PIANO, PIANO, PIENO on sale November 13

PIANO, PIANO, PIENO: Authentic Food from a Tuscan Farm by Susan McKenna Grant

“Piano, Piano, Pieno is full of … spectacular pasta recipes . . . delicious results.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Slowly, slowly, full” is how the lovely Italian phrase piano, piano, pieno translates, and it describes to perfection the experience of this book and the Slow Food movement, begun in Italy to promote a style of cooking with fresh, local ingredients, cooked classically, with attention and care. More than 200 hundred recipes, accompanied by evocative narratives of farm life and gorgeous color photographs of the food and the region, take the reader deep into the secret rural places of Italy, including the author’s spectacular organic farm/agriturismo, La Petraia. Unusual in its scope and depth, Piano, Piano, Pieno is an indispensable addition to any serious cook’s library.

“A lovely book that speaks with confidence and authority about Italian food traditions...The recipes are clear and inviting, the writing gracefully informative.” —Naomi Duguid, author of Hot Sour Salty Sweet

“Piano, Piano, Pieno is a hymn to the joy of pure, Italian cooking, by a woman who has lovingly nurtured an ancient Tuscan farm into an abundant renaissance. Susan McKenna Grant's recipes, for such delights as pappa al pomodoro, ciabatta, or bigoi in salsa, are clearly presented, and sing of the magical simplicity of Italian country cooking. She writes with gusto of the rich history, in some cases almost forgotten, of the foods and traditions of her adopted Italian home. Bravissima!" —Lorenza de Medici, author of Italy, the Beautiful Cookbook and Tuscany, the Beautiful Cookbook

learn more about La Petraia at www.lapetraia.com

12/1/08

MA GASTRONOMIE on sale October 30

MA GASTRONOMIE
by Fernand Point
introduction by Thomas Keller
translated and adapted by Frank Kulla and Patricia Shannon Kulla

One of the landmarks of French cuisine, and cult favorite of chefs and foodies alike, is back in print in an all-new edition


First published in France in 1969 and in the U.S. in 1974, Fernand Point’s Ma Gastronomie is one of the enduring classics of French cuisine, taking its place alongside works of Carême, Lucien Tendret, and Escoffier. An undisputed creative genius of French gastronomy and founder of the legendary La Pyramide restaurant in Vienne, halfway between Paris and the Riviera, Fernand Point revolutionized French cuisine, building on its traditions and creating his own versions of the great classical dishes. Ma Gastronomie is the record of this achievement. Long unavailable, except for a rare, second-hand copy surfacing on the market now and then and selling for hundreds of dollars, Ma Gastronomie has become a cult favorite of chefs and foodies over the years. This essential volume is as celebrated for Point’s wise, witty, and provocative views on food as for his remarkable, inventive recipes—over 200 of them—carefully compiled from his handwritten notes.

“I believe Fernand Point is one of the last true gourmands of the twentieth century. His ruminations are extraordinary and thought-provoking—he has been an inspiration for legions of chefs. It was the first cookbook that opened my eyes and made me more conscious of the entire dining experience. It made me think of the guest, and the culture surrounding food and restaurants.” —Thomas Keller, The French Laundry

“If someone were to take away all my cookbooks except for one, I would keep Fernand Point’s Ma Gastronomie. For me, his philosophy instilled what cuisine is all about: generosity and hugeness of heart. Point said that if you are not a generous person you cannot be in this field.” — Charlie Trotter, Charlie Trotter’s

“Before Point, cooking was a just a job; after, it was a calling.” — Molly O’Neill, The New York Times

"This book changed my life." —Marco Pierre White

SNITCH JACKET now in paperback

Christopher Goffard's Edgar-nominated neo-noir novel SNITCH JACKET is just out in paperback. Chris attended the SCIBA Author's Feast this past weekend as a finalist for the T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award.

Praise for SNITCH JACKET—

“Snitch Jacket is a great read, full of the blood and grit of true character....it announces the arrival of a great new writer in Christopher Goffard.” —Michael Connelly

“Snitch Jacket is a wonder of sentences that sing . . . the sights and smells and fast talking are all so memorable that we can't help looking forward to what comes next from this talented writer's mind and pen.” —Sarah Weinman, Los Angeles Times

“Goffard's prose shimmers with intelligence and humor, and he has a keen ear for telling detail. Fans of such cultish neo-noir scribes as Charlie Huston and Duane Swierczynski will be richly rewarded.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In its dark vision [Snitch Jacket] would probably give Raymond Chandler night sweats . . . you won't close it until the last page.” —Gregory McNamee, St. Petersburg Times

“Goffard writes like an angel and plots like a demon.” —Guardian (UK)

“Benny Bunt hangs around what may be the scummiest bar in SoCal . . . A big payday is coming . . . as in a Tarantino screenplay.” —New York magazine

“Christopher Goffard sees Southern California with a keen eye, and he writes with an incandescent humor that is remarkable. Pull up a seat at the narrator's favorite bar—the Greasy Tuesday—and enjoy the madness going on around you.” —T. Jefferson Parker

Praise for TEN BAD DATES WITH DE NIRO

Edited by Richard T Kelly
Just published by The Rookery Press

"By the time you come to the end of "10 Bad Dates" you will find that you've been exposed to, and forced to contemplate, just about everything worthwhile in movie history, from "Swiss Miss" to "Shanghai Express" (harnessing Sternberg's "exotic artifice to the mood of romantic fatalism" in Graham Fuller's fine phrase). You will also be closer to the essential truth about movies, which is that they achieve their best effects, the things that stay with us and make a few of them seem forever great, through the most ephemeral means—a curl of smoke, a curl of hair, the curl of a lip...a stimulating, necessary volume—and virtually alone among cinematic studies in the wit of its arguments and the seductiveness of its style."
—Richard Schickel, Los Angeles Times

SNITCH JACKET IS EDGAR NOMINEE

The Rookery Press is thrilled to report that Christopher Goffard's SNITCH JACKET is one of five finalists for the 2008 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, as announced by the Mystery Writers of America on January 18. Congratulations, Chris! And thanks to all the booksellers, readers, reviewers, and the sales team at Overlook and Penguin who backed SNITCH JACKET early on and who have been so brilliantly supportive of Rookery in our first year of publishing.

Read more about SNITCH JACKET, below.

New from Rookery: SNITCH JACKET by Christopher Goffard

SNITCH JACKET by Christopher Goffard

Benny Bunt is an over-educated misfit, ex-speed addict, and barfly who makes pocket money snitching on his friends. You will like him.

“Everyone knows that California sunshine is the world’s loneliest light,” says Benny, who inhabits an underworld of desperados and grotesques and spends much of his free time at the Greasy Tuesday, a squalid, southern California neighborhood dive teeming with local legends.
One night, one of these legends walks through the door: Gus “Mad Dog” Miller, a huge, tattoo-laden Vietnam vet who sports a necklace of severed ears and whose job at the Greasy Tuesday is “to keep the riffraff out.” “But everyone’s riffraff here,” Benny protests. Six months later, Benny, transfixed by this twisted Falstaffian personality, is arrested on suspicion of double murder after attending the freak “Howling Head” festival in the Mojave Desert.
Combining elements of classic noir, dark comedy, and a misfit’s memoir reminiscent of Notes from Underground, Christopher Goffard, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, brings life to the darker side of west coast counter-culture in a literary crime novel that will be a delight for fans of Elmore Leonard, the Coen brothers, Carl Hiassen, and Charles Bukowski.

“Christopher Goffard sees southern California with a keen eye, and he writes with an incandescent humor that is remarkable. Pull up a seat at the narrator's favorite bar—the Greasy Tuesday—and enjoy the madness going on around you.”
—T. Jefferson Parker, author of California Girl and The Fallen

STARRED REVIEW Publishers Weekly: Snitch Jacket Christopher Goffard. Overlook/Rookery, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-58567-954-6

"In Goffard's impressive debut, a darkly comic romp through the Southern California underworld, Benny Bunt, a 41-year-old dishwasher, finds his main escape in the Greasy Tuesday, a blue-collar bar in Costa Mesa. Among the recidivist misfits, his is a harmless familiar face. What they don't know is that Benny is a snitch who earns pocket money by ratting out his buddies to the cops. Enter one Gus “Mad Dog” Miller, a massive, bearded Vietnam vet, covered with prison tattoos; Gus holds court at the bar with outrageous tales of his exploits, military and criminal. Gus soon becomes Benny's best friend, and seeks his assistance in a contract killing. Only problem is, the police “botch” their surveillance and Benny ends up taking the fall for a double homicide committed at the Howling Head festival in the Mojave desert. Goffard's prose shimmers with intelligence and humor, and he has a keen ear for telling detail. Fans of such cultish neo-noir scribes such as Charlie Huston and Duane Swierczynski will be richly rewarded. (Oct.)"

Buy Snitch Jacket.

MOTHERLAND by Lesley Chamberlain *Now Available*

MOTHERLAND
A Philosophical History of Russia
Lesley Chamberlain

A “splendid” (Daily Telegraph) and invaluable introduction to the key Russian thinkers of the past 200 years and an eloquently-narrated journey in the history of ideas.

Includes sections on the key pre-Revolutionary philosophers in Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia: Alexander Herzen, Vissarion Belinsky, Pyotr Chaadaev, Mikhail Bakunin, Nikolai Stankevich & Ivan Turgenev

In this “lucid primer of Russian thought” (Times Literary Supplement), Lesley Chamberlain finds that during the last two centuries Russian intellectuals have asked two fundamental questions: “what makes a good man?” and “what is the right way to live?” The nineteenth-century ideal of a happy man living in a just society became, in Russia, a quest to effect wholesale transformation of society. Chamberlain shows how this moral passion, manifesting itself in philosophy and literature, existed in both pre- and post-revolutionary Russia. She reveals that 1917 did not represent the watershed we once thought, and shows how the dream of a plain and simple life reached its negative apotheosis under Lenin. In Motherland (Overlook/Rookery, July 9, 2007
352 pp, $35.00 [CAN $43.50], 978-1-58567-952-2) Lesley Chamberlain has produced a radical new interpretation of Russian intellectual history that, finally, gives a glimpse in to the soul of that singular country.

“A searching intellectual history of modern Russia . . . Provocative, and sure to inspire learned discussion, if not controversy.”—Kirkus

“Delving fearlessly into her complex and understudied subject, Chamberlain provides a useful synthesis of 200 years of thought by nearly 40 Russian philosophers . . . This useful reference and historical corrective should inspire further study into a neglected but rich intellectual landscape.”—Publishers Weekly

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lesley Chamberlain is a writer and reviewer distinguished for her wide-ranging work from travel (In the Communist Mirror) to philosophy (Nietzsche in Turin and Lenin’s Private War) to fiction. She lives in London.

Buy Motherland.