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In a compelling novel that takes the reader on a strange journey from Indochina to Paris, the Vietnamese cook for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas reveals his own fascinating story-Paris, 1934. Binh has accompanied his employers to the station for their departure to America. His own destination is unclear: will he go with his 'Mesdames', stay in France, or return to his native Vietnam? Binh fled his homeland in disgrace, leaving behind his malevolent charlatan of a father and his self-sacrificing mother. For five years, he has been the personal cook at the famous apartment on the rue de Fleurs. Binh is a lost soul, an exile and an alien, a man of musings, memories and possibly lies- Tastes, oceans, sweat, tears - The Book of Salt is a an inspired novel about food and exile, love and betrayal.

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Everybody wants Alonso dead. Detective Sergeant Swaby of the Jamaica Constabulary, who has set him up to take the rap for Chin Lee's murder, wants Alonso dead. The assassin Bulldog, who threw Chin Lee's body over the balcony of one-one-one, wants Alonso dead. The powerful but impotent drug baron Leprosini, whom Chin Lee was trying to double-cross, wants Alonso dead. The corrupt minister Magnus Bonanza, in cahoots with Leprosini, wants Alonso dead. Even Ras Clawt, the magnificently endowed freedom fighter, will kill Alonso if he makes a wrong move. Inoffensive and harmless, Alonso finds himself arrested, kidnapped, shot at, on the run and feigning madness. To cap it all, someone lands a plane on his head. The only way Alonso can hope to return to his pleasantly idle life as nightwatchman at the Casuarina Cottage Hotel, where he enjoys five star cuisine and the warm arms of precious Ting, is to find out the true facts of Chin Lee's death and so persuade Authority to exonerate him.

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Evan Jones was born in Jamaica in 1927 and was educated at Haverford College USA and Oxford University. He has written numerous plays for television, and screenplays for films. He has also has many publications, including The Song of the Banana Man, which is widely known and anthologized. He is married to the actress Joanna Jones. They have two daughters who are both writers.

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'Facts alone are wanted in life': the children at Mr Gradgrind's school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. They live in a smoky, troubled industrial town so entertainment is hard to come by and resentments run deep. The effects of Gradgrind's teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus clown, who retains her warm-hearted, compassionate nature despite the pressures around her.

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