The Creative Shrub Garden by Andy McIndoe

creative shrub gardenHome gardeners know the key elements to a well-designed garden: perennials that bloom year after year, annuals that add a burst of color, and bulbs that guarantee spring flowers. But what about shrubs–what role should these hardy plants play?

The Creative Shrub Garden by Andy McIndoe puts the shrub in its rightful place–front and center. This groundbreaking approach shows you how to make the most of the many benefits of shrubs – including their hardiness, year-long beauty, size, and low-maintenance nature – by making them the main element in a garden design. McIndoe teaches you the basics first, with tips on choosing shrubs based on a garden’s size, determining soil and climate needs, and pruning and maintenance. He then offers hundreds of shrub combinations that work with 15 main garden styles, including coastal, cottage, Mediterranean, tropical, urban, and more.

The Creative Shrub Garden celebrates a plant that is too often taken for granted and gives gardeners the confidence to use shrubs in the design-forward treatment they deserve. (description from publisher)

Ceviche the Peruvian Kitchen by

cevicheCeviche the Peruvian Kitchen is the first major Peruvian cookbook published for a US audience, featuring 100 recipes from the owner of London’s critically acclaimed restaurant Ceviche.

Flavor-driven and captivating, Peruvian dishes are unique and familiar at the same time. This cuisine combines native ingredients that are becoming increasingly popular in their own right (such as quinoa and amaranth) with Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese techniques and ingredients to create fresh, multicultural gourmet dishes that appeal to America’s ravenous taste for ethnic food.

From sizzling barbecued beef anticucho skewers, superfood salads featuring quinoa and physalis, and piquant ceviche to airy giant choclo corn cakes and lucuma ice dessert, Ceviche the Peruvian Kitchen is the first authoritative cookbook to bring the delicious dishes from Peru’s lush jungles, Andean peaks, and seaside villages to US kitchens. (description from publisher)

Haute Dogs by Russell van Kraayenburg

haute dogsHaute Dogs gives the classic cookout staple a fresh and tasty twist, with recipes inspired by everything from south-of-the-border BBQ to Japanese fusion to modern food-cart cuisine.

Handcraft your own top-notch dogs, buns, and condiments with step-by-step from-scratch instructions, and brush up on your hot dog history with an in-depth look at tasty traditions from the U.S. and beyond.

Just in time for summer, this indispensable guide will make your grilling extraordinary. (description from publisher)

 

Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman

ice cream queenIn 1913, little Malka Treynovsky flees Russia with her family in The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street. Bedazzled by tales of gold and movie stardom, she tricks them into buying tickets for America. Yet no sooner do they land on the squalid Lower East Side of Manhattan, than Malka is crippled and abandoned in the street.

Taken in by a tough-loving Italian ices peddler, she manages to survive through cunning and inventiveness. As she learns the secrets of his trade, she begins to shape her own destiny. She falls in love with a gorgeous, illiterate radical named Albert, and they set off across America in an ice cream truck. Slowly, she transforms herself into Lillian Dunkle, “The Ice Cream Queen” — doyenne of an empire of ice cream franchises and a celebrated television personality.

Lillian’s rise to fame and fortune spans seventy years and is inextricably linked to the course of American history itself, from Prohibition to the disco days of Studio 54. Yet Lillian Dunkle is nothing like the whimsical motherly persona she crafts for herself in the media. Conniving, profane, and irreverent, she is a supremely complex woman who prefers a good stiff drink to an ice cream cone . And when her past begins to catch up with her, everything she has spent her life building is at stake. (description from publisher)

Get Up! by James Levine

get upThat the average adult spends 50 to 70 percent of their day sitting is no surprise to anyone who works in an office environment. But few realize the health consequences they are suffering as a result of modernity’s increasingly sedentary lifestyle, or the effects it has had on society at large.

In Get Up! , health expert James A. Levine’s original scientific research shows that today’s chair-based world, where we no longer use our bodies as they evolved to be used, is having negative consequences on our health, and is a leading cause of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. Over the decades, humans have moved from a primarily active lifestyle to one that is largely sedentary, and this change has reshaped every facet of our lives–from social interaction to classroom design.

Levine shows how to throw off the shackles of inertia and reverse these negative trends through simple changes in our daily lives. (description from publisher)

Last Chain on Billie by Carol Bradley

last chain on billieAgainst the backdrop of a glittering but brutal circus world, Carol Bradley’s Last Chain on Billie charts the history of elephants in America, the inspiring story of the Elephant Sanctuary and the spellbinding tale of a resilient elephant who defied the system even as she struggled to conquer her past, who never lost sight of the life she was meant to have.

Left in the wild, Billie the elephant would have spent her days surrounded by family, free to wander the jungles of Asia. Instead, traders captured her as a baby and shipped her to America, where she learned to carry humans, stand on a tub and balance on one leg – the full repertoire of elephant tricks. For decades, Billie crisscrossed the country, dazzling audiences as she performed breathtaking stunts. But behind the scenes she lived a life of misery: traveling in trucks, chained for hours on end, barely able to move, giving eight-minute performances under harsh lights and to the sounds of blaring music. And worse.

Finally, she got a lucky break. As part of the largest elephant rescue in American history, Billie wound up at a sanctuary for performing elephants in Tennessee, able once more to roam through open meadows and share her days with a herd. She would never be beaten again. But, overcome with anxiety, she withdrew from the rest of the elephants and refused to let anyone remove a chain still clamped around her leg. Her caregivers began to wonder if Billie could ever escape her emotional wounds.

The compelling story of Billie’s battle to reclaim her old self is a testament to the intelligence, emotional complexity and remarkable strength of all elephants, captive or free. (description from publisher)

Back to Butter by Molly Chester

back to butterWhat if butter and other “banished” foods like eggs, cream, and bacon had the inherent potential to restore our health and well-being–and that of future generations? It’s a pretty good question, isn’t it?

Traditional foods are the real, whole, unprocessed ingredients of our ancestors’ kitchens. These simple foods nourished us for centuries, before modern food processing turned our health upside down. Their value is once again gaining recognition. Traditional foods include: Grass-fed Meats and Wild-caught Seafood Organic, Farm Fresh Produce Pastured, Whole, and Raw Dairy Healthy Saturated Fats and Unrefined Oils Soaked and/or Sprouted Grains, Nuts, Seeds, and Beans Fermented Vegetables and Cultured Condiments Unrefined Sweeteners. Back to Butter explores these topics and more. Beautifully photographed and divided into two parts, Part I teaches you how to stock a traditional foods pantry and offers step-by-step guidance on the techniques and preparation methods practiced in traditional foods–including sprouting, soaking, and fermenting. Part II showcases more than 75 mouthwatering recipes, from main meals to side dishes, desserts, and more,

Learn just how nourishing and delicious it can be to revisit the wisdom of our ancestors and return Back to Butter. (description from publisher)

Big Little Lies by Lianne Moriarty

big little liesSometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal. . . . A murder… . . . a tragic accident… . . . or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead. But who did what? Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest ( how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).

Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.

New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive. (description from publisher)

Drink the Harvest by Nan Chace

drink the harvestPreserving the harvest doesn’t have to stop with jam and pickles!

Many fruits, vegetables, and herbs can be made into delicious beverages to drink fresh or preserve for later — a healthy and inexpensive alternative to store-bought drinks. Drink the Harvest shows you how to create juices, ciders, wines, meads, teas, and syrups to savor any time of year. From strawberry juice to pear cider, dandelion wine to spiced apple mead, citrus peel tea to kombucha, you’ll love these delicious recipes. You’ll even discover how to create your own backyard beverage garden and how to harvest ingredients for maximum flavor and quantity.

Whether you’re looking for new ways to enjoy your garden’s bounty or want to experiment with pure concoctions made from farmers’ market finds, these recipes and techniques – including harvesting, canning, fermenting, and pasteurizing – will introduce you to a whole new world of garden goodness. (description from publisher)

Handmade for the Garden by Susan Guagliumi

handmade for the gardenThe DIY craze has moved beyond the craft room and into the garden!

Relying on easy-to-find, inexpensive, and repurposed materials, Handmade for the Garden is a treasure trove of original projects that not only make planting and growing efficient and successful but also add a personal touch to the gardenscape. Among the myriad projects in this hardworking book are mini hothouses; painted, stamped, and stenciled terracotta planters; hypertufa and cement pots and decorations; rustic and formal fencing and trellises; plant markers and stakes; and sieves and baskets.

With Handmade for the Garden to inspire them, gardeners of all skill levels will be empowered to experiment with form and function to discover creative, artful ways to personalize and beautify their gardens with handmade objects. (description from publisher)