Lessons from Madame Chic: 20 Stylish Secrets I Learned while Living in Paris is the offspring of author Jennifer Scott’s successful blog The Daily Connoisseur which is the result of a semester spent in France living with a French family while in college. Scott took her time to heart and shares with readers the French way of life and why it might be worth trying in ... Read More...
The Oracle Glass
A young girl with a particular, peculiar gift—the ability to read the future in a bowl of water, or, as it was known at the time, an oracle glass. Geneviève is not blessed in any of the ways important to girls in 17th century Paris. She has a club foot and a twisted spine so her mother sends her away shortly after her birth. It is only when her father discovers he has a ... Read More...
The Ruins of Lace
Sometimes the past has the power to devour the future. Sometimes, as the days grow shorter and more dreary, the only anecdote is a book that takes you far away and holds you there until the very last page. Ruins of Lace is just such a book. In the 1600s King Louis XIII banned the wearing of lace, making it the most desirable and dangerous commodity in the kingdom. The ... Read More...
White Truffles in Winter
Nothing speaks more accurately to the complexity of life than food. Whether you seldom eat in a restaurant or consider yourself to be a foodie, your life has been impacted by Auguste Escoffier, one of the most renowned chefs in the culinary world. His reign occurred during the mid-to-late 1800s when he oversaw the creation and management of the fine dining restaurants and ... Read More...
Suite Française
There are novels that come with a backstory so complex and heartrending the book itself can be overwhelmed. Irène Némirovsky, was a Ukrainian Jew living in Paris with her husband and two young daughters. She was a successful author and had written the first two parts of Suite Française in Paris during the German occupation. In 1942 at age 39 she would be sent to her death ... Read More...
