Jackie Cameron Cooks at Home Described as "Cooking with Loads of Love and Flavour"

House and Leisure spoke to Jackie Cameron about her newly published cookbook, Jackie Cameron Cooks at Home. When asked to describe the kind of cooking she writes about, she replied that it’s “Real home cooking; cooking with loads of love and flavour.”

Cameron spoke about how writing a monthly column for the Natal Witness has helped her to write recipes that anyone can make at home.

As an accomplished Natal-based cook who is the Head Chef at Hartford House in Mooi River, Jackie Cameron has already made a name for herself, creating innovative recipes using the freshest local produce. We were delighted with the news that Jackie has just released her first cook book, titled Jackie Cameron Cooks at Home, and caught up with the chef to find out what’s in store for those who are keen to get into the kitchen and put her recipes to the test…

Congratulations on your first cook book. How has it been received so far?

Thank you so very much. I actually can’t get over everyone’s enthusiasm and interest in my book. Overwhelming but truly wonderful.

• Complete interview: House and Leisure

Book details

• Jackie Cameron Cooks at Home by Jackie Cameron
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  EAN: 9780143530671
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Enjoy a Three Course Dinner with Susan Newham-Blake, Author of Making Finn

Moemas and Penguin Books take pleasure in inviting you to a three course dinner with Susan Newham-Blake, author of Making Finn.

Tickets cost R250 per person and space is limited to 20 guests.

Do not miss it!

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, 6 June 2013
• Time: 7:00 PM
• Venue: Moemas,
  Parktown Quarter,
  Corner 7th & 3rd Avenue Parktown North,
  Johannesburg | Map
• Cover charge: R250
• RSVP: moemasfood@gmail.com, 011 788 7725

Book Details

• Making Finn by Susan Newham-Blake
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  EAN: 9780143530633
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Emma van der Vliet: “Don’t Confuse Doing it All with Having it All”

What Emma van der Vliet would like readers to take away from her new novel Thirty Second World, is that you shouldn’t confuse doing it all with having it all. In the book, two women try to balance careers in the advertising industry with their relationships and family life.

“It’s not about balancing things, because that is definitely wishful thinking,” Van der Vliet told the Classy Bird blog. “Sometimes certain fields have to lie fallow for a bit while you tend to others, for instance my fiction writing field while I was busy with baby-making and a PhD”.

It has been six years since you released your first novel. Why has there been such a long break between books?

I was still working full time as a lecturer for the first few years after Past Imperfect was published, and I also popped out a third child and a PhD. Oh, and I did a teaching degree. So it was hard to find time to write in that mix! A lot of mental gestation happens in the back of my mind while I’m doing school projects, cooking fish fingers, trying to get my head around chunks of film theory or having a bath. But the actual writing takes time.

• Complete interview: Classy Bird

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• Thirty Second World by Emma van der Vliet
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  EAN: 9780143530688
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Join Jackie Cameron for a Coffee Morning at Novel Books

Penguin Books and Novel Books take great pleasure in inviting you to a coffee morning with Jackie Cameron, author of Jackie Cameron Cooks at Home.

The event is being held at 10 AM for 10:30 AM on Friday 24 May.

Don’t miss it!

Event Details

• Date: Friday, 24 May 2013
• Time: 10:00 AM for 10:30 AM
• Venue: Novel Books,
  Shop F08a
  Hobart Grove Centre
  Corner of Hobart and Grosvenor Roads
  Bryanston | Map
• RSVP: novelbooks@vodamail.co.za, 0114639320

Book Details

• Jackie Cameron Cooks at Home by Jackie Cameron
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  EAN: 9780143530671
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The Last Train to Zona Verde: Paul Theroux’s Final African Adventure

Following the success of the acclaimed Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and The Great Railway Bazaar, The Last Train to Zona Verde is an ode to the last African journey of the world’s most celebrated travel writer, Paul Theroux.

‘Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,’ writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey though the continent he knows and loves best.

Having travelled down the right-hand side of Africa in Dark Star Safari, he sets out this time from Cape Town, heading northwards in a new direction, up the left-hand side, through South Africa and Namibia, to Botswana, then on into Angola, heading for the Congo, in search of the end of the line.

Journeying alone through the greenest continent in what he feels will be his last African journey, Theroux encounters a world increasingly removed from both the intineraries of tourists and the hopes of post-colonial independence movements. Leaving the Cape Town townships, traversing the Namibian bush, passing the browsing cattle of the great sunbaked heartland of the savannah, Theroux crosses “the Red Line” into a different Africa: “the improvised, slapped-together Africa of tumbled fences and cooking fires, of mud and thatch”, of heat and poverty, and of roadblocks, mobs and anarchy.

A final African adventure from the writer whose gimlet eye and effortless prose have brought the world to generations of readers, The Last Train to Zona Verde is Paul Theroux’s ultimate safari.

About the author

Paul Theroux was born and educated in the United States. After graduating from university in 1963, he travelled first to Italy and then to Africa, where he worked as a Peace Corps teacher at a bush school in Malawi, and as a lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda. In 1968 he joined the University of Singapore and taught in the Department of English for three years. Throughout this time he was publishing short stories and journalism, and wrote a number of novels. Among these were Fong and the Indians, Girls at Play and Jungle Lovers, all of which appear in one volume, On the Edge of the Great Rift (Penguin, 1996).

In the early 1970s Paul Theroux moved with his wife and two children to Dorset, where he wrote Saint Jack, and then on to London. He was a resident in Britain for a total of seventeen years. In this time he wrote a dozen volumes of highly praised fiction and a number of successful travel books, from which a selection of writings were taken to compile his book Travelling the World (Penguin, 1992). Paul Theroux has now returned to the United States, but he continues to travel widely.

Paul Theroux’s many books include Picture Palace, which won the 1978 Whitbread Literary Award; The Mosquito Coast, which was the 1981 Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year and joint winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was also made into a feature film; Riding the Iron Rooster, which won the 1988 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; The Pillars of Hercules, shortlisted for the 1996 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; My Other Life: A Novel, Kowloon Tong, Sir Vidia’s Shadow, Fresh-air Fiend and Hotel Honolulu.

Book details

• The Last Train to Zona Verde by Paul Theroux
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  EAN: 9780241145975
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Gareth Crocker’s Never Let Go Attracts Interest from Reader’s Digest and Hollywood

Never Let Go by Gareth Crocker was published earlier this year and Reader’s Digest has already expressed an interest in it for their international Pegasus Programme, which condenses fiction titles for the Select Editions volumes.

Crocker’s first novel, Finding Jack, was published in seven Reader’s Digest volumes, making him the second South African, after Alan Paton, to have his work selected by them.

Crocker’s agent in London is also in negotiations with “a top Hollywood producer” who is interested in adapting both Never Let Go and Finding Jack.

Press release:

As South African author, Gareth Crocker, continues to launch Never Let Go (Penguin 2013) around the country, the novel has already attracted interest from both Hollywood and publishing giants, Reader’s Digest International.

The novel, a high-octane thriller, tells the story of a famous American novelist who loses his young daughter in a botched kidnapping. Following her death, the author is on the verge of taking his own life when a stranger arrives at his gate, promising the impossible: to bring his daughter back.

Never Let Go has just been released by Penguin South Africa and has already and attracted interest from Reader’s Digest’s international Pegasus Programme. The programme selects what it believes are among the hottest fiction titles from around the globe which are then condensed for their various Select Editions volumes in territories such as the United States, Australia, Asia and The United Kingdom. Crocker became only the second South African author (after Alan Paton) to have his work selected by Reader’s Digest when his first novel, Finding Jack, was signed to Reader’s Digest in 2009. On that occasion, Gareth’s novel appeared in seven different volumes together with the likes of Lee Child, Mary Higgins Clark, Jeffrey Archer and James Patterson.

In addition to this, Gareth’s London agent is currently in negotiations with attorneys on behalf of a top Hollywood producer who wants to make films out of both Never Let Go and Finding Jack.

‘It’s all been quite overwhelming,’ Gareth explains. ‘While you hope your work will be well received, it really is quite something when it attracts this sort of attention. I’m thrilled that Reader’s Digest have expressed an interest in condensing another one of my novels and am even more excited by the interest from Hollywood. The producer concerned has put together films that have been nominated for multiple Oscars and currently works with some of the biggest names in the industry.’

Crocker is unfortunately unable to reveal the producer’s name until the contracts have been finalised.

‘While there are never any guarantees in Hollywood, I’m just grateful that my work is being considered for production,’ says Crocker. ‘I’m desperate to play a driver or a pizza delivery guy in the films, just for a laugh.’

Ends

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• Never Let Go by Gareth Crocker
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  EAN: 9780143530855
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Mary Watson Talks About the Haunted House Motif in Her Novel The Cutting Room

In The Cutting Room, Mary Watson explores not only crime in South Africa but also “the relationship between different kinds of spaces and the people who inhabit them”. That is why she used the haunted house motif in this thriller, as an extreme example of this relationship, Watson said in an interview for the Classy Bird blog. The house is “given a presence and seems to come alive, possibly acting in a malevolent way towards its occupants”.

After winning the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2006 for your short story, ‘Jungfrau’; what made you decide to write the psychological thriller, The Cutting Room?

I wanted to write a book that reflected on the experience of crime in South Africa. I also wanted to explore a relationship that was riddled with contradictions. Most simply, it’s a book about how people do bad things to each other, however subtle or dramatic.

• Complete interview: Classy Bird

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• The Cutting Room by Mary Watson
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  EAN: 9780143530862
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Jacques Magliolo Says Patience and Discipline Are Key in Trading

Penguin Books chatted to Jacques Magliolo for some trading tips and to find out more about his recently revised book, Richer than Buffett: The Day Trader’s Handbook to Ultra-Wealth.

Magliolo’s advice for getting richer than Buffet? “Patience and discipline in trading to a self-imposed strategy, which enables you to make more profits than losses.”

Read the complete interview:

Jacques Magliolo tells us about his latest book.

What do you hope to achieve with your series of books?

To hit home the very simple fact that trading in equities, futures or other securities is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes dedication, knowledge and discipline to succeed as a day trader.

• Complete article: Penguin Books

Book details

• Richer than Buffett: The Day Trader’s Handbook to Ultra-Wealth by Jacques Magliolo
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  EAN: 9780143530848
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Justin Bonello Chats About Ultimate Braai Master and His Best Braai Experiences

Andrea Fedder caught up with Justin Bonello to chat about his television show and book, Ultimate Braai Master, for Yuppiechef‘s Spatula Magazine.

They discussed how we are “living on the one continent that still retains so much of its ‘wild’. Potjies, rooster brood and open flame feasts were born from the need to prepare food on the go.” Bonello’s Ultimate Braai Master embraces this concept.

What drives the engine under Justin Bonello’s hood?

We came armed with a list of questions but, upon realising that this vagabond foodie is an unstoppable Vesuvius of passion on everything Africa, we decided to just sit and listen to Justin Bonello’s take on our current food scene. The last time we had a cup of tea and a catch-up with Justin Bonello, he was stuck into the food and travel documentary genre, so his latest venture was simply a matter of time, really.

• Complete article: Spatula Magazine

Book details

• Ultimate Braai Master by Justin Bonello
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  EAN: 9780143530459
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Excerpt from White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse

Isaac is smuggled into Botswana lying beneath a coffin in the back of a hearse in Eleanor Morse’s White Dog Fell From the Sky. He is left lying on the side of the road, and when he comes to, he sees a white dog sitting next to him. “I am already dead, he thought, and this is my companion.”

Read the rest of the excerpt, as Isaac meets a woman who helps him, tries to find his way in Botswana and encounters someone from back home:

The hearse pulled onto a scrubby track, traveled several hundred feet, and stopped. The passenger door opened, followed by the driver’s door. Two men stepped out. They walked to the rear door, and to- gether the men slid out a coffin and laid it carefully on the ground. They returned to the car, struggled with something inside, and dragged out a limp body. It was so covered with road dust, its face was gone.
The driver splashed a bucket of water over it, nudged it with a toe. Rivulets ran down the side of one cheek, water etching through dust to walnut-colored skin.
“He’s late, no more in this world,” the passenger said.

• Keep reading: Penguin Books

Book details

• White Dog Fell From the Sky by Eleanor Morse
  EAN: 9780241145654
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