Meet the man who will go to any length in search of a good meal. Popular food blogger and Kalyan Karmakar has spent a lifetime being obsessed with food. In The Travelling Belly, he takes you on a delectable journey through the crowded lanes of India?s food havens, guiding you towards the good, and veering you away from the bad and the ugly of India?s multifarious urban foodscapes. Join him as he traces the many intricacies of the true-blue Bengali mahabhoj in Kolkata; dives deep into the kebab-laden alleys of Old Delhi; quests for the original Tunday in Lucknow; tracks down the crispiest kulchas in Amritsar and digs out the perfect Bohri meal in Mumbai. From sampling the biryani in Hyderabad to falling in love with the dosa in Chennai; from uncovering the best breakfast in Bangalore to getting to the heart of the home-cooked Goan meal, Kalyan?s food journeys will take you on a sensory experience that is as delicious as it is revelatory. Flavoured with the characteristic candour that his blog, Finely Chopped, is famous for, The Travelling Belly comes with recommendations from master chefs and food writers across India, providing a fascinating taste of the smorgasbord that is India?s cuisine and reaffirming how in India, more than anywhere else in the world, we are what we eat.

She was the daughter of a poor Russian family who escaped the horrors of communism by coming to America. Her new world desires conflicted with her old world father’s beliefs and the strains were devastating—both attempted suicide. But life prevailed and against all odds she was determined to follow her dream: become a classical ballet dancer. At sixteen, she was offered a dancing job in Las Vegas. Can you imagine her shock when she learned that the job was not for ballet, but for belly dancing?! What would her father say?! At first she rejected, then thought “why not?” This offer opened many doors through which she starred in her own Las Vegas show, many TV shows, and movies! She was wined and dined by Hollywood’s elite including kings and moguls in this touching, revealing and intriguing story. I know how it all happened—because this is my story.

In Pork Belly Tacos with a Side of Anxiety, Yvonne Castañeda shares vibrant stories of her childhood growing up in Miami as the daughter of humble immigrants from Mexico and Cuba . . . and how she came to develop an unhealthy relationship with food. To help ease her mami’s nervios, Yvonne becomes a perfectionist from a young age, achieving high grades at school and mastering the piano. But as her Cuban family members openly make comments about her awkward desarrollo, or puberty, Yvonne enters a new phase of self-consciousness that begins her obsession with weight. She abandons the piano for the high school cheerleading team, and reinvents herself, becoming both skinny and popular. However, as a first-generation adolescent born in the United States, Yvonne wrestles with the conflict between the cultural norms of her Hispanic/Latino heritage and American societal expectations. Plagued by doubt and low self-esteem, Yvonne begins a vicious cycle of weight gain and loss, as she battles Bulimia Nervosa. Beleaguered by feelings of guilt, shame, and inferiority, she develops anxiety, depression, and a reliance on dangerous coping mechanisms. Ultimately, sage advice from her dear abuela in Guadalajara, Mexico, guides Yvonne to a realization that shifts her perspective of herself and the purpose of her life, providing a foundation for inner peace, and la solución to her past struggles.

The Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris) is the third novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart, first published in 1873. It is a novel of the teeming life which surrounds the great central markets of Paris. The book was originally translated into English by Henry Vizetelly and published in 1888 under the title Fat and Thin. After Vizetelly's imprisonment for obscene libel the novel was one of those revised and expurgated by his son, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. The heroine is Lisa Quenu, a daughter of Antoine Macquart. She has become prosperous, and with prosperity her selfishness has increased. Her brother-in-law Florent had escaped from penal servitude in Cayenne and lived for a short time in her house, but she became tired of his presence and ultimately denounced him to the police. Émile Zola (1840 – 1902) was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France.

A gorgeous 9-month journal for a mother-to-be.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Dakota Fanning Like Brick Lane and The Kite Runner, Camilla Gibb’s widely praised new novel is a poignant and intensely atmospheric look beyond the stereotypes of Islam. After her hippie British parents are murdered, Lilly is raised at a Sufi shrine in Morocco. As a young woman she goes on pilgrimage to Harar, Ethiopia, where she teaches Qur’an to children and falls in love with an idealistic doctor. But even swathed in a traditional headscarf, Lilly can’t escape being marked as a foreigner. Forced to flee Ethiopia for England, she must once again confront the riddle of who she is and where she belongs.

On a beautiful day in Bakersfield, Brian Bigalow, his brother Brent and their sister Belinda wake to find that their belly buttons have been burgled! Accompanied by their British bulldog Barry, the Bigalows begin their search for the thieves who had borrowed their buttons. To their surprise, they discover The Belly Button Bandits, a group of bullying buccaneers who steal children’s belly buttons and hold them for ransom. Join the Bigalows in an exciting adventure through Bakersfield and be on the lookout for other hidden objects that begin with the letter B!

“Showcases the extremes of one of the world’s capitals. From ghost stories, to historical thrills, to underworld brutality . . . endlessly fascinating.”—CrimeReads Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. In Hong Kong Noir, fourteen of the city’s finest authors explore the dark heart of the Pearl of the Orient in haunting stories of depravity and despair. This anthology includes brand-new stories by Jason Y. Ng, Xu Xi, Marshall Moore, Brittani Sonnenberg, Tiffany Hawk, James Tam, Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang, Christina Liang, Feng Chi-shun, Charles Philipp Martin, Shannon Young, Shen Jian, Carmen Suen, and Ysabelle Cheung. “The history of Hong Kong, once a fishing village, encompasses piracy, the opium trade, prostitution, corruption, espionage and revolutionary plots; grist for the 14 dark tales in Hong Kong Noir.”—BBC Culture “A delightfully dark collection of fiction from Hong Kong, a city where talk is cheap and cash is still king.”—Ritz-Carlton Magazine “Ng and Blumberg-Kason defy the fates by presenting a collection of 14 stores—by Chinese tradition, an ominous number—illustrating their city’s dark side . . . Readers can feel lucky to have such a collection.”—Kirkus Reviews "Hong Kong Noir digs below the financial center’s gleaming surface to unearth stories of the city’s ghosts and spirits.”—South China Morning Post

"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village where the movies from his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs, which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Coma, and Doldrum. At best his search led him to Anywhere, USA, a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by obese and slow-witted hicks with a partiality for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost: lost to itself because he found it blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a foreigner in his own country.

For two weeks a year, Aimee's life is the traveling carnival that visits her small town in Minnesota. She meets carnie boy Kestrel, and year after year, their friendship grows. But childhood can't last forever.