse and a vineyard. Five years passed before they drank a goblet of their own wine, their orchards flowered, and their monastic white-walled rooms were filled with Provençal anitques. In discovering the fun and fascination of local customs, cuisine and history, Mary Henry learned, as an American woman, to glean the secret art of cross-cultural living and above all, to cope with the care and feeding of a Frenchman.

In 1976, in the Lot-et-Garonne region of southwest France, Ruth Silvestre and her family found and fell in love with, Bel-Air de Grezelongue, a house that had been left, deserted and uninhabited for ten years. "A House in the Sunflowers" provides rare glimpses of French family life in the region that is considered the gastronomic center of France, complete with mouth-watering descriptions of meals in the sun and fascinating insights into the history and customs of this area.

An account of the author's first frustrating but enlightening year in Provence opens on New Year's Day with a divine luncheon in a quaint restaurant, Mayle sets the scene and pits his British sensibilities against it. "We had talked about it during the long gray winters and the damp green summers," he writes, "looked with an addict's longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting through the bedroom window." He describes in loving detail the charming, 200-year-old farmhouse at the base of the Lubéron Mountains, its thick stone walls and well-tended vines, its wine cave and wells, its shade trees and swimming pool--its lack of central heating.

Harris's latest outing unfolds around the arrival of an outsider in a tiny French town. This time wine replaces chocolate as Harris's magic elixir, and the newcomer to the village of Lansquenet sur Tannes is Jay Mackintosh, a 37-year-old has-been writer from London. Fourteen years have passed since Jay's debut novel, Jackapple Joe, won the Prix Goncourt. Since then, he has been churning out B-novels under a pseudonym; he currently lives with his girlfriend, Kerry, an aggressively successful 25-year-old celebrity journalist. Flashbacks reveal that Jay's only recollections of happiness are the golden summers he spent as a youth with old Joseph "Jackapple Joe" Cox in the small English town of Kirby Monckton. Joe, a colorful character who made wines from fruits and berries, inspired Joe's successful first novel. But one day he disappeared. When Jay stumbles across an advertisement for an 18th-century "chateau" in wine-growing country, the spell of his misery is broken. After downing a bottle of Joe's '75 Special, which he has been hoarding for 24 years, Jay decides to buy the house sight unseen. Leaving Kerry in London, Jay moves to Lansquenet and starts a new rural life, beginning to write under his own name again. He is bewildered by his reclusive neighbor, Marise d'Api, who apparently coveted his derelict house and land, and is ostracized by the townspeople. Jay's quest to discover why everyone, including Marise's former mother-in-law, blames Marise for her husband's suicide keeps the plot moving at a steady clip.

Detective Lauriant, a cynical, yet compassionate, investigator who always gets his man, is back with two murder mysteries rolled into one volume. Lauriant's search for the truth behind the motives of the general's murder places him in danger-danger that can only be overcome if he can break away from the sinister world of bitter rivalries, treachery, and deceit, and pursue the investigation on his own terms. For fans of Maigret and Inspector Imanishi, these two new Detective Lauriant mysteries will leave fans anxiously awaiting more stories of rural France, murder, and intrigue from Graham R. Wood.

Unabashed materialism is tempered by dry wit in this collection of 12 jaunty short stories about heartache and love by a young prize-winning French writer. The collection's shorter stories are slight; nothing much happens, or problems raised are shrugged off without any attempt at resolution. The book's gems, on the other hand, delight by adding action to the mix. In "Junior," two boys borrow dad's Jaguar, with disastrous results; in "Clic-Clac" two sisters help their brother jump-start a love affair with a delectable colleague. If love is one recurring theme, another is class, particularly the distinction between middle and upper classes in French society. In "This Man and This Woman," a couple's loveless marriage is equated with their predictable taste in clothing and furnishings: It's all kind of nouveau riche, but fortunately they don't realize it.

A true forebear of magical realism, Giono creates men and women rooted in the folklore of provincial France. With a poet's grace and imagination, he weaves a grand story of the earth and of passion, of animals and weather, of the miracles we now call the laws of nature.

Love is something quite different in Provence, as Yvone Lenard discovers when she chaperones 50 red-blooded American college students for a year at California State University's study abroad program in Aix-en-Provence. Proclaiming themselves on their applications to the program to be "ambassadors of culture," their thoughts and senses turn to romance and sex upon arrival. As Resident Director of the program Lenard soon has her hands full, but her sense of humor prevails and she stays to form affectionate relationships with the students and a love affair with Provence. When not counseling her charges, Lenard finds a "safe" escort in the charming and eccentric Bill Hope, an American expatriate with whom she probes ancient villages and ruins and dines at sunset on the terraces of elegant restaurants. The ten stories in this collection are set in some of the region's most romantic locales. Each story concludes with advice on where to go to experience romance and a menu for a dinner for two with simple recipes to recreate the sensual flavors of Provence.

A versatile author and journalist, Jones is also a recognized expert on the gardening disciplines and design styles associated with the verdant and iconic region of Provence. Inspired by a diverse Mediterranean garden palette, professional and amateur gardeners are attracted to the region's endless mountaintop vistas of vineyards, olive groves, and intricate stone terraces that hide nooks teeming with herbs and flowers. From the Cote d'Azur to the Luberon hills, this exquisitely produced and informative guide exhibits 30 gardens that best interpret this new design approach. Hundreds of arresting photographs capture Provence's seductive allure, making this an intoxicating treat for armchair travelers as well as an enchanting resource for garden enthusiasts.

Celebrated by writers from Petrach to Peter Mayle, Provence's rugged mountains, wild maquis, and lavender-filled meadows are world-famous. Martin Garrett explores a region littered with ancient monuments and medieval castles. Looking at the vibrant dockside atmosphere of Luberon, he considers how writers like Mistral and Daudet have captured the character of a place and its people. He traces the development of Provence as a Roman outpost, medieval kingdom, and modern region of France, revealing through its landmarks the people and events that have shaped its often tumultuous history. Through its architecture, literature, and popular culture, this book analyzes and celebrates the identity of a region famous for its pastis and petanque. Linking the past to the present, it also evokes the intense light and sun-baked stones that have attracted generations of painters and writers.

A touching story of Elzéard Bouffier, who devoted his entire life to reforesting a desolate portion of Provence, in southern France. He single-handedly planted 100 acorns each day before, through, and after two world wars, and transformed a sorrowful place into one full of life and joy. Jean Giono's words offer a tribute to how much good one person can accomplish in a lifetime and advise on how to live life with deep meaning.

Revered by Enlightenment and Victorian thinkers, de Sade was recognized as a founding father by the Surrealists, and holds a prominent place in the history of modernism and post-modernism. This selection of his early writings, some appearing in English translation for the first time, reveals the full range of his sobering moods and considerable talents.

Amusing tales of "la vie en rose" in the south of France. Writing with affectionate humor, Mayle recounts such adventures as sneaking through British customs with a suitcase full of expensive truffles and digging for gold coins in his backyard with his wily and greedy neighbor. He encounters truly French eccentrics like Regis, the athlete gourmet who wears a track suit to enjoy his meals, and the ambitious Monsieur Salques, the choirmaster of the singing toads of St. Panteleon who plans to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution with an amphibian rendition of the "Marseillaise”.