Download or read book Chasing Cezanne written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-07-03 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hanky-panky on the international art scene is the source of the hilarity and fizz in Peter Mayle's new novel. He flies us back to the south of France (a region some readers of his irresistible best-sellers believe him to have invented), on a wild chase through galleries, homes of prominent collectors, and wickedly delectable restaurants. There are stopovers in the Bahamas and England, and in New York, where that glossiest of magazines, Decorating Quarterly, reflects the cutting-edge trendiness of its editor, Camilla Jameson Porter. (Camilla has recently broken new ground in the world of power lunches by booking two tables on the same day, and shuttling between them, at the city's trendiest restaurant.) It is Camilla who has sent our hero, Andre Kelly, to Cap Ferrat to take glamorous photo-graphs of the houses and treasures of the rich, famous, and fatuous. He happens to have his camera at the ready when he spots a Cézanne being loaded onto a plumber's truck near the home of an absent collector. Odd, thinks Andre. And in no time he's on the trail of a state-of-the-art art scam, chasing Cézanne. It's a joy to follow him and the crowds intent on speeding or foiling his quest--including a beautiful agent; a super-savvy art dealer attracted to the finer things in life, especially if they promise the payoff of a lifetime; an awesome Dutch forger; some outstandingly greedy New York sophisticates; and, invisible in the background, the parade of remarkable chefs whose mouthwatering culinary masterpieces periodically soothe the hero and tantalize the reader of Chasing Cézanne.

Download or read book The Corsican Caper written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is Peter Mayle at his effervescent best—his master sleuth, Sam Levitt, eating, drinking, and romancing his way through the South of France even as he investigates a case of deadly intrigue among the Riviera’s jet set. Billionaire Francis Reboul is taking in the view at his coastal estate, awaiting the arrival of vacationing friends Sam Levitt and Elena Morales, when he spies a massive yacht whose passengers seem a little too interested in his property. The yacht belongs to rapacious Russian tycoon Oleg Vronsky, who, for his own purposes, will stop at nothing to obtain Reboul’s villa. When Reboul refuses to sell, Vronsky’s methods quickly turn unsavory. Now it’s up to Sam—he’s saved Reboul’s neck before—to negotiate with an underworld of mercenaries and hit men, not to mention the Corsican mafia, to prevent his friend from becoming a victim of Vronsky’s “Russian diplomacy.” The dire situation doesn’t stop Sam and Elena from attending glamorous fêtes where the wines and starlets alike sparkle, and enjoying sumptuous meals—from multicourse revelations to understated delights like the first asparagus of the season, on which one must make a wish. But as Sam’s sleuthing draws him closer to the truth of Vronsky’s schemes, he realizes Reboul might not be the only one unable to enjoy the good life for long. Brimming with entertaining twists, sparkling scenery, and mouthwatering gustatory interludes as only Peter Mayle can write them, The Corsican Caper is a one-way ticket to pleasure, Provençal style. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

Download or read book The Diamond Caper written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a Riviera socialite’s diamonds are stolen—the latest in a string of seemingly unconnected but increasingly audacious jewelry heists across France—Peter Mayle’s bon vivant and master sleuth, Sam Levitt, and his partner, Elena Morales, are soon on the case. In these “perfect crimes,” Sam sees the hand of a master criminal, but as he and Elena dig deeper, they begin to realize just how dangerous it may be to pursue the truth. In the midst of all the excitement, there’s a house to renovate, rosé to share, and feasts of the Provençal summer bounty to enjoy—giving The Diamond Caper all the hallmarks of another delightfully sun-splashed Peter Mayle adventure.

Download or read book The Vintage Caper written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-10-20 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A globetrotting detective story, filled with the culinary delights and entertaining characters from the national bestselling author of A Year in Provence and our most treasured chronicler of French life. “Wine and food aficionados will find much to savor.... Light, funny, and packed with a menu’s worth of scrumptious descriptions of exceptional dinners and drinks.” —USA Today The Vintage Caper begins high above Los Angeles with a world-class heist at the impressive wine cellar of lawyer Danny Roth. Enter Sam Levitt, former lawyer and wine connoisseur, who follows leads to Bordeaux and Provence. The unraveling of the ingenious crime is threaded through with Mayle’s seductive renderings of France’s sensory delights—from a fine Lynch-Bages to the bouillabaisse of Marseille—guaranteed to charm and inform even the most sophisticated palates.

Download or read book A Year in Provence written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days.

Download or read book Chasing Aphrodite written by Jason Felch and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “thrilling, well-researched” account of years of scandal at the prestigious Getty Museum (Ulrich Boser, author of The Gardner Heist). In recent years, several of America’s leading art museums have voluntarily given up their finest pieces of classical art to the governments of Italy and Greece. Why would they be moved to such unheard-of generosity? The answer lies at the Getty, one of the world’s richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it had been buying looted antiquities for decades. Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and candid interviews, these two journalists give us a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of a world-class museum, and tell a story of outlandish characters and bad behavior that could come straight from the pages of a thriller. “In an authoritative account, two reporters who led a Los Angeles Times investigation reveal the details of the Getty Museum’s illicit purchases, from smugglers and fences, of looted Greek and Roman antiquities. . . . The authors offer an excellent recap of the museum’s misdeeds, brimming with tasty details of the scandal that motivated several of America’s leading art museums to voluntarily return to Italy and Greece some 100 classical antiquities worth more than half a billion dollars.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “An astonishing and penetrating look into a veiled world where beauty and art are in constant competition with greed and hypocrisy. This engaging book will cast a fresh light on many of those gleaming objects you see in art museums.” —Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting

Download or read book A Good Year written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delightful, best-selling tale about the business and pleasure of wine, adapted into a Ridley Scott movie starring Russell Crowe and Marion Cotillard. Max Skinner has recently lost his job at a London financial firm and just as recently learned that he has inherited his late uncle’s vineyard in Provence. On arrival he finds the climate delicious, the food even better, and two of the locals ravishing. Unfortunately, the wine produced on his new property is swill. Why then are so many people interested in it? Enter a beguiling Californian who knows more about wine than Max does—and may have a better claim to the estate. Fizzy with intrigue, bursting with local color and savor, A Good Year is Peter Mayle, beloved author of A Year in Provence, at his most entertaining.

Download or read book The Marseille Caper written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lovable rogue and sleuth extraordinaire Sam Levitt is back in another beguiling, as-only-Peter-Mayle-can-write-it romp through the South of France. At the end of The Vintage Caper, Sam had just carried off a staggering feat of derring-do in the heart of Bordeaux, infiltrating the ranks of the French elite to rescue a stolen, priceless wine collection. With the questionable legality of the adventure—and the threat of some very powerful enemies!—Sam thought it’d be a while before he returned to France, especially with the charms of the beautiful Elena Morales to keep him in Los Angeles. But when the immensely wealthy Francis Reboul—the victim of Sam’s last heist but someone who knows talent when he sees it—asks our hero to take a job in Marseille, it’s impossible for Sam and Elena to resist the possibility of further excitement . . . to say nothing of the pleasures of the region. Soon the two are enjoying the coastal sunshine and the delectable food and wine for which Marseille is known. Yet as a competition over Marseille’s valuable waterfront grows more hotly disputed, Sam, representing Reboul, finds himself in the middle of an increasingly intrigue-ridden and dangerous real-estate grab, with thuggish gangsters on one side and sharklike developers on the other. Will Sam survive this caper unscathed? Will he live to enjoy another bowl of bouillabaisse? All will be revealed—with luck, savvy, and a lot of help from Sam’s friends—in the novel’s wonderfully satisfying climax.

Download or read book Cezanne s Parrot written by Amy Guglielmo and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspiring picture book biography of the artist Paul Cezanne, the painter who laid the groundwork for modern art and whom Pablo Picasso declared "the father of us all." All Cezanne wants is to be a great painter like his friends Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir. But when he shows his works, the professors, the critics, and the collectors all dismiss him: "Too flat!" "Too much paint!" "These are rough and unfinished!" Even his own pet parrot, Bisou, can't be brought to say, "Cezanne is a great painter!" And who can blame them? Cezanne doesn't care about tradition, and he doesn't follow the rules. He's painting in a way no one else has done before, creating something completely new--and he's destined to change the world of art forever. Cezanne's Parrot is a spirited celebration of creativity, determination, and perseverance--and the artist who would become known as the father of modern art.

Download or read book A Year in Provence Toujours Provence written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage Books. This book was released on 1993-10-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A boxed set containing Mayle's best-selling A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence offers a colorful study of the people, landscapes, and life-styles of Provence. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Download or read book Encore Provence written by Peter Mayle and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2000-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ENCORE PROVENCE continues the account of an Englishman's life abroad. Among other curiosities, explore a school for noses in Haute Provence, the mysterious death of an oversexed butcher, the quest for the finest bouillabaisse and an assortment of the characters who lie in wait in bars and on boules courts. And, of course, the essential importance of lunch. BON APPETIT!

Download or read book Joel Meyerowitz C zanne s Objects written by Joel Meyerowitz and published by Damiani Limited. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in a limited edition of 25 copies, this elegant boxed volume presents Joel Meyerowitz' masterful color photographs of C�zanne's Atelier and the objects, and includes a photograph signed and numbered by the artist. Some years ago, Meyerowitz visited C�zanne's studio in Provence, and experienced a flash of understanding about his art. C�zanne had painted the walls a dark gray, mixing the color himself. Consequently, every object in the studio seemed to be absorbed into the gray of the background. Meyerowitz saw how C�zanne thus flattened perspective. He decided to take each of the objects in the studio and view them against the gray wall. He then arranged them in rows, and made a photographic grid of five rows with five objects on each row. These photographs are at once marvelous photographic still lifes and an incredible revelation of C�zanne's methods

Download or read book Chasing Matisse written by James Morgan and published by Free Press. This book was released on 2009-03-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who hasn't had the fanthasy of leaving his or her old life behind to start over? What would happen if you gave up your job, city, state, and routine to move to another part of the world? Critically acclaimed writer and aspiring painter James Morgan does just that. Risking everything, he and his wife shed their old, settled life in a lovingly restored house in Little Rock, Arkansas, to travel in the footsteps of Morgan's hero, the painter Henri Matisse, and to find inspiration in Matisse's fierce struggle to live the life he knew he had to live. Part memoir, part travelogue, and part biography of Matisse, Chasing Matisse proves that you don't have to be wealthy to live the life you want; you just have to want it enough. Morgan's riveting journey of self-discovery takes him, and us, from the earthy, brooding Picardy of Matisse's youth all the way to the luminous Nice of the painter's final years. In between, Morgan confronts, with the notebook of a journalist and the sketchpad of an artist, the places that Matisse himself saw and painted: bustling, romantic Paris; windswept Belle-île off the Brittany coast; Corsica, with its blazing southern light; the Pyrénees village of Collouire, where color became explosive in Matisse's hands; exotic Morocco, land of the secret interior life; and across the sybaritic French Riviera to spiritual Vence and the hillside Villa Le Rêve -- the Dream -- where the mature artist created so many of his masterpieces. A journey from darkness to light, Chasing Matisse shows us how we can learn to see ourselves, others, and the world with fresh eyes. We look with Morgan out of some of the same windows through which Matisse himself found his subjects and take great heart from Matisse's indomitable, life-affirming spirit. For Matisse, living was an art, and he never stopped striving, never stopped creating, never stopped growing, never stopped reinventing himself. "The artist," he said, "must look at everything as though he were seeing it for the first time." That's the inspiring message of renewal that comes through on every page of Chasing Matisse. Funny, sad, and defiantly hopeful, this is a book that restores our faith in the possibility of dreams.

Download or read book How Proust Can Change Your Life written by Alain de Botton and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-02-23 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘What a marvellous book this is . . . de Botton dissects what [Proust] had to say about friendship, reading, looking carefully, paying attention taking your time, being alive and adds his own delicious commentary. The result is an intoxicating as it is wise, amusing as well as stimulating, and presented in so fresh a fashion as to be unique . . . I could not stop, and now much start all over again.’ Brian Masters, Mail on Sunday ‘De Botton not only has a complete understanding of Proust’s life . . . but what is particularly charming about this small, readable book is its tongue-in-cheek benignity, its lightly held erudition and its generous way of lending itself to what is not only the greatest book of the century but also the darkest and the most eccentric’ Edmund White, Observer ‘It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction . . . de Botton, in emphasizing Proust’s healing, advisory aspects, does us the service of rereading him on our behalf, providing of that vast sacred lake a sweet and lucid distillation.’ John Updike, New Yorker ‘De Botton’s little book is so charming, amusing and sensible that it may even itself change your life.’ Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph ‘This engaging book is one of the most entertaining pieces of literary criticism I have read in a long while.’ Sunday Telegraph ‘A very enjoyable book’ Sebastian Faulks

Download or read book Seeking C zanne written by Ted Macaluso and published by Owls Cove Press. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jamie and her brother Billy are trapped inside a painting, they want nothing more than to get back to the real museum. But every time they try going back, the museum disappears. They need to find Paul Cézanne to reveal the trick to getting home--and that's not easy. To find him, they need to learn how to experience and appreciate artistic works. Journey with the siblings as they step into a world of art and adventure. The two children navigate among several styles of painting by artists from six countries. In the form of a mystery, Jamie and Billy learn to recognize the work of Paul Cézanne as compared to Claude Monet, Isaac Levitan, and others. The book is exciting on its own and can also support a student’s understanding of the National Core Arts Standards. Grades 2 to 4.

Download or read book A Dog s Life written by Peter Mayle and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-07-03 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once upon a time in Provence, Peter Mayle adopted a dog of uncertain origins and dubious hunting skills and gave him a name—Boy. Now he gives this canny canine a voice in an irresistible “memoir” that proves that the best vantage point for observing life may well be on all fours. As Boy recounts his progress from an overcrowded maternal bosom to unchallenged mastery of the Mayle household, he tells us why dogs are drawn to humans (“our most convenient support system”) and chickens (“that happy combination of sport and nourishment”). We share in his amorous dalliances, his run-ins with French plumbers and cats, and in the tidbits (both conversational and edible) of his owners’ dinner parties. Enhanced by fifty-nine splendidly whimsical drawings by Edward Koren, A Dog’s Life gives us all the delights we expect from any book by Peter Mayle—pedigree prose, biting wit, and a keen nose for the fragrance of civilization—together with the insouciant wisdom of which only a dog (and probably only Peter Mayle’s dog) is capable.

Download or read book Bowker s Guide to Characters in Fiction 2007 written by and published by . This book was released on 2008-02 with total page 3004 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: