South Africa, 1880. Frances Irvine, destitute in the wake of her father's sudden death, is forced to abandon her life of wealth and privilege in London and emigrate to the Cape. In this remote and inhospitable land she becomes entangled with two very different men, leading her into the dark heart of the diamond mines. Torn between passion and integrity, she makes a choice that has devastating consequences.
'The Ultimate G&T' -- Jamie Oliver 'The best tonic on the planet' -- Ashton Kutcher The first cocktail book to put the mixers centre-stage, from brilliant Fever-Tree brand and created by leading bartenders around the world. Rather than starting with the spirits, this book focuses on key mixers - including tonic, lemonade, ginger ale, ginger beer and cola. Leading bartenders have created 125 classic and contemporary cocktail recipes that make the most of the botanical partnerships. The book also explores the origins of key ingredients, including quinine, lemons and elderflower, revealing the role quinine has played in geo-politics, for example, and the impact different herbs have on taste. In the way that we increasingly want to know the source and production methods of the food we eat, so this guide allows you to understand more fully what we drink - and use that knowledge to create the most delicious cocktails.
The Study of Plants in a Whole New Light “Matt Candeias succeeds in evoking the wonder of plants with wit and wisdom.” ―James T. Costa, PhD, executive director, Highlands Biological Station and author of Darwin's Backyard #1 New Release in Nature & Ecology, Plants, Botany, Horticulture, Trees, Biological Sciences, and Nature Writing & Essays In his debut book, internationally-recognized blogger and podcaster Matt Candeias celebrates the nature of plants and the extraordinary world of plant organisms. A botanist’s defense. Since his early days of plant restoration, this amateur plant scientist has been enchanted with flora and the greater environmental ecology of the planet. Now, he looks at the study of plants through the lens of his ever-growing houseplant collection. Using gardening, houseplants, and examples of plants around you, In Defense of Plants changes your relationship with the world from the comfort of your windowsill. The ruthless, horny, and wonderful nature of plants. Understand how plants evolve and live on Earth with a never-before-seen look into their daily drama. Inside, Candeias explores the incredible ways plants live, fight, have sex, and conquer new territory. Whether a blossoming botanist or a professional plant scientist, In Defense of Plants is for anyone who sees plants as more than just static backdrops to more charismatic life forms. In this easily accessible introduction to the incredible world of plants, you’ll find: • Fantastic botanical histories and plant symbolism • Passionate stories of flora diversity and scientific names of plant organisms • Personal tales of plantsman discovery through the study of plants If you enjoyed books like The Botany of Desire, What a Plant Knows, or The Soul of an Octopus, then you’ll love In Defense of Plants.
"Cinchona revolutionized the art of medicine as profoundly as gunpowder had the art of war." -- Bernardino Ramazzini, Physician to the Duke of Modena, Opera omnia, medica, et physica, 1716 In the summer of 1623, ten cardinals and hundreds of their attendants died in Rome while electing a new pope. The Roman marsh fever that felled them was the scourge of the Mediterranean, northern Europe and even America. Malaria, now known as a disease of the tropics, badly weakened the Roman Empire. It killed thousands of British troops fighting Napoleon in 1809 and many soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War. It turned back travelers exploring West Africa in the nineteenth century and brought the building of the Panama Canal to a standstill. Even today, malaria kills someone every thirty seconds. For more than one thousand years, there was no cure for it. Pope Urban VIII, elected during the malarial summer of 1623, was determined that a cure should be found. He encouraged Jesuit priests establishing new missions in Asia and in South America to learn everything they could from the peoples they encountered. In Peru a young apothecarist named Agostino Salumbrino established an extensive network of pharmacies that kept the Jesuit missions in South America and Europe supplied with medicines. In 1631 Salumbrino dispatched a new miracle to Rome. The cure was quinine, an alkaloid made of the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree. Europe's Protestants, among them Oliver Cromwell, who suffered badly from malaria, feared that the new cure was nothing but a Popish poison. More than any previous medicine, though, quinine forced physicians to change their ideas about illness. Before long, it would change the face of Western medicine. Yet how was it that priests in the early seventeenth century–who did not know what malaria was or how it was transmitted–discovered that the bark of a tree that grew in the foothills of the Andes could cure a disease that occurred only on the other side of the ocean? Using fresh research from the Vatican and the Indian archives in Seville, as well as documents she discovered in Peru, award-winning author Fiammetta Rocco chronicles the ravages of the disease; the quest of the three Englishmen who smuggled cinchona seeds out of South America; the way in which quinine opened the door to Western imperial adventure in Asia, Africa and beyond; and how, even today, quinine grown in the eastern Congo still saves the lives of so many suffering from malaria.
Literally Italian for "bad air," malaria once plagued Rome, tropical trade routes and colonial ventures into India and South America and the disease has no known antidote aside from the therapeutic effects of the "miraculous" quinine. This first book from journalist Honigsbaum is a rousing history of the search for febrifuge or, more specifically, the rare red cinchona tree, the bark from which quinine is derived.
'The Ultimate G&T' -- Jamie Oliver 'The best tonic on the planet' -- Ashton Kutcher The first cocktail book to put the mixers centre-stage, from brilliant Fever-Tree brand and created by leading bartenders around the world. Rather than starting with the spirits, this book focuses on key mixers - including tonic, lemonade, ginger ale, ginger beer and cola. Leading bartenders have created 125 classic and contemporary cocktail recipes that make the most of the botanical partnerships. The book also explores the origins of key ingredients, including quinine, lemons and elderflower, revealing the role quinine has played in geo-politics, for example, and the impact different herbs have on taste. In the way that we increasingly want to know the source and production methods of the food we eat, so this guide allows you to understand more fully what we drink - and use that knowledge to create the most delicious cocktails.
*** 'The secret to great, refreshing, stylish serves first time, every time!' Ian Buxton, author Gin: The Ultimate Companion. From the world's leading premium mixer brand, Fever-Tree Easy Mixing: More than 150 Quick and Delicious Mixed Drinks and Cocktails, is Fever-Tree's follow up to the bestselling Art of Mixing. With clever variations on the classic gin and tonic to a selection of spritzes, mules and mojitos, to some nifty no-and-low alcohol alternatives and a handful of pitchers for when the party really gets started, Fever-Tree Easy Mixing celebrates how easy it is for anyone to enjoy quick and delicious drinks at home.
A serious and stylish look at sophisticated nonalcoholic beverages by a former Bon Appétit editor and James Beard Award nominee. “Julia Bainbridge resets our expectations for what a ‘drink’ can mean from now on.”—Jim Meehan, author of Meehan’s Bartender Manual and The PDT Cocktail Book NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Bon Appétit • Los Angeles Times • Wired • Esquire • Garden & Gun Blackberry-infused cold brew with almond milk and coconut cream. Smoky tea paired with tart cherry juice. A bittersweet, herbal take on the Pimm’s Cup. Writer Julia Bainbridge spent a summer driving across the U.S. going to bars, restaurants, and everything in between in pursuit of the question: Can you make an outstanding nonalcoholic drink? The answer came back emphatically: “Yes.” With an extensive pantry section, tips for sourcing ingredients, and recipes curated from stellar bartenders around the country—including Verjus Spritz, Chicha Morada Agua Fresca, Salted Rosemary Paloma, and Tarragon Cider—Good Drinks shows that decadent brunch cocktails, afternoon refreshers, and evening digestifs can be enjoyed by anyone and everyone.
The seven stories in Pam Durban's widely praised debut collection are tales of family, of love and loss, of survival and affirmation. Durban's resonant prose subtly obliges her readers to experience the rush of icy water in a stream, the taste of greens freshly snatched from an overgrown garden, the dread weight of confusion and uncertainty. In "This Heat," the opening story, a mill worker faces the long-expected loss of her teenage son when his weak heart finally gives out. In the title story, which concludes the collection, a formidably eccentric woman abruptly leaves her daughter and granddaughter to answer a "calling" to do missionary work in Africa. Framed between these two stories is a gathering of characters made real and consequential by Durban's touch: a country singer more than a few big breaks short of stardom, a preadolescent boy lovestruck over his private swimming instructor, a father cut off from his children by haunting war memories, and others.
“A wonderful nightmare of a book: tender and frightening, disturbing but compassionate. Fever Dream is a triumph of Schweblin’s outlandish imagination.” –Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling and Reputations A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.
