The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2009-06-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1407018264

At Edinburgh's Department of Environmental Health, hard-drinking, womanising officer Danny Skinner wants to uncover secrets: 'the bedroom secrets of the master chefs', secrets he believes might just help him understand his self-destructive impulses. But the arrival of the virginal, model-railway enthusiast Brian Kibby at the department provokes an uncharacteristic response in Skinner, and threatens to throw his mission off course. Consumed by loathing for his nemesis, Skinner enacts a curse, and when Kibby contracts a horrific and debilitating mystery virus, Skinner understands that their destinies are supernaturally bound, and he is faced with a terrible dilemma.

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2007-09-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393343669

Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, is up to his old tricks with his new work of transgressive short fiction. Irvine Welsh's first short-story collection since his debut work The Acid House presents five extraordinary stories, which remind us that he is a master of the short form, a brilliant storyteller, and—unarguably—one of today's funniest and most subversive writers. In "Rattlesnakes" three young Americans, lost in the desert, are accosted by two armed Mexicans. A Korean chef and a Chicago socialite find themselves connected through the disappearance of a pooch named Toto in "The D.O.G.S. of Lincoln Park." And in the title story, Mickey Baker—an ex-pat English bar owner living on the Costa Brava—tries to keep all of his balls in the air: maintaining his barmaid's weight at the sexual maximum, attending to the youthful Persephone, and dodging his ex-wife and Spanish gangsters. In typically Welshian fashion, the characters and settings are anything but typical. These stories will make you laugh and gasp.

The Digested Read

The Digested Read
Author: John Crace
Publisher: RDR Books
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2005-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781571431592

Literary ombudsman John Crace never met an important book he didn't like to deconstruct. From Salman Rushdie to John Grisham, Crace retells the big books in just 500 bitingly satirical words, pointing his pen at the clunky plots, stylistic tics and pretensions of Big Ideas, as he turns publishers' golden dream books into dross.

Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse

Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse
Author: Frederic Morin
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 927
Release: 2018-11-27
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 1524732311

A new cookbook/survival guide/love letter to Montreal for these apocalyptic times, from the James Beard Award–nominated culinary adventurists and proprietors of the beloved restaurant, Joe Beef. “The first Joe Beef cookbook changed forever what a cookbook could be. Anything that came after had to take it into account. Now, with this latest and even more magnificent beast, the rogue princes of Canadian cuisine and hospitality show us the way out of the numbing, post-apocalyptic restaurant Hell of pretentiousness and mediocrity that threatens to engulf us all. It makes us believe that the future is shiny, bright, beautiful, delicious—and probably Québécois. This book will change your life.” —Anthony Bourdain It’s the end of the world as we know it. Or not. Either way, you want Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse in your bunker and/or kitchen. In their much-loved first cookbook, Frédéric Morin, David McMillan, and Meredith Erickson introduced readers to the art of living the Joe Beef way. Now, they’re back with another deeply personal, refreshingly unpretentious collection of more than 150 new recipes, some taken directly from the menus of Fred and Dave’s acclaimed Montreal restaurants, others from summers spent on Laurentian lakes and Sunday dinners at home. Think Watercress Soup with Trout Quenelles, Artichokes Bravas, and seasonal variations on Pot-au-Feu—alongside Smoked Meat Croquettes, a Tater Tot Galette, and Squash Sticky Buns. Also included are instructions for making your own soap and cough drops, not to mention an epic 16-page fold-out gatefold with recipes and guidance for stocking a cellar with apocalyptic essentials (Canned Bread, Pickled Pork Butt, and Smoked Apple Cider Vinegar) for throwing the most sought-after in-bunker dinner party Filled with recipes, reflections, and ramblings, in this book you’ll find chapters devoted to the Québécois tradition of celebrating Christmas in July, the magic of public television, and Fred and Dave’s unique take on barbecue (Burnt-End Bourguignon, Cassoulet Rapide), as well as ruminations on natural wine and gluten-free cooking, and advice on how children should behave at dinner. Whether you’re holing up for a zombie holocaust or just cooking at home, Joe Beef is a book about doing it yourself, about making it on your own, and about living—or at least surviving—in style.

Trainspotting

Trainspotting
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780393057249

"The best book ever written by man or woman...deserves to sell more copies than the Bible."--Rebel, Inc.

Skagboys

Skagboys
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 543
Release: 2012-09-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393088731

Chronicles the misadventures of Mark Renton and his friends as they cope with economic uncertainties, family problems, drug use, and the opposite sex in 1980s Edinburgh.

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2015-02-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385539398

When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer, disarms an apparently crazed gunman, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind. Within hours, Lucy becomes a hero. The solitary eye-witness, the depressed and overweight Lena Sorenson, thrilled by Lucy's heroism and decisiveness, becomes obsessed with the trainer and enrolls as a client at her Bodysculpt gym. It quickly becomes clear that Lena is more interested in Lucy's body than her own, and a budding fatal attraction takes hold. However, it's when Lucy imprisons Lena, and can't stop thinking about the sex lives of Siamese twins, that the real problems start. In Lucy and Lena, Irvine Welsh has created two of his most memorable female protagonists, and one of the most bizarre, sadomasochistic folie à deux in contemporary fiction. The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins taps into two great obsessions of our time--how we look and where we live--and tells a story so subversive and dark it blacks out the Florida sun.

Filth

Filth
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 418
Release: 1998-09-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393350983

With the Christmas season upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Edinburgh's finest is gearing up socially—kicking things off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse. . . .In Bruce Robertson Welsh has created one of the most compellingly misanthropic characters in contemporary fiction, in a dark and disturbing and often scabrously funny novel about the abuse of everything and everybody. "Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius. He is the best thing that has happened to British writing in decades."—Sunday Times [London] "[O]ne of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit, and force, and in a voice which those alienated by much current fiction clearly want to hear."—Times Literary Supplement "Welsh writes with such vile, relentless intensity that he makes Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the French master of defilement, look like Little Miss Muffet. "—Courtney Weaver, The New York Times Book Review "The corrupt Edinburgh cop-antihero of Irvine Welsh's best novel since Trainspotting is an addictive personality in another sense: so appallingly powerful is his character that it's hard to put the book down....[T]he rapid-fire rhythm and pungent dialect of the dialogue carry the reader relentlessly toward the literally filthy denouement. "—Village Voice Literary Supplement, "Our 25 Favorite Books of 1998" "Welsh excels at making his trash-spewing bluecoat peculiarly funny and vulnerable—and you will never think of the words 'Dame Judi Dench' in the same way ever again. [Grade:] A-. "—Charles Winecoff, Entertainment Weekly

The Beatle Man

The Beatle Man
Author: Scott M. Liddell
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2008-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0955683009

"It all came back. With a bang. Another one." Danny McColl's career as a Glasgow lawyer doesn't start too well. A broken nose and a trip to the hospital. It will get worse. He doesn't yet realise the havoc his personal search for retribution will unleash. Taking revenge on his assailants, and driven by a need to make up for his part in the death of his alcoholic father, he takes on the Finches, a family of thugs that terrorise his new neighbours. In doing so he reveals the truth behind the mysterious life of The Beatle Man with tragic, violent consequences...

Ecstasy

Ecstasy
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1996
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780393315813

A bestsellig romance author suffers a paralyzing stroke and her philandering husband wonders how this will affect his gambling and whoring budget; two young lovers must come to terms with their chemically induced deformity; Lloyd from Leith transfigures his passion for an unhappily married woman. These three tales confirm Irvine Welsh's position as a master of the "chemical" romance genre.