The Food Clock
by Fast Ed Halmagyi

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Harper Collins

Ed Halmagyi is known for his time-saving, fuss-free cooking tips on popular television and radio programs. His philosophy is that when you do less, the ingredients can do more. In The Food Clock, he celebrates the natural flavour of fresh seasonal produce in rustic French provincial cuisine. He weaves the story of Monsieur Henri Petit-Pois who goes fishing, harvests his garden and finds an interesting contraption at his local market in France – a food clock. Summer brings melons, fruits, tomato and fig salad, grilled mango and cinnamon mascarpone and roast lamb with apricot stuffing. Autumn sees the making of jams and bread and duck, rabbit and wild mushrooms being added to garden produce. Winter encourages corned beef and braised oxtail as well as quail and pate and spring is ripe for salmon, salads and caramelised pineapple tarts. Halmagyi’s love affair with seasonal food goes back to the traditional arts of baking and is beautifully presented, ready to give to the foodie person in your life.

In The Pleasure Groove: Love, Death and Duran Duran 
John Taylor

Sphere

There’s something about celebrity autobiographies that often makes them all very similar. Slightly nerdy kid with love of music makes it big in the world, then takes too many drugs and loses everything, then once sober makes a return to the top. Reading John Taylor, the bass player for Duran Duran’s tale is not that different to the autobiographies of Boy George, Belinda Carsile or Rob Lowe’s recent publication. If you had pictures of Taylor on your bedroom wall as a teenager though, it makes for an interesting read – because it turns out that Taylor was slightly nerdier than your average pop star. His birth name was Nigel, and his role as one of the founding members of the band has probably been under appreciated. The early part of the book of the book where Taylor vividly recalls his teenage life worshiping David Bowie and the NME is probably the most engaging part of Taylor’s recollections. If you’re a fan of Duran Duran and want some insight into their world, you’ll enjoy this one.

Between the Lines
by Jodi Picoult & Samantha van Leer

Allen & Unwin

Once upon a time there was a 15 year-old girl named Delilah who really liked reading fairy tales. She hated school but could read the same fairy tale over and over again. Of course it had a handsome prince, a castle and an evil villain. Delilah thinks that being a teenager is like being part of someone else’s story and wonders what it would be like not to be trapped inside someone else’s plot. Meanwhile, back in the book, Prince Oliver has begun to wonder about life outside the story in Otherworld, in particular the teenage loner who keeps opening his book. Can the two of them ever get together? The actual fairy tale alternates between chapters written from Delilah and Oliver’s perspectives and is very entertaining. Jodi Picoult is the author of 18 best-selling novels and her daughter Samantha van Leer is in junior high school. After pitching the idea to her mother, Samantha writes alongside her to create this fantastic modern fairy tale.                                    

The Search for Anne Perry
by Joanne Drayton

Not many people outside New Zealand would have heard of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme when the two 15 year olds were imprisoned after killing Pauline’s mother in 1954. It was Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures that not only launched his international career, but drew the world’s attention to the two women forty years after the event. Both had been released from prison and were living with assumed names far away from New Zealand when the film was released in 1994. Even though Jackson called it ‘a murder story with no villains’, Juliet Hulme’s life changed when the film was released as she was outed as the crime fiction writer Anne Perry. The writer of 20 best-selling books, the revelation cast a new light on the violent deaths, confronting dark issues and moral questions her books posed. This book is certainly a must-read for fans of Anne Perry, but it is also a fascinating book about the murder who became a writer of murder stories.