Antoine Laurent Knihy

From the front flap of the dustIn a restaurant on the Boulevard St-Germain, the Marquis de St-Lyre meets Annabelle Fleury over the ruins of a ill-prepared champignons à la provençale . A master chef, owner of a restaurant in Nice, he offers to teach the young fashion designer the secrets of haute cuisine in just two days if she will accompany him on a train to the Côte d'Azur.What begins for Annabelle as an introduction to creative cooking becomes a far more dangerous and challenging initiation into the twin art of storytelling as the Marquis, magus-like, leads her deeper into a maze of terror and deceit. For he is a master of illusion, and the ingredients of his art are the fantasies, myths, and nightmares of the consummate storyteller. In search of the perfect ingredients for the perfect dish, they travel to strange places in time and space aboard a transformed Mistral express train. Talk of the perfect mushroom carries them to an enchanted forest; for garlic they search an Egyptian tomb; for oil, a baroque hacienda in Spain. Finally, as the train nears its destination, it is time for Annabelle, the apprentice conjurer, to prove her skills. Unaware of the trap that has been set for her, she begins to concoct, from her memories and imagination, the most beguiling — and dangerous — fantasy of them all. Cuisine Novella is a remarkable and bewitching first novel.