29 best-known placemat patterns taken from now rare instruction booklets published some thirty years ago include Modern Squares, Americana, Fisherman’s Lace, 26 others. All stitches used to make placemats explained in diagrams. Instructions. 47 illustrations.

Paris, 1947: Colette Rossant returns to Paris after waiting out World War II in Cairo among her father's Egyptian-Jewish relatives. Initially, the City of Light seems gray and forbidding to the teenage Colette, especially after her thrill-seeking mother leaves her in the care of her bitter, malaisé grandmother. Yet Paris will prove the place where Colette awakens to her senses. Taken under the wing of Mademoiselle Georgette, the family chef, she develops a taste and talent for French cooking. The streets of Paris soon become Colette's own as she navigates the outdoor markets and café menus and emerges into her new, gastronomical self. Return to Paris is an extraordinary coming-of-age story that charts the course of Colette's culinary adventures -- replete with expertly crafted recipes and family photographs. An exploration of passion in all its flavor and texture, Colette's memoir will live in the hearts and palates of readers for years to come.

Cairo, 1937: French-born Colette Rossant is waiting out World War II among her father's Egyptian-Jewish relatives. From the moment she arrives at her grandparents' belle époque mansion by the Nile, the five-year-old Colette finds companionship and comfort among the other "outsiders" in her home away from home -- the cooks and servants in the kitchen. The chef, Ahmet, lets Colette taste the ful; she learns how to make sambusaks for her new friends; and she shops for semits and other treats in the Khan-al-Khalili market. Colette is beginning to understand how her family's culture is linked to the kitchen...and soon she will claim Egypt's food, landscape, and people as her own. Apricots on the Nile is a loving testament to Colette's adopted homeland. With dozens of original recipes and family photographs, Colette's coming-of-age memoir is a splendid exploration of old Cairo in all its flavor, variety, and wide-eyed wonder.

This book was written primarily as a legacy to the author's family. She was born in Egypt and grew up in Cairo in the 1950's in a secular Jewish community which had its own unique customs and traditions. In its apogee, the community numbered 80,000 people. They all left or were expelled between 1948 and 1967 and there are now only a handful of Jews still living in Egypt. In the book, she shares memories of her childhood and describes in great detail a way of life which no longer exists. She evokes the scents snd smells of the busy Cairo streets and describes the local people she came into contact with every day. Jewish and Muslim festivals, mores, customs and superstitions are recounted anecdotally. She also talks about her experience as a refugee in England, initially living in a hostel in Gloucestershire and then settling in London. Apart from her father, her family did not speak English, so learning a new language, battling with the harsh English winter and adapting to a new culture had its difficulties. Her family, like most refugees, surmounted all these with a great deal of resilience and determination. She describes herself as British, but confesses to still feeling somewhat uprooted, even after all these years.

This richly colored memoir chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family, from its bold arrival in cosmopolitan Alexandria to its defeated exodus three generations later. In elegant and witty prose, André Aciman introduces us to the marvelous eccentrics who shaped his life--Uncle Vili, the strutting daredevil, soldier, salesman, and spy; the two grandmothers, the Princess and the Saint, who gossip in six languages; Aunt Flora, the German refugee who warns that Jews lose everything "at least twice in their lives." And through it all, we come to know a boy who, even as he longs for a wider world, does not want to be led, forever, out of Egypt.

Revelations in Egyptology, based on the diaries of Dorothy Eady, better known as Omm Sety. Omm Sety, a brilliant, adventuring Englishwoman, worked under some of the greatest Egyptologists of the 20th century and "saw" into the past. Hers is a story of ancient love - of gods, pyramids, pharaohs and queens, and treasures that wait beneath the sand. In Omm Sety's Egypt, the authors present never-before-seen episodes from her truly incredible life, including important revelations about Egypt's lost history. Hanny el Zeini was her close friend during the many years she lived in the ancient holy city of Abydos. It was a friendship filled with star-lit evenings among the ruins of ancient temples, speaking of the mysteries of this land they both loved. Dr. el Zeini was her trusted confidant to whom she revealed her secret other life in 19th Dynasty Egypt. Shortly before her death in 1981, she gave him her diaries, which chronicled her life in two worlds. Drawing on Omm Sety's diaries and on hundreds of hours of recorded conversations and Dr. el Zeini's own writings, co-author Catherine Dees brings this extraordinary material together into a story that asks the reader to suspend disbelief and enter into the mystery that was Omm Sety.

Bestselling novelist Margaret George brings to life the glittering kingdom of Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, in this lush, sweeping, and richly detailed saga, the basis for the Cleopatra TV mini-series. Told in Cleopatra's own voice, The Memoirs of Cleopatra is a mesmerizing tale of ambition, passion, and betrayal in the ancient Egyptian world, which begins when the twenty-year-old queen seeks out the most powerful man in the world, Julius Caesar, and does not end until, having survived the assassination of Caesar and the defeat of the second man she loves, Marc Antony, she plots her own death rather than be paraded in triumph through the streets of Rome. Most of all, in its richness and authenticity, it is an irresistible story that reveals why Margaret George's work has been widely acclaimed as "the best kind of historical novel, one the reader can't wait to get lost in." (San Francisco Chronicle).

Mitsrayim enthralls the reader with spiritual themes and exotic settings. Ms. Anderson is one of the best writers that I have read at marrying the characters to the action. --By Thomas Martin, Crossings and Reflections, Suite101.com Anderson takes a persuasive and passionate approach in the area of reincarnation; she outlines her journey during ancient times. Her past life details a Queen of the land now being called Egypt. From the very beginning, Anderson uses her in-depth research to introduce many phenomenal spiritual experiences and a multitude of characters that unravel through flashbacks of lost memories. Chapter 5... Profound Thought Creates a New Reality ... Mitsrayim represents the love of culture and history, as well as the unknown spiritual power of human beings on earth. Anderson's masterful skill of presentation delivers a compelling story of the belief in reincarnation and The Mystery School of Thought in Mitsrayim (Egypt). The incredible events that led The Great Ancients of the past, and the many visitors from the skies through this mystical time are brought to an explosive conclusion by her amazing recitation. The memoir theme is a life-changing event leaving an impression of spiritual growth that will leave you questioning the unknown. Anderson opens up her soul to reveal her journey through one of her many lifetimes.

The first time Melanie Ross meets April Hall, she’s not sure they have anything in common. But she soon discovers that they both love anything to do with ancient Egypt. When they stumble upon a deserted storage yard, Melanie and April decide it’s the perfect spot for the Egypt Game. Before long there are six Egyptians, and they all meet to wear costumes, hold ceremonies, and work on their secret code. Everyone thinks it’s just a game until strange things start happening. Has the Egypt Game gone too far?

“Poignant . . . deeply personal . . . an indelible history of the largely forgotten Jews of Egypt . . . ” —Miami Herald In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything, and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind. An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado’s memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph.