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Books: CookBooks: Ice Cream
Twelve Sharp (Stephanie Plum Novels)by Janet Evanovich List Price: $26.95 Available from Amazon $16.17 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly The mixture of slapstick and gunplay that has put Evanovich's series about a sassy, less than competent New Jersey bounty hunter at the top of bestseller lists once again works its magic in Stephanie Plum's latest caper (after 2005's Eleven on Top). Stephanie, who freely admits her failings as a hunter of fugitives, faces a growing work backlog that threatens the continued existence of her job. Her clumsy efforts to clear some cases, along with the help of her outrageous colleague, Lula, result only in their adding another sad sack to the office payroll—a forlorn shoe salesman who's talked off a ledge by Stephanie's offer of a position as file clerk. Stephanie's ambivalence toward the two men in her life becomes harder to maintain when one of them, the mysterious Ranger, is accused of kidnapping his own daughter. Countless over-the-top scenes, including one at a funeral parlor, will delight longtime fans. Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* In a manner almost elegant in its offhandedness, Stephanie Plum gets us up to speed on her life as a bounty hunter in Trenton, NJ; her ever-eccentric family; and her fellows in her cousin's bail-bond office. It doesn't take more than a few pages. Then someone who is mistaken for Ranger--one of the two men in and out of Stephanie's life (the other is Morelli the cop)--is accused of kidnapping his daughter. Evanovich uses all of her considerable arsenal here: wisecracking humor and set pieces about cars, neighborhoods, family matters, and the funeral parlor (now with new directors straight out of Queer Eye for the Burg Guy). Then, at one point, both Morelli and Ranger are living out of Stephanie's apartment (she flees to her childhood bedroom). Evanovich also deftly uses celebrity stalking and identity theft to sketch a quite scary bad guy, and she creates in Ranger's daughter, Julie, a spirited 10-year-old version of her mesmerizing father. The ending is downright terrifying, but the coda is soothing and features a cake with icing roses. Kids? Cupcakes? What could possibly be next? GraceAnne DeCandido Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
The Time Traveler's Wifeby Audrey Niffenegger List Price: $14.00 Available from Amazon $8.40 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly This highly original first novel won the largest advance San Francisco-based MacAdam/Cage had ever paid, and it was money well spent. Niffenegger has written a soaring love story illuminated by dozens of finely observed details and scenes, and one that skates nimbly around a huge conundrum at the heart of the book: Henry De Tamble, a rather dashing librarian at the famous Newberry Library in Chicago, finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He disappears from a scene in, say, 1998 to find himself suddenly, usually without his clothes, which mysteriously disappear in transit, at an entirely different place 10 years earlier-or later. During one of these migrations, he drops in on beautiful teenage Clare Abshire, an heiress in a large house on the nearby Michigan peninsula, and a lifelong passion is born. The problem is that while Henry's age darts back and forth according to his location in time, Clare's moves forward in the normal manner, so the pair are often out of sync. But such is the author's tenderness with the characters, and the determinedly ungimmicky way in which she writes of their predicament (only once do they make use of Henry's foreknowledge of events to make money, and then it seems to Clare like cheating) that the book is much more love story than fantasy. It also has a splendidly drawn cast, from Henry's violinist father, ruined by the loss of his wife in an accident from which Henry time-traveled as a child, to Clare's odd family and a multitude of Chicago bohemian friends. The couple's daughter, Alba, inherits her father's strange abilities, but this is again handled with a light touch; there's no Disney cuteness here. Henry's foreordained end is agonizing, but Niffenegger has another card up her sleeve, and plays it with poignant grace. It is a fair tribute to her skill and sensibility to say that the book leaves a reader with an impression of life's riches and strangeness rather than of easy thrills. Copyright 2003 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From AudioFile Although the title suggests that this is science fiction, Niffenegger's charming, emotionally charged novel is much more a love story. Told alternately from the viewpoints of time traveler Henry and his wife, Clare, it's highly enjoyable on audio. Readers Christopher Burns and Maggi-Meg Reed blend their respective chapters seamlessly. Each reader characterizes all roles within a chapter, and the depictions mesh beautifully. Both narrators characterize Korean friend Kimmy in a charmingly amusing voice and lend a light mood to the couple's daughter, Alba. Burns portrays the emotional chaos of Henry's life so genuinely as to cast the listener directly into his pain and joy. The abridged recording leaves one longing for more. J.J.B. 2004 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition. |
In Cold Bloodby Truman Capote List Price: $14.00 Available from Amazon $8.40 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review "Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans--in fact, few Kansans--had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there." If all Truman Capote did was invent a new genre--journalism written with the language and structure of literature--this "nonfiction novel" about the brutal slaying of the Clutter family by two would-be robbers would be remembered as a trail-blazing experiment that has influenced countless writers. But Capote achieved more than that. He wrote a true masterpiece of creative nonfiction. The images of this tale continue to resonate in our minds: 16-year-old Nancy Clutter teaching a friend how to bake a cherry pie, Dick Hickock's black '49 Chevrolet sedan, Perry Smith's Gibson guitar and his dreams of gold in a tropical paradise--the blood on the walls and the final "thud-snap" of the rope-broken necks. The New York Times Book Review, Conrad Knickerbocker The resulting chronicle is a masterpiece--agonizing, terrible, possessed, proof that the times, so surfeited with disasters, are still capable of tragedy. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. |
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The Devil Wears Prada: A Novel by Lauren Weisberger List Price: $13.95 Available from Amazon $8.37 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review It's a killer title: The Devil Wears Prada. And it's killer material: author Lauren Weisberger did a stint as assistant to Anna Wintour, the all-powerful editor of Vogue magazine. Now she's written a book, and this is its theme: narrator Andrea Sachs goes to work for Miranda Priestly, the all-powerful editor of Runway magazine. Turns out Miranda is quite the bossyboots. That's pretty much the extent of the novel, but it's plenty. Miranda's behavior is so insanely over-the-top that it's a gas to see what she'll do next, and to try to guess which incidents were culled from the real-life antics of the woman who's been called Anna "Nuclear" Wintour. For instance, when Miranda goes to Paris for the collections, Andrea receives a call back at the New York office (where, incidentally, she's not allowed to leave her desk to eat or go to the bathroom, lest her boss should call). Miranda bellows over the line: "I am standing in the pouring rain on the rue de Rivoli and my driver has vanished. Vanished! Find him immediately!" This kind of thing is delicious fun to read about, though not as well written as its obvious antecedent, The Nanny Diaries. And therein lies the essential problem of the book. Andrea's goal in life is to work for The New Yorker--she's only sticking it out with Miranda for a job recommendation. But author Weisberger is such an inept, ungrammatical writer, you're positively rooting for her fictional alter ego not to get anywhere near The New Yorker. Still, Weisberger has certainly one-upped Me Times Three author Alex Witchel, whose magazine-world novel never gave us the inside dope that was the book's whole raison d' etre. For the most part, The Devil Wears Prada focuses on the outrageous Miranda Priestly, and she's an irresistible spectacle. --Claire Dederer
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Bookby Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield, and Nancy Stevens Available from Amazon $9.95 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page Book Description With little skill, surprisingly few ingredients, and even the most unsophisticated of ice-cream makers, you can make the scrumptious ice creams that have made Ben & Jerry's an American legend. BEN & JERRY'S HOMEMADE ICE CREAM & DESSERT BOOK tells fans the story behind the company and the two men who built it-from their first meeting in 7th-grade gym class (they were already the two widest kids on the field) to their "graduation" from a $5.00 ice-cream-making correspondence course to their first ice-cream shop in a renovated gas station. But the best part comes next. Dastardly Mash, featuring nuts, raisins, and hunks of chocolate. The celebrated Heath Bar Crunch. New York Super Fudge Chunk. Oreo Mint. In addition to Ben & Jerry's 11 greatest hits, here are recipes for ice creams made with fresh fruit, with chocolate, with candies and cookies, and recipes for sorbets, sundaes, and baked goods. The 90-plus authentic recipes are spiced with Lyn Severance's bright, quirky, full-color illustrations. Over 383,000 copies in print.
Despite a philosophical disagreement over chunk size-Ben prefers them large and occasional while Jerry favors frequent, somewhat smaller ones-together Ben and Jerry are good friends who make great ice cream. Now they share all the recipes and techniques that have been made them nationwide heroes. Specially adapted to make at home, there are 90 recipes in all, including sorbets, summer slushes, giant sundaes and other ice-cream concoctions. All you have to do is remember Ben & Jerry's two rules of ice-cream making: RULE #1 You don't have to be a pro to make incredibly delicious ice cream. RULE #2 There's no such thing as an unredeemingly bad batch of homemade ice cream. NEW FLAVORS TO TRY: Orange Cream Dream Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Honey Apple Raisin Walnut Peanut Butter Fudge Swirl Chocolate Superfudge Brownie FLAVORS YOU KNOW AND LOVE: Heath Bar Crunch Dastardly Mash Fresh Georgia Peach Oreo Mint BEN & JERRY REVEAL: How to break Heath Bars into the perfect bite-size chunks. How to add chunks so they don't sink to the bottom. Why you must eat honey-flavored ice cream in one sitting. Bio Ben Cohen has been a Pinkerton Guard, a garbage man, and a short-order cook. He began seriously testing ice-cream flavors at the age of five. Jerry Greenfield has worked as a lab technician. He is glad he was not admitted to medical school. Nancy Stevens is a magazine and newspaper writer who has been published in the Saturday Review, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Working Woman.
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The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killerby Philip Carlo List Price: $24.95 Available from Amazon $15.72 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly This stomach-turning account of the multiple atrocities committed over 43 years by Richard "The Ice Man" Kuklinski—as sadistic a killer as most readers would ever want to encounter in print—seems like more of an as-told-to than an independent journalistic narrative, though Carlo says that he verified Kuklinski's accounts where possible. But rather than critically assess Kuklinski's largely self-serving tales of his roles in such major mob killings as those of Jimmy Hoffa and Gambino boss Paul Castellano, Carlo (The Night Stalker) seems to accept them. Instead of applying objective insight into how such a murderer—who researched methods that would prolong his victims' suffering—came to be, the author presents instead chapter after chapter of Kuklinski summarily killing criminals he was hired to eliminate or randomly gunning down someone on the street to test out a new weapon. By disregarding the questions raised by Mafia experts such as Jerry Capeci about Kuklinski's credibility, Carlo has fumbled an opportunity. Sloppy errors (e.g., Rudy Giuliani served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, not the Eastern District) also detract from the book, which ends with a bizarre invitation to the reader to write to Kuklinski at the Trenton State Prison. (July 11) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Richard Kuklinski, the Ice Man of the title, has told his story before in a variety of forums, including books and videos. Here Carlo tells Kuklinski's story more or less straight from the killer's mouth, with little verification or questioning. Given Kuklinski's grandiose claims, such as participation in the unsolved murder of Jimmy Hoffa, this produces a narrative of unrelieved horror. Kuklinski reveled not only in killing but also in the suffering of his victims, and here he emphasizes how he compartmentalized his life so that his family was shielded from the nastiness of his trade. Other than fulsome detail, not much new about Kuklinski is relayed. Carlo's presentation of Kuklinski uninterrupted does, however, make for nice comparative reading with the killer's wife's book, Married to the Iceman (1994). Good as an omnibus resource on Kuklinski, this is a fine entry in the burgeoning field of works tracing the decline of the traditional organized crime families and their once impenetrable structures. Mike Tribby Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
Williams-Sonoma Collection: Ice Cream (Williams Sonoma Collection)by Mary Goodbody and Chuck Williams List Price: $16.95 Available from Amazon $11.02 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page Book Description Vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, coffee: Everyone has a favorite flavor of ice cream. As a simple treat on a hot summer afternoon or an elegant finish to a special meal, ice cream is a versatile dessert that is delightfully easy to make at home. Williams-Sonoma Collection Ice Cream offers more than 40 recipes for rich ice creams, tangy sorbets, and flavorful granitas. When delicious combinations of ingredients -- fresh cream, fruit at its peak of ripeness, fine-quality chocolate -- are combined and frozen in an ice-cream maker, the results are always sublime. From the crunch of ice creams made with candy, cookies, or nuts to those as smooth as caramel, there are plenty of irresistible choices inside these pages. In addition, an entire chapter devoted to more elaborate ice cream dishes will inspire you to use your favorite flavors to make impressive frozen desserts. Tempting, full-color photographs of each ice cream make it easy to decide which one to prepare, and photographic side notes highlight essential ingredients and techniques, making Ice Cream more than just a fine collection of recipes. A comprehensive basics section and a detailed glossary will also provide you with everything you need to know to make delicious homemade ice cream your new favorite dessert. From a scoop of creamy, old-fashioned ice cream to a dish of sweet sorbet or a spoonful of rich gelato -- iced desserts are a refreshing way to enjoy an infinite array of wonderful, sweet flavors. Williams-Sonoma Collection Ice Cream offers more than 40 easy-to-follow recipes that allow you to make all-time favorites as well as delicious new flavors. Whether you crave an irresistibly rich chocolate-hazelnut gelato, a light and tangy lemon sorbet, or the best vanilla ice cream you have ever tasted, the recipes inside will inspire you to serve ice cream for any occasion. This vividly photographed, full-color recipe collection promises to become an essential addition to your kitchen bookshelf. "Once you have sampled the flavors inside, you will realize that homemade ice cream is simply the best there is!"
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The Best Ice Cream Maker Cookbook Everby Peggy Fallon List Price: $16.95 Available from Amazon $11.02 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page Book Description Choice is what it's all about: Choosing your favorite flavor, favorite topping or swirl-in, favorite frozen dessert. For no matter what kind of ice cream maker you own -- an inexpensive canister or a top-of-the-line electric freezer -- there's an extra special treat here for you. Exciting flavors include an assortment of vanillas of varying degrees of richness, several great chocolates, Butter Pecan, Sensational Strawberry, Peaches 'n' Cream, Utterly Peanut Butter and Double Ginger to mention only a sampling. For an extra flourish, there's a collection of ice creams with add-ons -- swirls and twirls, sauces and toppings. There is even an entire chapter of great reduced-fat light ice creams and nonfat frozen yogurts with names like Creamy Banana, Cappuccino, Date Rum and Maple Crunch. Many completely fat-free frozen delights are covered in the chapter called "Sorbets, Granitas and Other Ices." Enticing and refreshing, they come in flavors such as Kiwi-Lime, Mango Margarita, Spiced Rasberry and Strawberry Daquiri. And for showstopping, truly fabulous desserts, made completely in advance, turn to the last chapter, which contains ice cream cakes, pies and other frozen desserts.
Makes about 1 1/2quarts This was probably the first flavor of commercially produced premium ice cream I ever tasted. Now I make it at home, using the best quality rum and, just for fun, a combination of dark and golden raisins. 3/4 cup raisins, preferably half dark and half golden (about 6 ounces) 1. In a small nonreactive saucepan, combine the raisins with enough rum to cover. Bring to a simmer over low heat. (Watch carefully. If the alcohol gets too hot, it will ignite.) Remove from the heat and let cool. Strain the rum into a heatproof glass measuring cup and set aside. Reserve the raisins. 2. In a large bowl, combine the heavy cream and half-and-half. Gradually whisk in the sugar to blend. Whisk in the vanilla. Refrigerate, covered, until very cold, at least 3 hours or as long as 3 days. 3. Whisk the mixture to blend and pour into the canister of an ice cream maker. Freeze according to the manufacturer's directions. When the ice cream is at the soft-serve stage, add 1/3 cup of the rum and the raisins and process 1 minute longer. (Discard any remaining rum or reserve for another use.) Eat at once or transfer to a covered container and freeze up to 8 hours. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Raspberry Granita Makes about 1 quart Since raspberries vary greatly in sweetness, you really do have to taste here and adjust the sugar accordingly. Other berries can be used with the same process. 1 1/2 cups (about 1/2 pound) fresh or frozen unsweetened raspberries 1. In a food processor or blender, combine the raspberries and water. Puree until smooth. Strain through a sieve into a medium bowl, pressing through as much fruit and juice as possible. Discard the seeds. 2. Add 1/3 cup sugar and the lemon juice. Stir to blend and dissolve the sugar, Taste for sweetness and add more sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, if needed. Cover and refrigerate until very cold, at least 2 hours or as long as 3 days. 3. Stir the mixture to blend and pour into the canister of an ice cream maker, Freeze according to the manufacturer's directions. Eat at once.
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