I was looking at the calendar and realized that I had three blogs to do before Mother’s Day (Sunday, May 9) so I thought why not do some suggestions for “Yer Momma ‘n Dem”!!  These book suggestions hopefully will be a big hit with someone’s mom, grandmother and/or wife out there….

Savannah Style by Paula Deen and Brandon Branch

With its lush gardens, stately town houses, and sprawling plantations, Savannah is the epitome of old Southern style, and who better to give you the grand tour than Paula Deen, the city’s most famous resident and anointed Queen of Southern Cuisine?

In this gorgeous, richly illustrated book, Paula Deen shares a full year of Southern living. Whether it’s time to put out your best china and make a real fuss, or you’re just gathering for some sweet tea on the porch at dusk, Savannah style is about making folks feel welcome in your home. With the help of decorator and stylist Brandon Branch, you’ll learn how to bring a bit of Southern charm into homes from Minnesota to Mississippi. For each season, there are tips on decorating and entertaining. In the spring, you’ll learn how to make the most of your outdoor spaces, spruce up your porch, and make your garden inviting. In the summer, things get more casual with a dock party. Sleeping spaces, including, of course, the sleeping porch, are the focal point of this chapter. In the fall, cooler weather brings a return to more formal entertaining in the dining room, and in the winter, attention returns to the hearth, as Paula and her neighbors put out their best silver and show you how they celebrate the holidays.

Paula loves getting a peek at her neighbors’ parlors, so she’s included photographs of some of Savannah’s grandest homes. From the vast grounds of Lebanon Plantation to the whimsically restored cottages on Tybee Island, you’ll see the unique blend of old-world elegance and laid-back hospitality that charmed Paula the moment she arrived from Albany, Georgia, with nothing but two hundred dollars and a pair of mouths to feed. And she isn’t shy about giving you a window into her own world, either. From her farmhouse kitchen to her luxurious powder room, you’ll see how Paula lives when she’s not in front of the camera.

Packed with advice and nostalgia, Paula Deen’s Savannah Style makes it easy to bring gracious Southern living to homes north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Roses by Leila Meacham

East Texas, 1916 When precocious 16-year-old Mary Toliver inherits cotton plantation Somerset from her father, the first seeds of familial discontent are sown. By becoming the new mistress of Somerset, Mary betrays her mother Darla and her brother Miles, and the Toliver dynasty will never recover. And when Mary and timber magnate Percy Warwick decide not to marry, though fiercely in love, it is a decision which will have sad and tragic consequences not only for them but for generations of their families to come. Set against a panoramic backdrop, Roses is a heartbreaking love story of sex, scandal and seduction. It covers 100 years and three generations of Texans.

In the Green Kitchen by Alice Waters

Alice Waters has been a champion of the sustainable, local cooking movement for decades.  To Alice, good food is a right, not a privilege.  In the Green Kitchen presents her essential cooking techniques to be learned by heart plus more than 50 recipes—for delicious fresh, local, and seasonal meals—from Alice and her friends.  She demystifies the basics including steaming a vegetable, dressing a salad, simmering stock, filleting a fish, roasting a chicken, and making bread. An indispensable cookbook, she gives you everything you need to bring out the truest flavor that the best ingredients of the season have to offer.

Contributors:  Darina Allen, Dan Barber, Lidia Bastianich, Rick Bayless, Paul Bertolli, David Chang, Traci Des Jardins, Angelo Garro, Joyce Goldstein, Tanya Holland, Thomas Keller, Niloufer Ichaporia King, Peggy Knicherbocker, Jim Lahey, Deborah Madison, Clodagh McKenna, Jean-Pierre Moulle, Joan Nathan, Scott Peacock, Cal Peternell, Gilbert Pilgram, Claire Ptak, Oliver Rowe, Amaryll Schwertner, Fanny Singer, David Tanis, Bryant Terry and Anna Lappe, Poppy Tooker, Charlie Trotter, Jerome Waag, and Beth Wells.

Caught by Harlan Coben

17-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.

Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate—and nationally televised—sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined.

In a novel that challenges as much as it thrills, filled with the astonishing tension and unseen suburban machinations that have become Coben’s trademark, Caught tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who suddenly realizes she can’t trust her own instincts about this story—or the motives of the people around her.

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