One of my favorite things about blogging is having the opportunity to preview and share my favorite design and lifestyle books with you! There are sooo many good ones this fall, and I have included summaries and highlights below. With the holidays rapidly approaching, any of these books would make an excellent hostess gift, stocking stuffer, or thoughtful present. And of course, you will want copies for yourself as well! 🙂 Summaries are via Amazon…  Happy reading!

Set on a ranch in the stunningly beautiful Southern California wine country, well-known writer and television personality Frances Schultz’s hospitality is no secret in Santa Barbara County and beyond. The cooking of chef and recipe creator Stephanie Valentine is acclaimed by all who’ve sampled it, including Martha Stewart and Julia Child. Frances invites us into her home, her heart, and a place at her beautiful table, and she shows us how she does it.

Whether you’re planning a simple picnic for two or a celebration dinner for twenty, California Cooking and Southern Style is the perfect cookbook and table-scape guide to have at your fingertips always. Using fresh, seasonal ingredients and tested by everyday home cooks, the recipes are tried, true, do-able, and delicious. The same goes for the beautiful and deceptively simple table settings.

A unique, at-a-glance listing of eighteen menus is followed by chapters featuring each menu with recipes, table settings, and entertaining tales and tips. With a hundred-plus recipes and photographs, California Cooking and Southern Style will make your mouth water, your eyes dance, your guests grateful, and your heart happy.

Join us in dreaming of a world of stunning beauty overflowing with heritage, enduring romantic charm, and incomparable grace. From the editors of Victoria magazine, Our Hearts Are in England invites you to travel along scenic byways to visit quaint villages, glorious gardens, and quintessential cottages. Filled with lush photography and enchanting prose, this exquisitely bound hardcover book is one to savor as we voyage together in search of England’s very essence.

Our Hearts Are in England offers an impassioned salute to one of our most cherished destinations. From rolling hills dotted with sheep in the Cotswolds to charming little towns clustered along the country’s rugged shorelines, peaceful villages beckon us to slow down and drink in their pastoral beauty. Wonders abound in history-steeped sites, including the former homes of William Morris, leader of the British Arts and Crafts movement, and literary legends Beatrix Potter in the Lake District and Jane Austen in the sophisticated town of Bath. Become immersed in the Victorian splendor of Highclere Castle, the magnificent backdrop for the television series Downton Abbey and its fictional Crawley family, who came to be adored by millions worldwide. Behind the brick walls and hedges surrounding the David Austin rose gardens in Shropshire, techniques for their care and cultivation from expert garden designer Michael Marriott mingle with the heady redolence of hundreds of exquisite blossoms. And what can compare to the elegant appeal of London, where such notable destinations as The Ritz, Portobello Road, and Kensington Palace await? We also step inside the atelier of Catherine Walker & Co., couture designer to British royalty Diana, Princess of Wales, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

Through Our Hearts Are in England, enjoy the people, homes, and sites that make England truly remarkable. This beautifully designed volume is replete with stories to inspire your own adventures, whether they unfold from your favorite armchair or by plane and train. Timeless traditions, including the custom of afternoon tea, reflect a genteel spirit also displayed through the art of needlework and lovingly tended gardens. Brew a cup of your favorite blend, and settle in a cozy corner with Our Hearts Are in England to explore―and to celebrate―this treasured isle that we love so well.

Alex Hitz, “the very best host in the world” says the Wall Street Journal, shares more than 100 timeless, tried-and-true recipes for classic comfort foods to serve with his inimitable style of gracious entertaining.

Having played host to the A-list and beau monde from Atlanta to Park Avenue to Beverly Hills, Alex Hitz is a consummate entertainer and bon vivant–who can really cook. Elegance, comfort, and wit (and always a little decadence) suffuse every detail of every delightful and delicious occasion. Defying diets and trends, Alex treats guests like family with rich, Southern-inspired food and the generous traditions of Southern hospitality.

Conceived as full menus, each occasion offers recipes and tips for ultimate success, from his always-
perfect-every-time Thanksgiving table and epic Boxing Day buffet to a bright Easter brunch and an intimate Valentine’s Day supper. In addition to twelve expertly curated menus, Hitz provides can’t-fail recipes for his essential dishes, classic recipes every confident cook should have in their back pocket, from perfect vinaigrettes and homemade mayonnaise to Bel-Air Onion Puffs, Risotto alla Milanese, To-Die-For Ale-Braised Brisket, and Caroline’s Tipsy Ambrosia.

Ever the raconteur, Hitz delivers common-sense rules–including for the art of being a guest, and what always or never to do as a thoughtful host–providing readers with the skills and confidence to establish their own signature style.

‘The homes I’ve always been drawn to are portraits of the people who live there…’ Australian Designers at Home invites readers into the homes of 20 of the country’s leading names in interior design. With unfettered access to their most private retreats, we see where the best of the industry express their true, unfiltered selves. Jenny Rose-Innes celebrates the designers who have inspired her, sharing their histories and houses, as well as professional insights and practical tips on decorating. This book provides an invaluable resource for designers, decorators and interiors enthusiasts alike. Richly illustrated throughout with stunning colour photography by Simon Griffiths, Australian Designers at Home takes readers on an intimate journey, revealing how the most influential designers decorate their own houses. Find out what home means from the people who create them for a living.

Entertaining at Home presents gatherings in the homes of leading tastemakers from the worlds of interior design, architecture, culinary arts, and society–including Lynn Wyatt, Suzanne Kasler, Julia Reed, Kimberly Schlegel Whitman, Carla McDonald, and Danielle Rollins, among others–who show readers how best to entertain with flair and finesse.

Leading party aficionados share their successful strategies for delighting family and friends, offering their personal viewpoints and providing behind-the-scenes details that go into creating memorable occasions. They offer their approaches to arranging flowers, setting the table, selecting menus, stocking the pantry, compiling killer playlists, and purchasing the perfect hostess gift. Included are a variety of easy-to-master delectable recipes, such as bacon-wrapped pretzels, seafood chowder, spicy gazpacho, and refreshing sangrias.

From a summer social in New Orleans and a lively luncheon in Texas to a lavish winter smorgasbord holiday dinner in Washington, D.C., the hosts offer a myriad of inspirational ideas. Whether it’s an elegant table set with Leontine Linens or Pinot Grigio served in colorful cups and paired with potato chips and caviar, this book is a visual trove of festive get-togethers in beautiful residences. Beautifully photographed, it is the essential new go-to entertaining guide.

AD100 and Elle Decor A-List designer Timothy Corrigan shares his secrets for creating rooms that are elegant and comfortable, luxurious yet livable.

Throughout his career, Corrigan has established a look that is layered and detailed, while always suitable for the way people live today. His distinctive approach encompasses practicality as well as beauty, merging European refinement with California comfort. Here, Corrigan shares homes in which he has defined a new contemporary elegance, including a John Fowler-inspired London townhouse, a Hollywood Regency-inspired Los Angeles Colonial, an art-filled Chicago apartment in the sky, and Corrigan’s own Paris pied-à-terre.

Corrigan includes advice throughout on how to adapt classic design principles and traditional forms to make them work for busy modern lives. Between each chapter are instructive interludes in which Corrigan outlines the building blocks of successful decoration, with fundamental topics such as scale and proportion, symmetry, architectural details, and working with color.

From Susan Sully comes this book of inspirations for those who are enamored with the ever-enchanting Southern way of living.

The words “Southern hospitality” conjure up a wealth of welcoming images, from breezy porches with white colonnades and the seductive scent of magnolia blossoms cut from the yard to fill heirloom vases to tables laden with fine china on embroidered linens, illuminated by candles. Southern Hospitality at Home showcases the special qualities of graciousness and charm that define the American South’s way of living. Learn from Southern style experts how to make your home an inviting place for sharing with family and friends–from designing welcoming entrance halls and inviting living rooms to comfortable kitchens, pretty guest rooms, and shady garden rooms–and weave your spell of hospitality.

Featured are an array of exceptional houses including an eighteenth-century dwelling in Charleston with a bold, contemporary palette and a rustic plantation where high and low styles mix in perfect harmony. In Savannah, interior designer Chuck Chewning brings modern sophistication to a Greek Revival townhouse. In Georgia, textile artist Susan Hable Smith injects bright color and pattern into an old-fashioned cottage and a collector offers fresh ideas for displaying antiques. With tips for decorating and accessorizing, arranging flowers and setting tables, caring for silver and serving authentic Southern recipes, this beautifully photographed hospitality resource is practical and inspirational, true to tradition, and relevant for today.

On Style brings together today’s top up-and-coming interior designers who together reflect the future of decorating, illustrated with never-before-published photos of each designer’s work.

The world is changing, and interior design is changing along with it. Today’s designers are presenting a fresh take on decorating, and they are connecting directly with their audience over social media. In his follow-up to Interior Design Master Class, editor Carl Dellatore turns his curatorial eye toward this next generation of decorators, culling fifty of the top designers working in America today. On Style provides an intimate view into the personalities, inspirations, and aesthetics of these members of the new guard. Each profile spotlights a never-before-seen project, as well as each designer’s story and influences, and of course, their advice for achieving great style. The group hails from across the country, from Seattle to Los Angeles, Houston to New York. It includes best-selling authors like Paloma Contreras; Elle Decor’s 2018 A-Listers like Nick Olsen, Charlie Ferrer, and Bennett Leifer; members of distinguished firms like Cullman & Kravis and McMillen Inc.; and protégés of famous decorators such as Bunny Williams, Jamie Drake, and Miles Redd. This fascinating cross section of talent results in a book that readers will want to return to again and again for ideas and inspiration.

This book is the perfect visual guide for anyone ready to explore the beauty and history the hotel has to offer, and a takeaway memento for those who’ve visited this special place

Located in the Straits of Mackinac between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas, Mackinac Island is a magical place, accessible only by ferry, private boat, or small plane. In 1887, Grand Hotel was built on the island to accommodate a new leisure class. Today, horse-drawn carriages (no motorized vehicles are allowed) still bring guests to the 660-foot-long porch to catch the breezes off the Great Lakes.

When the Musser family – the owners of the hotel – brought in designer Carleton Varney, a 40-year relationship began, as did an ongoing mission to renovate, update, and create the guest rooms, public spaces, and outer buildings of Grand Hotel. That project continues today. (“The job of decorating is never done,” says the designer.) Varney has developed a vision that brings visitors back year after year to their choice of the 397 rooms – no two of which are alike.

In Rooms to Remember, Varney – in his usual colorful and anecdote-filled style – walks the reader through over 200 lavish photographs of the 43 Named Rooms and Suites, providing decorating details, history, and insights. This book is the perfect visual guide for anyone ready to explore the beauty and history the hotel has to offer, and a takeaway memento for those who’ve visited this special place. Come along and join this glorious tour of an iconic American hotel!

The first book on the houses and interiors of a firm known for its sensitive and sumptuous residential work in traditional and contemporary styles.

Whether for a plantation guesthouse in South Carolina or a Dutch Colonial home on Long Island Sound, Eric J. Smith’s evocative designs are the result of thoughtful planning integrated with a deep understanding of his clients’ lives and lifestyles, a design ethos beautifully evident in the book.

From a Georgian home in California and a French Country home on Long Island to a Shelter Island fishing camp, Smith’s work is at once an homage to tradition and an expression of the living beauties these traditions still offer. Over the course of a storied career, and often working with prestigious interior designers–including Alexa Hampton, David Easton, and William Diamond–Smith has garnered a reputation for a kind of personal architecture that is, in each case, in sync with the homeowner, whomever he or she may be, and the place, whether it is oceanfront, on a hillside, or set beside a lake or stream. Renewing Tradition features custom residential projects from New York to California, and Bermuda to the United Kingdom, and Smith’s houses, apartments, and country cabins are a revelation, work to be savored and which will serve to inspire homeowners in search of a guide to achieving comfortable elegance in the home.

Classic and timeless, these exclusive homes recall the simple glamor of vintage Hamptons design.

For every lavish, state-of-the-art, over-the-top home under construction in the Hamptons, there is an equally compelling, culturally significant home that has been restored and maintained its original designs. This fascinating glimpse inside these classic homes aims to capture the illustrious architecture and design of the Hamptons historic houses. Accompanied by architectural photographer Stanley Rumbough and Hamptons historian Richard Barons, readers are invited “over the privet hedges” of dozens of homes that offer clues to the Hamptons’ storied past. From quaint, 18th-century cottages to the Sister Parish-style décor of Hamptons legend Dina Merrill, the houses profiled here boast historical significance and impeccable style. Heartfelt contributions from Hamptons icons David Netto and Alec Baldwin recall a time before million-dollar homes dominated the area’s pristine beaches and lovely lanes. Copublished by The East Hampton Historical Society and DelMonico Books

Behind the Privets: Classic Hamptons Houses (DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2019) Text © 2019 by Richard Barons. Photographs © 2019 by Stan Rumbough.

Renowned interior designer Cathy Kincaid’s first book provides a fresh approach to combining classic and contemporary design with a refined sensibility.

Known for her carefully nuanced color palettes and attention to detail, Cathy Kincaid creates warm and gracious interiors. Her worldly taste in collecting art and furnishings, her intricate layering of patterns, and the customized details–from trelliswork to lacquered surfaces–she applies to every room are hallmarks of her style. Presented are varied residences, ranging from a ship captain’s cottage and a 1920s Spanish Colonial to a bucolic farmhouse and a family house in the country, in such locations as Dallas, Connecticut, and the South of France.

Sprinkled throughout is Kincaid’s advice on such topics as selecting the right lighting, whether it be sconces or lamps; ways to showcase blue-and-white porcelain; and suggestions for how to edit one’s home. She has been long involved in historic preservation, working on many landmarked dwellings. Learn from this design expert how to achieve a comfortable yet sumptuous home environment.

A gorgeously illustrated look at the profound influence that classical ballet and the ballerina have had on high fashion…

Ballerina: Fashion’s Modern Muse is a revelatory, irresistible treat for dance aficionados and fashionistas alike. Couturiers such as Balmain, Balenciaga, Chanel, Schiaparelli, Charles James, Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent designed ballet-inspired dresses and gowns, many featuring the boned bodices and voluminous tulle skirts of classical tutus. And ready-to-wear designers such as Claire McCardell found inspiration in ballet leotards and other practice clothing, creating knitted separates, bathing suits, and wrap dresses. Written by fashion and ballet experts, the book is illustrated with archival photography by such masters as Richard Avedon, Edward Steichen, Irving Penn, Man Ray, and Cecil Beaton, along with newly commissioned photography of contemporary ballerinas wearing ballet-influenced couture.

Architectural Digest at 100 celebrates the best from the pages of the international design authority. The editors have delved into the archives and culled years of rich material covering a range of subjects. Ranging freely between present and past, the book features the personal spaces of dozens of private celebrities like Barack and Michelle Obama, David Bowie, Truman Capote, David Hockney, Michael Kors, and Diana Vreeland, and includes the work of top designers and architects like Frank Gehry, David Hicks, India Mahdavi, Peter Marino, John Fowler, Renzo Mongiardino, Oscar Niemeyer, Axel Vervoordt, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Elsie de Wolfe. Also included are stunning images from the magazine’s history by photographers such as Bill Cunningham, Horst P. Horst, Simon Upton, Francois Dischinger, Francois Halard, Julius Shulman, and Oberto Gili. (Preview pictures are not currently available.)

Luxurious homes featuring woodblock printed panoramic wallpapers from the premier French manufacturer Zuber & Cie.

Since its founding in 1797, Zuber & Cie wallpapers’ fame has spread far and wide, from King Louis Philippe awarding Jean Zuber the Legion of Honor in 1834 to Jackie Kennedy installing Zuber’s “Vues de l’Amérique du Nord” in the White House. According to France Today, the company still uses the same antique woodblocks, the same paint formulas, and the same time-honored processes to create its stunning wallpapers as it did in Jean Zuber’s time.

Gorgeous displays of friezes, borders, ceiling roses and architectural trompe l’oeil, have been photographed for Zuber in homes in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. (Additional information coming soon!)

Interior designer Nicolò Castellini Baldissera joins forces with fashion and interiors photographer Guido Taroni to showcase the most beautiful homes Inside Tangier.

A white-walled city perched between Morocco and Europe, Tangier was long a haven for the literary and artistic avant-garde—and black sheep—of Europe and America. Now a new generation of residents are blending color, pattern, and taste to create an interior aesthetic all their own. Inside Tangier explores a selection of these exceptional properties and their eccentric inhabitants—from antiques dealer and collector Gordon Watson and interior designers Frank de Biasi and Veere Greeney to the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs—providing rare insights into the sometimes bohemian, sometimes extravagant, but always stylish “Tangerine” lifestyle.

A trove of master interior designer Tom Scheerer’s latest projects in his signature style—sophisticated, yet relaxed and unpretentious…

Tom Scheerer’s second book, 16 of his latest projects are featured, including city houses and apartments in New York, Dallas, Houston, and Paris; summer houses in Nantucket, the Hamptons, and Maine; and tropical houses in Harbour Island, Antigua, and Abaco. Each project exudes a serenity and a sense of comfort and ease that derives from its perfect proportions combined with fresh, unpretentious beauty. It all seems completely effortless, belying the fierce intelligence and impeccable eye behind every decorating decision. Illustrated with Francesco Lagnese’s luminous photographs, Tom Scheerer: More Decorating is a master class in interior design for aficionados and practiced professionals alike.

Sleep beautifully: be inspired by hundreds of the most stylish, iconic, and simply fabulous beds and bedrooms ever designed…

In our bedrooms, we take leave of our daily woes. Far from the bustle of the kitchen, the sociability of the living room or the indulgence of the dining room, this part of the home is reserved for intimacy, romance, and dreaming.

Bedtime: Inspirational Beds, Bedrooms and Boudiors is an inspiring, visual journey into the sleepiest, yet most salacious, room of the house. Celia Forner whisks you through the bedrooms of queens and emperors, designers and decorators, today’s most exclusive hotels, and even the most evocative fictional boudoirs from stage and screen. Taking us from Marie Antoinette to the Maharaja of Indore; from Tony Duquette to Peter Marino; from Mae West and Peggy Guggenheim to Rudolph Nureyev; from Gone with the Wind to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bedtime is a must have for anyone who dreams of sleeping like a king or queen. Designers and clients alike will find fresh inspiration in this king-size source book, which shows astonishing breadth of vision in collating more beds and bedrooms than one could possibly dream of, and is an invaluable addition to any design collection.

Textile designer Lisa Fine shares the many sources of inspiration for her coveted hand-printed linens and her personal interior design aesthetic.

In Near & Far, Lisa Fine invites us into her homes in Dallas, New York, and Paris and then takes us along as she visits the places and people who have been her greatest sources of inspiration. Among her favored treasures are the Mughal palaces and gardens of India, the 18th-century home of Carl Linnaeus in Sweden, the whitewashed retreat of interior designer John Stefanidis on Patmos, the idyllic country house and garden of London-based designer Penny Morrison, and the storied house in the Tangier Casbah belonging to collectors Jamie Creel and Marco Scarani. Evocatively photographed by Miguel Flores-Vianna and with a foreword by style editor Deborah Needleman, Near & Far not only provides a trove of design ideas, but also offers advice for anyone interested in giving full expression to their personal style.