The Spice Merchant's Wife

Author: Charlotte Betts
Publisher: Piatkus
ISBN: 0749959290
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Book Description
1666. Newly married to a wealthy spice merchant, Kate Finche believes all her dreams of a happy family life are just around the corner until the Great Fire rages through London. She watches in horror as their livelihood goes up in flames, filling the air with the heady scents of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. As the city is devastated, Kate's husband Robert is forced to seek employment to ensure their survival, but when he is found drowned, Kate refuses to believe that he has taken his own life. Widowed and penniless, she seeks refuge in The House of Perfume, the home of blind perfumer Gabriel Harte, who awakens Kate's senses to a whole new world. But as she flees from this forbidden love, her husband's murderer comes looking for her . . . The Spice Merchant's Wife is a stunning novel, bursting with the colour and flavour of Restoration London - perfect for readers of Phillipa Gregory, Joanne Harris and Patrick Suskind's Perfume.

The Spice Merchant's Daughter

Author: Christina Arokiasamy
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
ISBN: 0307396282
Category : Cookery (Spices)
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
It was the aroma. The exotic scent of spices: rich, alluring, and almost magical. A scent that would sometimes overpower the freshness in the air and sometimes subtly mingle with it to create a tantalizing bouquet. A scent that would always bring me back to my childhood. Growing up enveloped in the aromas of her mother’s spice stall in Kuala Lumpur, Christina Arokiasamy developed an artist’s sense of how to combine and use spices in traditional and innovative ways. In The Spice Merchant’s Daughter, she shares her family’s spice secrets, expertly guiding and enticing home cooks to enliven their repertoires. Christina weaves evocative stories of cooking at her mother’s side with real-world practical advice gleaned not only from working in professional kitchens but also from tackling the nightly task of getting a home-cooked dinner on the table for her family of four using American ingredients. She shows how easy it is to build layers of complex flavor to create 100 tempting Southeast Asian–inspired recipes, including Lemon Pepper Wings, Spicy Beef Salad, Steamed Snapper with Tamarind-Ginger Sauce, Cardamom Butter Rice with Sultanas, and Coconut Flan Infused with Star Anise. She unlocks the transformative power of homemade spice rubs, curry pastes, and sauces, as well as chutneys and pickles, enabling home cooks to bring new depth and dimension to their favorite dishes. With lush photography and a chapter identifying and defining key pantry ingredients and aromatics, The Spice Merchant’s Daughter both inspires and empowers, awakening the senses and unlocking the alluring world of spices.

A Love for All Seasons

Author: Denise Domning
Publisher: Topaz
ISBN: 9780451407047
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Book Description
A handsome apprentice falls in love with his master's breathtaking daughter, a young woman promised to another. The conflict between honor, duty and undeniable love slices with a razor's edge, bringing them ever closer to disaster, and bringing the reader back for more.

Spice

Author: Jack Turner
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307491226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
In this brilliant, engrossing work, Jack Turner explores an era—from ancient times through the Renaissance—when what we now consider common condiments were valued in gold and blood. Spices made sour medieval wines palatable, camouflaged the smell of corpses, and served as wedding night aphrodisiacs. Indispensible for cooking, medicine, worship, and the arts of love, they were thought to have magical properties and were so valuable that they were often kept under lock and key. For some, spices represented Paradise, for others, the road to perdition, but they were potent symbols of wealth and power, and the wish to possess them drove explorers to circumnavigate the globe—and even to savagery. Following spices across continents and through literature and mythology, Spice is a beguiling narrative about the surprisingly vast influence spices have had on human desire. Includes eight pages of color photographs. One of the Best Books of the Year: Discover Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle

My Something Wonderful

Author: Jill Barnett
Publisher: Bell Bridge Books
ISBN: 0983180458
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Book Description
He took her from all she had ever known, asked her to trust him when she most needed someone to trust, and she followed with her heart, unaware he carried a dark secret that could tear them apart . . . . When a stranger, a golden knight who is one of the king's barons, comes to Glenna Gordon's isolated island farm, she learns her whole life has been a lie. Lyall Roberston, Baron Montrose, carries a secret royal order to take Glenna to the father she has never known, a man so powerful he has hidden his daughter away to protect her from his enemies. Raised in seclusion for her own safety, with no knowledge of who she really is, Glenna has become strong and self-reliant, someone who is unused to being ordered about. But Lyall doesn't have time to deal with one headstrong woman. He has a single, all-consuming goal: to win back his family lands lost when his father was declared a traitor. As they ride across the wild hills and valleys of Norman Scotland, a land filled with unexpected danger and treachery, they are swept into a forbidden love, one as dangerous as the enemies pursuing them. But Lyall is tortured by a dark past and a secret that threatens their love, and soon, Glenna must face the truth: that her heart as well as her life is at risk.

The Apothecary's Daughter

Author: Charlotte Betts
Publisher: Piatkus
ISBN: 0748124950
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
*The ebook bestseller* A story bursting with colour and flavour, perfect for fans of Susanna Gregory, Georgette Heyer and Joanne Harris 1665. Susannah Leyton has grown up behind the counter of her father's apothecary shop in bustling Fleet Street. A skilled student - the resinous scents of lavender, rosemary, liquorice and turpentine run in her blood - her father has granted her the freedom to pursue her considerable talents. But Susannah is dealt a shocking blow when her widowed father marries again, and her new step-mother seems determined to remove her from the apothecary shop for good. A proposal of marriage from the charming Henry Savage seems to offer Susannah an escape. But as the plague sweeps through London, tragedy strikes, and dark secrets in her husband's past begin to unfold. It will take all of Susannah's courage and passion to save herself from tragedy . . .

Pepper

Author: Marjorie Shaffer
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250021006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
Filled with anecdotes and fascinating information, "a spicy read indeed." (Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed the World) The perfect companion to Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History, Pepper illuminates the rich history of pepper for a popular audience. Vivid and entertaining, it describes the part pepper played in bringing the Europeans, and later the Americans, to Asia and details the fascinating encounters they had there. As Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds, said, "After reading Marjorie Shaffer's Pepper, you'll reconsider the significance of that grinder or shaker on your dining room table. The pursuit of this wizened berry with the bite changed history in ways you've never dreamed, involving extraordinary voyages, international trade, exotic locales, exploitation, brutality, disease, extinctions, and rebellions, and featuring a set of remarkable characters." From the abundance of wildlife on the islands of the Indian Ocean, which the Europeans used as stepping stones to India and the East Indies, to colorful accounts of the sultan of Banda Aceh entertaining his European visitors with great banquets and elephant fights, this fascinating book reveals the often surprising story behind one of mankind's most common spices.

Gold & Spices

Author: Jean Favier
Publisher: Holmes & Meier Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
"Eminent medievalist Jean Favier introduces and analyzes the political, social, moral, and economic milieux of the late Middle Ages that engendered Europe's transformation from feudalism to capitalism. ... Favier reveals that the ultimate consequence of this risk-taking was not merely the accumulation of wealth by such families as the Medici and the Fuggers, but the transposition of social and aesthetic values upon the populace, leading to the rise of the middle class."--Jacket.

The Spice Market's Symphony

Author: StoryBuddiesPlay
Publisher: StoryBuddiesPlay
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 113

Book Description
The Spice Market's Symphony Dive into the captivating world of "The Spice Merchant's Daughter," a gripping historical fiction novel set in the vibrant spice markets of 17th-century Alexandria. Follow the harrowing journey of a young woman from a wealthy merchant family whose life is shattered when her father is falsely accused of treason. As she is forced into hiding, she discovers a clandestine network of traders and spies working to undermine the Ottoman Empire's stranglehold on the spice trade. With danger lurking at every turn, she forms an unlikely alliance with a renegade Ottoman captain whose own motives are shrouded in mystery. This thrilling novel weaves together themes of betrayal, bravery, and intrigue against the backdrop of a richly detailed historical setting. Perfect for fans of historical fiction and suspense, "The Spice Merchant's Daughter" offers a riveting tale of resilience and the fight for justice. historical fiction, 17th-century Alexandria, Ottoman Empire, spice trade conspiracy, historical thriller, young woman protagonist, historical mystery, Alexandria spice markets, espionage novel, betrayal and justice

Cumin, Camels, and Caravans

Author: Gary Paul Nabhan
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520379241
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
Gary Paul Nabhan takes the reader on a vivid and far-ranging journey across time and space in this fascinating look at the relationship between the spice trade and culinary imperialism. Drawing on his own family’s history as spice traders, as well as travel narratives, historical accounts, and his expertise as an ethnobotanist, Nabhan describes the critical roles that Semitic peoples and desert floras had in setting the stage for globalized spice trade. Traveling along four prominent trade routes—the Silk Road, the Frankincense Trail, the Spice Route, and the Camino Real (for chiles and chocolate)—Nabhan follows the caravans of itinerant spice merchants from the frankincense-gathering grounds and ancient harbors of the Arabian Peninsula to the port of Zayton on the China Sea to Santa Fe in the southwest United States. His stories, recipes, and linguistic analyses of cultural diffusion routes reveal the extent to which aromatics such as cumin, cinnamon, saffron, and peppers became adopted worldwide as signature ingredients of diverse cuisines. Cumin, Camels, and Caravans demonstrates that two particular desert cultures often depicted in constant conflict—Arabs and Jews—have spent much of their history collaborating in the spice trade and suggests how a more virtuous multicultural globalized society may be achieved in the future.