If you’re a fan of their popular TV Series, this latest offering from Si King and Dave Myers won’t disappoint. Packed with 90 regional recipes and loads of foodie facts from all over the UK, they show us where to get the best pies and the freshest duck eggs to how to cook trout with rhubarb and what the strange ingredient in a Welsh breakfast is (it’s cockles… I might give that one a miss thanks guys).

Once again, the duo mounted their beloved Harleys and, during the winter of 2008/2009, they travelled over 10,000 miles covering 30 counties to work with farmers, suppliers and producers in every area. They’ve brought us an array of weird and wonderful recipes (faggots cooked in cider anyone?) some of which, to be honest, will either delight or repulse you. If nothing else it will encourage you to try new ideas and combinations that you’d never previously considered, with the help of the professional chefs in each county giving us the benefit of their expertise. The photography is brilliant and illustrates each recipe and its origin really well.

My personal favourite is the Boxty (page 90). A traditional Irish dish, it’s easy to make and is simply delicious with the maple syrup and crispy bacon.  I’m yet to get around to the Smoke Roasted Pigs Cheeks but you never know – the next time I’m in Monmouthshire I’ll be sure to pick some up.

There’s a nice description of each county and their observations are clever – these two really do know their food and although some of it is a little pretentious I’ll let them off. If you’re confident with your culinary skills and fancy something a little different, buy this book; if you haven’t progressed further than beans on toast, then stick to Delia.

The “Rough Guide” series of travel guides have become immensely popular travel companions for a wide variety of holidaymakers. Known for their invaluable information about discovering attractions off the beaten path, they will prove to be indispensible, no matter where in the world you have planned your escape.

There is an impressive range of destinations included in the series and of course, all the major cities, such as New York, London, Berlin, Cairo and Istanbul, to name just a few, are covered extensively. However, there are also some handy guides for different types of getaways. For example, “The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget” has become highly sought after with backpackers looking for a more authentic and down-to-earth experience, while the “Rough Guide to Thailand” has also been a popular choice for adventurer seekers.

The vast majority of content, especially for the better known locations, has been written by both highly experienced travellers and locals, and you can rest assured that the information will be clearly explained and up to date. Everything from flights, local transport, hotels, hostels, bars and restaurants will be included and each category is conveniently split into ranges of budget, to be certain that everyone’s needs are met.

No matter what sort of information you are looking for, whether it’s for finding the best luxury cruise or ideal location for your ski holidays, the Rough Guide series will have it covered. It could be the most important item you take with you on your holiday.

When you’re driving around town, chances are you’ve spotted more than a few private number plates. Most of us have probably considered buying one but with personalized plates now so popular, the likelihood of securing that perfect registration is slim – at least the ones that are within our price range!

Private plates can be an inexpensive way to hide the real age of your vehicle and make it your own. They can be the perfect gift for that special person in your life or the finishing touch to your dream car.  This book covers everything you need to know if you’re looking for, registering or transferring UK registrations. The private registration expert Ruby Speechley, has certainly done her research and has written some interesting facts about private and rare number plates. She gives us the details on registration legislation and the history of number plates.

Did you know that registration numbers are not items of property in their own right? A vehicle’s registration number is a unique method of identifying it for tax and law enforcement purposes. It‘s assigned to the vehicle (not the keeper) and unless it is transferred or retained the registration number normally remains with the vehicle until it is broken up, destroyed or sent permanently out of the country. There are a few different styles of registration you can choose from: dateless registrations, current style registrations, prefix registrations, and suffix registrations.

If you decide to take the plunge and get your own private number plate, you’ll be in good company – Paul Daniels has one (MA G1C – yes, really!), celebrity crimper Nicky Clarke (H41R D0 – hmm…) and Jimmy Tarbuck (C0M1C – oh dear). Just make sure it’s not quite so cringe worthy as these!

Imagine that you are a paediatrician and the coroner in a small American town in ‘Grant County.’ You’re recently divorced from you police-chief husband (even though you secretly still love him); you take a routine lunch break at a diner with your sister, only to discover that in the toilet there is a woman bleeding to death. Later, you discover not only that she has been ritualistically murdered but also she was the twin sister of your ex-husband’s top detective, who has always shown a somewhat prickly animosity toward you … you are entering the first novel of crime-author Karin Slaughter, Blindsighted.

Slaughter has a knack for making the implausible seem rivetingly plausible. Her Grant County series, featuring paediatrician-coroner Dr Sara Linton, are riveting who-dunnits, fusing precise forensic science with a wildly inventive speculative imagination, which unerringly culminates in superbly chilling crime fiction.

Karin Slaughter’s burgeoning imagination has also created another compelling character, Will Trent, who made his first appearance in her novel Triptych published in 2006.  Despite his dyslexia and abusive childhood history, Trent has become the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s most intelligently intuitive crime-solving officer. Ashamed of his literacy problem, he is movingly blind to his genius as a detective. In her latest work, entitled Genesis and published in July 2009, Karin Slaughter brings the flawed  and wounded heroes, Will Trent and Sara Linton, together in a desperate and heart-stopping effort to solve a grisly murder.

Slaughter’s main characters are hurt, betrayed and even self-destructive human beings who even so display an inspiring commitment to truth and justice.

If you’re considering investing in a Smartphone and can’t choose between the iPhone , Android or Blackberry, then this book may help you decide by taking you through the setting up and configuration of most models of the Google Android Smartphone. Touted as “The first EASY guide to Google phones for consumers, not experts!” it explains all the features of the Google Android phone and how to get the most out of it. Written in clear and concise language it explains how to set up an Android phone quickly, use your Gmail account, chat with Google Talk and fix common problems with service and hardware.

Although this slim paperback is less than a year old, because technology is changing daily it might not be as up to date as you think. It’s also worth noting that some of the features contained in this book are not applicable to the UK G1. It’s basically an instruction manual and you can learn everything in here by looking on the internet; if you haven’t bought an Android phone yet then it’s pretty useless. Calling and voicemail are covered, which is unnecessary (this information comes with the phone). The information about the integrated Google applications is good though and it will get you using features you might not have previously known about or thought to use. The Troubleshooting section is excellent for reference but the part on customisation is basic and could have done with more detail.

Before you take the plunge, use the internet to compare mobile phones and see which models have the features that suit your lifestyle. If you’ve already bought an Android phone then you’ll find parts of it useful but consult your user manual – it’s cheaper! Use the money you’ve saved on buying this book on some useful Android apps!

“Overcoming Compulsive Gambling” is a handy self-help book for anyone who feels that they may be developing a gambling addiction. The increase in gambling over the years – with the rise in popularity of poker and bingo sites on the internet – means more and more people are in danger of developing a gambling addiction without realising it.

For extreme cases, this book will not be the definite cure, but it is an extremely useful way to begin the process of recovery. The author, Professor Alex Blaszczynski – who is a practicing psychologist and member of the School of Psychiatry in New South Wales –  is an expert in the field and has previously worked on such books as “In the Pursuit of Winning: Problem Gambling Theory, Research and Treatment”.

For this book, he has relied on proven methods within Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (also referred to as CBT). This form of therapy is often considered to be the most effective for treating dependency disorders. The methods mentioned in this book have been mainly developed by Blaszczynski and are now widely used throughout the world.

The author has divided the book into separate areas that explain the whole process of recovery in an easy to read manner. The first chapters cover such question as “What is gambling and when is it a problem?” and “How does the problem develop?”. He then goes into detail about what can be done stop compulsive gambling. Everything is explained clearly, without using psychological terms to confuse the reader.

“Vogue Fashion” is a fascinating book that has taken a fresh look at how the world of fashion has been shaped since the beginning of the 20th Century. This vast undertaking was carried out by the author, Linda Watson, who has worked with the infamous Vogue magazine. She is a graduate is fashion design and fashion history, a former assistant to Vivienne Westwood as well as having worked as a freelance fashion journalist for some of the major UK newspapers.

The quality of content in this book is sure to impress any reader, and it becomes immediately obvious that the author knows fashion, and fashion history inside out. Some of the biggest movements in Men’s and Women’s clothing are documented throughout this book, and it provides an intriguing and chronological insight into how style has changed over the years.

However, if you are looking for a comprehensive list of the movers and shakers in the fashion industry, this will be well worth a read, but do bear in mind there are slightly more stylish and glossy alternatives of these types of fashion books available. “Vogue Fashion” is similar vein to Praidon’s “The Art Book’, but noticeably less polished and somewhat lacking in terms of providing a concrete reference guide. However, it must be noted that “The Art Book” took five writers to complete.

“Vogue Fashion” will be a perfect gift for someone looking to discover the important movements in the fashion industry and also for avid fashion enthusiasts who are looking for different sources of information. Nevertheless, there are more comprehensive alternatives on the market will offer much more for your money.

Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyssey is exactly as the name would suggest; an epic journey through the cities, barren landscape and thick overgrown jungles of Eastern Asia. He has gone to many far-flung destinations in his travels and has visited rural families, street vendors and local farmers in his quest to uncover the secrets of Far Eastern cuisine.

Of course the author will need no introduction to anyone who is a fan of TV cookery programmes. Stein is easily one of the UK’s most celebrated chefs and was named the BBC Food Personality of the Year in 2004. He also received an OBE in 2003. He has many cookery titles to his name, including “Rick Stein’s Seafood”, which won the highly acclaimed James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year Award for 2005.

From the best pho soup in Vietnam to the finest jhol fish stew in Bangladesh, Stein has gone to great lengths to compile the 150 recipes in this book. For anyone who has been following the TV series of the same name, they will know how much the chef has gone through just to find the best-tasting recipes, and here he shares the finer secrets of each one.

It is easy to see that this will be a must for any lover of Eastern cuisine, but the dishes are so vast and varied that there is sure to be something that will satisfy any taste bud.  What’s more is that it is a joy to read, and the recipes are a joy to cook.

Lives riven with impossible choices, invisibly scarred with regret and charged with hope, dread, love and trauma – these constitute the stuff and substance of so much of human life. Jodi Picoult fashions them into beautifully poignant prose.

An author who has produced fifteen novels in seventeen years, Picoult writes about exceptional subjects in a way that touches us all. Her capacity to evoke powerful identifications with the dilemmas and issues of her stories, if not the individual characters, show her as a novelist who can speak to everyman, from postal worker to high court judge, bus-driver to billionaire banker.

Picoult’s debut novel Songs of the Humpback Whale uses marine biology to render a profoundly human tale in which sudden loss brings new understanding and love. None of us are free from contingency, from the unexpected and unbidden. An oceanographer is forced to use his intuitive knowledge of tracking whales to re-find his abruptly departed wife and daughter, realising that he must, as with whales, try to imagine the world (and himself) through his wife’s eyes.

Her most recently published novel, Handle with Care, seems to deal with a rare infantile illness which will inevitably result in a future of broken bones and physical agony, but it also powerfully addresses us all with a fateful question: what would we do?  Would we risk poisoning our deepest friendship in order to secure legal compensation? Would we have terminated the pregnancy if we’d known? Picoult uses the extraordinary to confront us ordinary people with profound ethical issues we might otherwise ignore.

“The Unofficial Guide to Cruises” is over 700 pages of information covering the best cruise deals and cruise ships from around the globe. The most popular cruise routes are covered extensively, with an impressive 500 ships and 100 cruise lines listed by value and quality of service. For anyone looking for cheap cruises, the “Unofficial Guide” also has some handy tips on how to get the lowest price tickets and free cruising days.

The book has been written by Kay Showker – a highly respected expert on cruises and the islands of the Caribbean – and Bob Sehlinger, who has also written unofficial guides for Disneyworld, Las Vegas as well as Orlando and Central Florida.

However, the majority of the book’s content will not be of benefit to the seasoned cruise-ship traveller. It is more of a guide for newcomers to the world of cruising and the type of advice it gives will normally not be anything new to the experienced cruise traveller – there is no inside knowledge to be gained from reading this book.

That having been said, the easy-to-follow content and clear and comprehensive information has made it widely regarded as a must for novices. The Chicago-Sun Times hailed it as an “A tourist′s best friend!”, while the New York Times described it as “indispensible”.

If you are planning your first cruise holiday, this book is highly recommended.