The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
By Deb Perelman (Knopf, $35)
The long-awaited cookbook by Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen—home cook, photographer, and celebrated food blogger. And now, with the same warmth, candor, and can-do spirit her blog is known for, Perelman presents her first cookbook: more than 100 recipes—almost entirely new, plus a few favorites from the site—all gorgeously illustrated with hundreds of her beautiful color photographs. The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook is all about approachable home cooking. These are recipes you’ll bookmark and use so often they become your own, recipes you’ll slip to a friend who wants to impress her new in-laws, and recipes with simple ingredients that yield amazing results in a minimum amount of time.
Celebrate: A Year of Festivities for Families and Friends
By Pippa Middleton (Viking, $50)
In her first book, Pippa Middleton, party planner and editor of The Party Times, an online party magazine, reveals the secrets to hosting a successful party with recipes, tips, and detailed instructions on how to throw a memorable event. The book is divided by seasons, and Middleton presents crafts, recipes, games, and endearing bits of trivia appropriate to the occasion, which empower the reader to create their own extraordinary gatherings.
Flowers
By Carolyne Roehm (Clarkson Potter, $85)
Carolyne Roehm is back after more than a decade with a sumptuous new book in which she shares her love of gardening and flower arranging. Flowers showcases more than 300 images of the varieties in her abundant gardens, all captured at their most vibrant and exquisite moments throughout the season. With a gardener’s intimate understanding and a designer’s elegant eye, Roehm shows us the flowers she has cultivated for decades in and around Weatherstone, her historic Connecticut home. While alternating dramatic close-ups with portraits of lovely arrangements and sweeping views of her land, Roehm writes with wit, emotion, and affection of what flowers have meant to her.
The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs
The New Yorker Magazine, forward by Malcolm Gladwell. (Random House, $45)
Only The New Yorker could fetch such an unbelievable roster of talent on the subject of man’s best friend. This copious collection, beautifully illustrated in full color, features articles, fiction, humor, poems, cartoons, cover art, drafts, and drawings from the magazine’s archives. With delightful section titles like “Good Dogs,” “Bad Dogs,” “Top Dogs,” and “Underdogs,” and a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell, this gorgeous keepsake is a gift to dog lovers everywhere from an exceptional magazine.
