Jem, Ned and Billy are three urchins scraping a living off the dirty streets of Victorian London.

This is an inspirational guide to baking from the winner of 'The Great British Bake Off 2010'. From the traditional to new twists on old favourites there are recipes to suit all abilities. The book covers cakes, cookies, pastry, desserts, and even ice-creams.

In the eighth of the River Cottage Handbook series, Pam Corbin offers an appealing guide to baking perfect cakes Baking is the most comforting and entirely satisfying of the culinary arts - making a cake is not only a sumptuous process in its own right but the end result is entirely delicious. Pam Corbin offers the voice of experience, setting out basic techniques and recipes that will guarantee success. This is traditional baking at its very best, with over 75 adaptable recipes including Macaroons, Meringues, Fairy Cakes (and their counterpart - Gnome Cakes), the classic Victoria Sandwich, Rhubarb Pudding Cake, Walnut Cake, Banana Breakfast Muffins, Orange Cake with Earl Grey Icing, and the glorious Battenberg Cake with its distinctive pink and yellow checks. As a finishing touch, there is a section devoted to sweet embellishments like feather icing, crystallised violets and chocolate leaves. Say goodbye to sinking sponges and brittle brownies with this comprehensive guide to the heavenly world of cake making, introduced by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Hailed as "one of the three finest wits of her day," the Countess Elizabeth von Arnim cemented her literary reputation with this companion work to her extraordinarily popular first novel, the semi-autobiographical Elizabeth and Her German Garden (also available from Cosimo Classics). First published in 1899, this is a proto-feminist account of one woman's attempt to carve out of a space of her own-away from the husband she only half jokingly refers to as her "Man of Wrath"-in the rambling gardens of the family's county estate. By turns bitingly satirical and achingly lovely, this will delight fans of von Armin's friends and fellow writers E.M. Forster and Katherine Mansfield. British novelist ELIZABETH VON ARNIM (1866-1941) is also the author of Enchanted April.

Selected for Jamie Oliver's Cookbook Club ‘I love it. As soon as I opened this, I felt it was Christmas.’ – Diana Henry Advent celebrates the magical run-up to Christmas with over 100 classic German baking recipes. The Advent season is one of the most special times of the year, when candles twinkle, the Christmas tree is decorated, and the smells of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove fill the kitchen. In her new cookbook Advent, Anja Dunk shares her recipes for the very best of traditional German festive bakes. From lightly spiced Lebkuchen, frosted cinnamon stars, jam-filled ginger hearts, snow-capped coconut macaroons, to marzipan-filled Stollen, edible tree decorations, lucky meringue mushrooms and a gingerbread house dripping with candies and sugar icicles, you will find delectable spiced treats to fill your Bunter Teller and share with friends and family. Featuring Anja’s own linocut illustrations and evocative photography, this is a stunning, comforting clothbound volume that will be a family favourite for many years to come. The weeks of Advent hold all the sweet, almost unbearable anticipation of Christmas for days on end and this gorgeous book embraces that fairy-tale feeling within its pages.

'The food is creative, beautifully presented and exciting.' Guardian 'To us, the fact our cooking is vegetarian is incidental - we just like to eat good food. We love to reinvent classic dishes, create new flavour combinations, source unusual ingredients and occasionally we use a microwave because well, why not?' From the start, Andrew and Donna's rule was, no pasta bake and no vegetable curry. They set up Vanilla Black as a restaurant with a mission - to reinvent expectations about what it means to eat vegetarian food. It's all about the flavour, the first bite that intrigues, the surprising, the unusual, the recipes your friends will want to steal. From Jerusalem artichoke, white wine and thyme pie to a reinvention of classic tomatoes on toast, from Savoy cabbage pudding to broad bean and lemon cheesecake, from smoky baked beans to Marmite new potatoes, and from parsnip cake with Horlicks frosting to cherry Bakewell tart with marzipan custard, this surprising and inventive cookbook will change the way you think about food - and leave you wanting more. Vanilla Black restaurant is co-owned by Andrew Dargue, head chef, and his partner Donna Conroy, who runs front of house. www.vanillablack.co.uk @vanillablack1

THE ROMAN MYSTERIES meets Sherlock Holmes! In the mean streets of Victorian London lies the body of wealthy Mr Montgomery. The police must move fast to catch his killer. They need an insider, someone streetwise, cunning, bold . . . someone like Alfie. When Inspector Denham makes him an offer he can't refuse, it's up to Alfie and his gang to sift clues, shadow suspects and negotiate a sinister world of double-dealing and danger - until the shocking truth is revealed. The first action-packed adventure in THE LONDON MURDER MYSTERIES series.

IACP AWARD FINALIST • The expert baker and bestselling author behind the Magnolia Network original series Zoë Bakes explores her favorite dessert—cakes!—with more than 85 recipes to create flavorful and beautiful layers, loafs, Bundts, and more. “Zoë’s relentless curiosity has made her an artist in the truest sense of the word.”—Joanna Gaines, co-founder of Magnolia NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME OUT Cake is the ultimate symbol of celebration, used to mark birthdays, weddings, or even just a Tuesday night. In Zoë Bakes Cakes, bestselling author and expert baker Zoë François demystifies the craft of cakes through more than eighty-five simple and straightforward recipes. Discover treats such as Coconut–Candy Bar Cake, Apple Cake with Honey-Bourbon Glaze, and decadent Chocolate Devil’s Food Cake. With step-by-step photo guides that break down baking fundamentals—like creaming butter and sugar—and Zoë’s expert knowledge to guide you, anyone can make these delightful creations. Featuring everything from Bundt cakes and loaves to a beautifully layered wedding confection, Zoë shows you how to celebrate any occasion, big or small, with delicious homemade cake.

Between the Acts is the final novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1941 shortly after her suicide. This is a book laden with hidden meaning and allusion. It describes the mounting, performance, and audience of a festival play (hence the title) in a small English village just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Much of it looks forward to the war, with veiled allusions to connection with the continent by flight, swallows representing aircraft, and plunging into darkness. The pageant is a play within a play, representing a rather cynical view of English history. Woolf links together many different threads and ideas - a particularly interesting technique being the use of rhyme words to suggest hidden meanings. Relationships between the characters and aspects of their personalities are explored. The English village bonds throughout the play through their differences and similarities. Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English writer who is considered one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

A murder in her quaint British bookshop drops American Gothic novelist Penelope Parish into her deadliest caper yet. Penelope Parish is ready to close the book on her amateur sleuthing—from now on, The Open Book’s writer-in-residence will be sticking to villains of the fictional variety while she puts the final touches on her new novel. But when an author is murdered inside the bookshop, all of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke goes on high alert. Now it’s up to Pen and the quirky citizens of Chumley to stop a killer and protect the charming British town she’s begun to call home.