Mix together a group of mature students:
A culinary Sloane, a take-away cook and a food journalist.
Add in:
A handsome host
Season with:
A celebrity chef
Bring to the boil:
At a luxurious cookery school in France!
Waltho Williams has no idea what he’s letting himself in for when he opens the doors of La Maison du Paradis, his beautiful French home. But with dwindling funds, a cookery school seems like the ideal business plan.
Running away from an impending divorce, super-snob Caroline Carrington hopes a luxurious cookery holiday will put her back on her feet. Blackpool fish and chip cafĂ© owner Fran Cartwright thinks she’s won the lottery when her husband Sid books her on a week working alongside a celebrity chef. Meanwhile, feeling she is fading at fifty, journalist Sally Parker-Brown hopes her press week covering the cookery course will enable her to boost her career.
But will the eclectic group be a recipe for success, or will the mismatched relationships sink like a souffle?
Whip out an apron, grab a wooden spoon and take a culinary trip to La Maison du Paradis, then sit back and enjoy The French Cookery School!
The French Cookery School by Caroline James was published on 25 April 2024 by One More Chapter. As part of this Blog Tour organised by Rachel's Random Resources, I am delighted to welcome the author here to Random Things today. She's telling us about the books that are special to her, in My Life In Books
I was about fifteen when I first read this book, and it left such an impression on me that I left home a little while later. It is a powerful story about a group of young runaways from different backgrounds who meet in Torremolinos in the summer of ’69. Full of disenchantment and feeling adrift from the world during the Vietnam era, they travel to exotic locations with their hopes and dreams and experience a ‘summer of love’. It is a brilliant historical account of that era. Although it may feel outdated today, it is as powerful now as it was then.
I grew up in Cheshire on Stoke on Trent’s borders, near the five towns featured in this story. Arnold Bennet draws on his experience of life in the Potteries. The period detail is excellent as is the historical perspective of the German siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. The main characters are the Baines sisters, who grew up in a local general store and the story is told from their viewpoints, tracing the arc of two very different lives. I have always been impressed that the author wrote so brilliantly from a woman’s perspective. It’s been a writing bible for me, and I’ve read it many times.
hospitality industry, which included owning a pub and a beautiful country house hotel.