Felicity Cloake is an award-winning journalist and author specialising in food and drink, probably best known for her weekly column in the Guardian, How to make the Perfect… In One More Croissant for the Road, her first book to combine food and travel, Felicity crosses the channel for a culinary adventure.

Birgitte Kampmann is a classically-trained chef. She spent many years in the U.S.A., later becoming the chef at the American Embassy in Copenhagen. In My American Kitchen Notes, she gives many of the recipes she cooked at the Embassy, along with anecdotes about her experiences and her perceptions of America and American food,

Squirrel Pie (and other stories) is the latest in a long list of highly acclaimed publications by artist, journalist and food writer, Elisabeth Luard. Subtitled Adventures in Food Across the Globe, this is indeed an exciting and entertaining journey through forests, over islands and rivers and into deserts, revealing how terrain influences the food we eat as she shares tales and dishes gathered on her travels.

Adam Gopnik's The Table Comes First is a witty meditation on life and food. It is subtitled Family, France and the Meaning of Food. Jesse Thompson reads two extracts from the book.

"Scholarly, playful, idiosyncratic and witty, Aldo Buzzi's The Perfect Egg is an excursion into the food that has obsessed, provoked and intrigued the author through his life."  So says the blurb on the dust jacket of this wonderfully entertaining collection of food writings. Rupert Baker reads a piece entitled "Spaghetti Bolognese, Overcooked" which will ring a bell with anyone who has a secret love of tinned rice pudding or soggy Weetabix.

Table Talk: Sweet and Sour, Salt and Bitter brings together the best of AA Gill's columns on food. David Watson reads two chapters from the book: Pizza Express, and Elizabeth David.

Here are some wonderfully funny stories from behind the scenes of the catering world; among them the night Leith's nearly caught fire when a dumpy little woman (Princess Margaret, as it happened) ordered roast pheasant, and why Warren Beatty and Julie Christie really wanted to sit under the spotlight. For the very first time, Prue can be heard reading extracts from her autobiography.

At the age of seven, tired and bewildered after a long journey from England to Syria via Lebanon, Josceline Dimbleby caught her first sight of Damascus from the mountain road. In the extract she has chosen to read from her book of recipes, travels and memories, Orchards in the Oasis,  the magic of her first impressions of her new home are vividly recalled;  the deep red mulberry-stained water in the pool, the sun-warmed apricots, the scented pastries that awoke a lifelong passion for food and flavour.