A portrait of a marriage in which lofty principles clash fatally with appetite and ambition—featuring a middle-aged restaurant owner who is "the biggest and the most profound thing Mishima has done so far in an already distinguished career" (The New Yorker). “One of the outstanding writers of the world." —The New York Times For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness. But when the middle-aged entrepreneur falls in love with one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, she renounces her business in order to become his wife. In time, however, Kazu decides to resurrect her husband's political career. She embarks on a series of compromises and evasions that will force her to choose between her marriage and the demands of her irrepressible vitality.

"When factory worker Dan Dong accidentally discovers how easy it is to infiltrate state- and corporate-sponsored banquets by posing as a journalist, he quickly becomes addicted to the insane luxury of these meals. For the first time, he tastes crab-claw tips, exotic fungi, and a dish made from thousands of pigeon tongues arranged in the shape of a chrysanthemum. But when Dan's disguise enables him to become privy to a deep-rooted scandal, his conscience compels him to cross the line between subterfuge and reality by actually writing an expose. With the help of the witty, jaded reporter Happy Gao, Dan embarks on a journey that will take him from the highest rungs of society to its most sordid depths." "Throughout the book, food - from the spicy, oily fare Dan orders for a high-class prostitute at a restaurant called Pink Chamber, to the humble noodle dishes prepared by his long-suffering wife, Little Plum - is present on almost every page, described so vividly that you can almost smell and taste it. But by the final page of The Banquet Bug, it has become clear that the perils of consumption run parallel to its pleasures."--BOOK JACKET.

Set against the backdrop of the Enlightenment, the delectable decadence of Versailles, and the French Revolution, The Last Banquet is an intimate epic that tells the story of one man’s quest to know the world through its many and marvelous flavors. Jean-Marie d’Aumout will try anything once, with consequences that are at times mouthwatering and at others fascinatingly macabre (Three Snake Bouillabaisse anyone? Or perhaps some pickled Wolf's Heart?). When he is not obsessively searching for a new taste d’Aumout is a fast friend, a loving husband, a doting father, and an imaginative lover. He befriends Ben Franklin, corresponds with the Marquis de Sade and Voltaire, becomes a favorite at Versailles, thwarts a peasant uprising, improves upon traditional French methods of contraception, plays an instrumental role in the Corsican War of Independence, and constructs France’s finest menagerie. But d’Aumout’s every adventurous turn is decided by his at times dark obsession to know all the world’s flavors before that world changes irreversibly. As gripping as Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, as gloriously ambitious as Daniel Kehlman’s Measuring the World, and as prize-worthy as Andrew Miller’s Pure, The Last Banquet is a hugely appealing novel about food and flavor, about the Age of Reason and the ages of man, and our obsessions and about how, if we manage to survive them, they can bequeath us wisdom and consolation in old age.

The unspoken secrets and buried lies of one family rise to the surface in this stunning crime drama featuring Scotland Yard members Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George. As Inspector Thomas Lynley investigates the London angle of an ever more darkly disturbing case, his partner, Barbara Havers, is looking behind the peaceful façade of country life to discover a twisted world of desire and deceit. The suicide of William Goldacre is devastating to those left behind who will have to deal with its unintended consequences—could there be a link between the young man's leap from a Dorset cliff and a horrific poisoning in Cambridge? After various issues with her department, Barbara Havers is desperate to redeem herself. So when a past encounter gives her a connection to the unsolved Cambridge murder, Barbara begs Thomas Lynley to let her pursue the crime, knowing one mistake could mean the end of her career. Full of shocks, intensity, and suspense from the first page to the last, A Banquet of Consequences reveals both Lynley and Havers under mounting pressure to solve a case both complicated and deeply disturbing.

All the forest animals enjoy eating the fruit from a wild blackberry bush, until a bear arrives to join them.

According to Chinese tradition, those who die hungry or unjustly come back to haunt the living. Some are appeased with food. But not all ghosts are successfully mollified. In this chilling collection of stories,Ying Chang Compestine takes readers on a journey through time and across different parts of China. From the building of the GreatWall in 200 BCE to themodern day of iPods, hungry ghosts continue to torment those who wronged them. At once a window into the history and culture of China and an ode to Chinese cuisine, this assortment of frightening tales—complete with historical notes and delectable recipes—will both scare and satiate!