A memoir and manifesto from the world’s most Michelin starred chef, Alain Ducasse, with introductions by internationally renowned writer Jay McInerney and chef Clare Smyth.  At twelve years old, Alain Ducasse had never been to a restaurant. Less than fifteen years later, he received his first Michelin star. Today he is one of just two chefs to have been awarded twenty-one stars.  Now, for the very first time, Ducasse shares a lifetime of culinary inspirations and passions in a book that is part memoir and part manifesto. Good Taste takes us on a journey from his childhood, where he picked mushrooms with his grandfather on a farm in Les Landes, to setting up groundbreaking schools and restaurants across the world. He is now taking off his chef’s whites and passing on what he knows to the next generation.  Ducasse writes a poignant ode to the humble vegetables that have inspired his entire cuisine and to the masters that guided him along the way, from Paris to New York to Tokyo. As he looks to the future, he reflects on just what ‘good taste’ means.

'A brilliant and moving work - unique, refreshing, imaginatively powerful' New York Times You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might become clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not... So begins our nameless hero's trawl through the brightly lit streets of Manhattan, sampling all this wonderland has to offer yet suspecting that tomorrow's hangover may be caused by more than simple excess. Bright Lights, Big City is an acclaimed classic which marked Jay McInerney as one of the major writers of our time.

'Stylish observation ...Suspenseful and well told' Lionel Shriver, Financial Times It is 2008 and Russell and Corrine Calloway have spent half their lives in the bright lights of New York. Obama and Clinton are fighting for leadership and the collapse of Lehman Brothers looms. Meanwhile, Russell is running his own publishing company, and clinging to their downtown loft; Corrine manages a charity, and is desperate to move somewhere with more space for their twins. Although they try to forget each other's past indiscretions, when Jeff Pierce's posthumous novel gathers a new cult following, the memory of their friend begins to haunt the couple. Then, with devastating timing, Corrine's former lover makes an unexpected reappearance...

First published in Paris in 1955, and originally banned in the United States, J. P. Donleavy's first novel is now recognized the world over as a masterpiece and a modern classic of the highest order. Set in Ireland just after World War II, "The Ginger Man" is J. P. Donleavy's wildly funny, picaresque classic novel of the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne'er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin. He barely has time for his studies and avoids bill collectors, makes love to almost anything in a skirt, and tries to survive without having to descend into the bottomless pit of steady work. Dangerfield's appetite for women, liquor, and general roguishness is insatiable--and he satisfies it with endless charm.

Originally published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1988, and now reissued by Grove Press, The Story of My Life by Jay McInerney is a hilarious, sobering portrait of 1980s New York City featuring twenty-something actress Alison Poole and her coterie of club-hopping, coke-addicted friends. In this breathlessly paced novel, McInerney revisits the nocturnal New York of Bright Lights, Big City. Alison Poole is a budding actress already fatally well versed in hopping the clubs, shopping Chanel, falling in and out of lust, and abusing other people's credit cards. As Alison races toward emotional breakdown, McInerney gives us a funny yet oddly touching portrait of a postmodern Holly Golightly coming to terms with a world in which everything is permitted and nothing really matters.

_______________ 'A shrewd, acidic portrait of literary life in Manhattan at the turn of this already frightful century' - Guardian 'A beautiful, affecting novel, one of the best yet inspired by 9/11' - Sunday Telegraph 'Engrossing from start to finish, this compassionate novel depicts a very human response to tragedy' - Mail on Sunday _______________ Jay McInerney's classic novel of New York in the shadow of 9/11 tells a story of love, family and conflicting desires Ten years on from Brightness Falls, Russell Calloway is still a literary editor; his wife Corrine has sacrificed her career to watch anxiously over their children. Across town Luke McGavock, a wealthy ex-investment banker, is taking a sabbatical from moneymaking, struggling to reconnect with his socially resplendent wife Sasha and their angst-ridden teenage daughter, Ashley. These two Manhattan families are teetering on the brink of change when 9/11 happens. Through the lens of catastrophe, The Good Life explores that territory between hope and despair, love and loss, regret and fulfilment. This is Jay McInerney doing what he does best, presenting us with life in New York City, in all its moral complexity. _______________

Photographer Christophe von Hohenberg's photographs give the impression of squinting against the glaring summer sun-bleached out details blur and feint gestures carve out the presence of figures against the vast oceanic expanse. Allowing himself to be "blinded by the light" von Hohenberg has found harmony on the beaches of the Hamptons, a place that cleanses, renews, and soothes. As delicate smears and ghostly shapes flesh out the familiar yet distant dreamscape of the beaches, von Hohenberg's photographs intimate an ineffable feeling-haunting, serene, and sublime. The White Album of the Hamptons provides a visual record of von Hohenberg's experiment in capturing the soul of the Hamptons and its unseen world of transcendent illumination through black-and-white photographs.

A colourful, multi-facted chronicle of New York in the early 1920s, Manhattan Transfer ranks with Joyce's Ulysses as a powerful and often lyrical meditation on the modern city. Using experimental montage and collage techniques borrowed from the cinema, and the jumbled case histories of a picaresque range of characters from dockside crapshooters to high-society flappers, Dos Passos constructs a brilliant picture of New York City as a great futuristic machine filled with motion, drama and human tragedy.

Country & Townhouse's Best Book for Christmas, 2018 A delectable anthology celebrating the finest writing on wine. In this richly literary anthology, Jay McInerney - bestselling novelist and acclaimed wine columnist for Town & Country, the Wall Street Journal and House and Garden - selects over twenty pieces of memorable fiction and nonfiction about the making, selling and, of course, drinking of fine wine. Including excerpts from novels, short fiction, memoir and narrative nonfiction, Wine Reads features big names in the trade and literary heavyweights alike. We follow Kermit Lynch to the Northern Rhone, while long-time New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling raises feeding and imbibing on a budget in Paris into something of an art form. Michael Dibdin's fictional Venetian detective Aurelio Zen gets a lesson in Barolo, Barbaresco and Brunello vintages from an eccentric celebrity, and writer and gourmet Joseph Wechsberg visits the medieval Chateau d'Yquem to sample different years of the roi des vins. Also showcasing an iconic scene from Rex Pickett's Sideways and work by Jancis Robinson, Roald Dahl, Auberon Waugh and McInerney himself, this is an essential volume for any disciple of Bacchus.

"Ransom," Jay McInerney's second novel, belongs to the distinguished tradition of novels about exile. Living in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, Christopher Ransom seeks a purity and simplicity he could not find at home, and tries to exorcise the terror he encountered earlier in his travels--a blur of violence and death at the Khyber Pass.
Ransom has managed to regain control, chiefly through the rigors of karate. Supporting himself by teaching English to eager Japanese businessmen, he finds company with impresario Miles Ryder and fellow expatriates whose headquarters is Buffalo Rome, a blues-bar that satisfies the hearty local appetite for Americana and accommodates the drifters pouring through Asia in the years immediately after the fall of Vietnam.
Increasingly, Ransom and his circle are threatened, by everything they thought they had left behind, in a sequence of events whose consequences Ransom can forestall but cannot change.
Jay McInerney details the pattern of adventure and disillusionment that leads Christopher Ransom toward an inevitable reckoning with his fate--in a novel of grand scale and serious implications.

In this richly literary anthology, Jay McInerney--bestselling novelist and acclaimed wine columnist for Town & Country, Wall Street Journal, and House and Garden--selects over twenty pieces of memorable fiction and nonfiction about the making, selling, and of course, drinking of fine wine. Including excerpts from novels, short fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction, Wine Reads features big names in the trade and literary heavyweights alike. We follow Kermit Lynch to the Northern Rhone in a chapter from his classic Adventures on the Wine Route. In an excerpt from Between Meals, long-time New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling raises feeding and imbibing on a budget in Paris into something of an art form--and discovers a very good rose from just west of the Rhone. Michael Dibdin's fictional Venetian detective Aurelio Zen gets a lesson in Barolo, Barbaresco, and Brunello vintages from an eccentric celebrity. In real life, and over half a century ago, Jewish-Czech writer and gourmet Joseph Wechsberg visits the medieval Chateau d'Yquem to sample different years of the "roi des vins" alongside a French connoisseur who had his first taste of wine at age four. Also showcasing an iconic scene from Rex Pickett's Sideways and work by Jancis Robinson, Benjamin Wallace, and McInerney himself, this is an essential volume for any disciple of Bacchus.

Corrine Calloway is a young stockbroker on Wall Street, her husband Russell an underpaid but ambitious publishing editor. The happily married couple head into New York's 1980s gold rush, awash with prospects and promise, where the best and brightest vie with the worst and most craven for riches, fame and the love of beautiful people. But the Calloways soon discover that what goes up must come crashing down, both on Wall Street and at home. Brightness Falls captures lives-in-the-making: men and women confronting adulthood with wit and low behaviour, fear and confusion, and, just occasionally, a little honesty and decency.

From the bestselling author of Bright Lights, Big City and Brightness Falls comes a chronicle of a generation, as enacted by two men who represent all the passions and extremes of the class of 1969. Patrick Keane and Will Savage meet at prep school at the beginning of the explosive '60s. Over the next 30 years, they remain friends even as they pursue radically divergent destinies--and harbor secrets that defy rebellion and conformity.

Country & Townhouse's Best Book for Christmas, 2018 A delectable anthology celebrating the finest writing on wine. In this richly literary anthology, Jay McInerney - bestselling novelist and acclaimed wine columnist for Town & Country, the Wall Street Journal and House and Garden - selects over twenty pieces of memorable fiction and nonfiction about the making, selling and, of course, drinking of fine wine. Including excerpts from novels, short fiction, memoir and narrative nonfiction, Wine Reads features big names in the trade and literary heavyweights alike. We follow Kermit Lynch to the Northern Rhone in a chapter from his classic Adventures on the Wine Route. In an excerpt from Between Meals, long-time New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling raises feeding and imbibing on a budget in Paris into something of an art form - and discovers a very good rose from just west of the Rhone. Michael Dibdin's fictional Venetian detective Aurelio Zen gets a lesson in Barolo, Barbaresco and Brunello vintages from an eccentric celebrity. Jewish-Czech writer and gourmet Joseph Wechsberg visits the medieval Chateau d'Yquem to sample different years of the "roi des vins" alongside a French connoisseur who had his first taste of wine at age four. Also showcasing an iconic scene from Rex Pickett's Sideways and work by Jancis Robinson, Benjamin Wallace and McInerney himself, this is an essential volume for any disciple of Bacchus.

he bestselling Brightness Falls--now in trade paper from the author of Bright Lights, Big City. In the story of Russell and Corrine Calloway, set against the world of New York publishing, McInerney provides a stunningly accomplished portrayal of people contending with early success, then getting lost in the middle of their lives.

The tragicomedy of a young man in NYC, struggling with the reality of his mother's death, alienation and the seductive pull of drugs.