Books about Decadent from Amazon.com

Devin Alexander, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Biggest Loser Cookbook, lets you have your cake and lose weight, too, with sinfully tempting — yet amazingly healthy — recipes for America’s all-time favorite foods.

Chef and former L.A. caterer Devin Alexander has maintained a fifty-five-pound weight loss for over sixteen years by transforming the dishes she and millions of other Americans love best into guilt-free (yet still outrageously mouth-watering) indulgences--Rigatoni with Meat Sauce, BBQ Bacon Cheeseburgers, Eggplant Parmesan, Sinless Yet Sinful Sticky Buns, and even Dark Chocolate Layer Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

Thesesimple-to-prepare recipes for the kind of delectable dishes people crave but feel they can’t eat when trying to be healthy and trim, actually can be the basis of a personal weight-loss plan. They can also be a way to add “off-limit” foods back into an already successful diet. Or they can simply be part of an exciting new way to eat healthfully — and with pleasure.

In The Most Decadent Diet Ever! Devin Alexander proves that even the most decadent dishes — Chipotle Chili with Blue Cheese Crumbles, "Fried" Jumbo Shrimp, Super-Stuffed Steak Soft Tacos, Fettu-Skinny Alfredo, Godiva Brownie Sundaes, and Chocolate Chip Pancakes — can lead to weight loss, good health, and carefree enjoyment.

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Price: $11.24 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Young widow Passion Dare thought she'd never love again. But a handsome earl has been pursuing her- and after a lifetime of propriety, Passion ponders throwing caution to the wind. After several heady encounters, the pair must face blackmail, learn a shocking truth-and choose between duty and desire..
Price: $3.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The gourmet chocolate market is growing like gangbusters, and Truffles offers 50 recipes for indulgent chocolate truffles using high-quality chocolate infused with a wide range of fabulous flavorings. Anyone can become a master truffle maker with these clear, easy-to-follow recipes and tips on truffle-making basics, choosing the right chocolate, and decorating and storing truffles. Filled with beautiful 4-color photographs, this is the only book on the market devoted entirely to truffles..
Price: $6.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Countess Cristina de Vogüé invites us into the splendor of her home at Château Vaux-le-Vicomte and divulges sixty-three recipes from her exclusive collection. Personally selected from family recipe books, passed along by close friends, or inspired by her international travels, these decadent desserts are the perfect finale to any meal. From Lady Cawdor’s Orange Soufflé to Floating Island with Pink Pralines and Green Tea Custard, they are suited for every occasion, from afternoon tea to holiday feasts.The book opens with the history of the château, whose striking architecture and idyllic gardens were the inspiration for Versailles. Stunning original photography showcases the finished desserts in the atmospheric interiors and shaded gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte, featuring the rich details that define French style—brocade upholstery, crisp linens, crystal tableware, and silver place settings..
Price: $29.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For a good, spicy read about colonial Asia's most decadent city, this is the book. Stella Dong, a second-generation Chinese-American living in New York, tells the story of Old Shanghai in racy style: readers expecting tales of drugs, prostitution, and gang warfare will not be disappointed Her scholarship is sound, however, and at the end of each chapter she provides bibliographies of drier, more academic studies for those wishing to delve deeper.

The Treaty of Nanking that ended the First Opium War between Britain and China in 1842 granted trading concessions in Shanghai to the European powers. The international currents shaping the city over the next hundred years were complex: British merchants, Chinese warlords, Russian emigrés, Sephardic Jews, and German spies exploited its extraterritorial status to make Shanghai a hotbed of greed, vice, and intrigue. Opium was crucial to the city's extraordinary wealth and lawlessness, though Dong also relates the rise of its criminal gangs to the development of coastal steamships and consequent loss of inland-transportation jobs. Foreign participation in the opium trade was not confined to the British: the role of the French Concession in Shanghai is described in well-researched detail. The flamboyant personalities that prospered in the city's unfettered environment come alive, characters like Pockmarked Huang, who combined the post of police chief in the French Concession with leadership of the Green Gang. Dong explores Shanghai's political significance both as the source of Chiang Kai-shek's fortunes and as a center of Communist revolutionary activity. As the city again becomes the leading commercial metropolis of a dynamic national economy, Shanghai 1842-1949 successfully documents its unique role in the development of modern China. --John Stevenson.
Price: $5.40 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In COOKIE DOUGH DELIGHTS, Camilla V. Saulsbury worked magic with refrigerated cookie dough. With BROWNIE MIX BLISS she turns her attention to the familiar box of brownie mix and the many possibilities contained herein.

Incredibly, all 175-plus recipes in BROWNIE MIX BLISS begin with a standard box of brownie mix. What's more, all the recipes have been streamlined for easy, everyday baking. The problem, if you can call it that, will be deciding which treat to make first. How about Mocha Buttercream Brownies? Or Snickers Supreme Brownies? Or maybe Mint Julep Ganache Brownies? And that's but the tip of the chocolate iceberg. While brownie mix can be used to create all manner of mouthwatering concoctions, it can also be transformed into countless other very easy, very chocolate desserts ranging from sophisticated biscotti, soufflé cakes, madeleines, and cheesecakes to nostalgic drop cookies ice cream novelties, gooey layered bar cookies, and so much more.

In addition to the recipes, Saulsbury offers "Brownie Points," or tips for baking success. For the accomplished baker as well as the novice, BROWNIE MIX BLISS takes the chocolate dessert to a new level of, well, bliss!.
Price: $10.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Who could forget the decade that brought us AIDS, Milli Vannilli, teen slasher movies, and a sitting U.S. president with an advanced case of Alzheimer's disease? Well, I guess that question answers itself, but for those who wish to remember, no finer source can be found than Totally Awesome 80s, by Matthew Rettenmund, the man who brought us Encyclopedia Madonnica. This loving but ironic catalog of the most important cultural events of the 80s is fittingly slim, flashy, and shallow, covering mostly the poppiest movies, songs, and political actions of the era that told us "greed is good.".
Price: $9.73 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Following the twin trails of desire and depravity to a shocking, sadistic paradise - a garden in China where torture is practiced as an art form - a dissolute Frenchman discovers the true depths of degradation beyond his prior bourgeois imaginings. Entranced by a resolute Englishwoman whose capacity for debauchery knows no bounds, he capitulates to her every whim amid an ecstatic yet tormenting incursion of visions, scents, caresses, pleasures, horrors, and fantastic atrocities. The Torture Garden is exceptional for its detailed descriptions of sexual euphoria and exquisite torture, its political critique of government corruption and bureaucracy, and its revolutionary portrait of a woman - which challenges even contemporary models of feminine authority. This is one of the most truly original works ever imagined. Beyond providing richly poetic experience, it will stimulate anyone interested in the always-contemporary problem of the limits of experience and sensation. As part of the continuing struggle against censorship and especially self-censorship, it will remain a landmark in the fight against all that would suppress the creation of a far freer world. Written in 1899, this fabulously rare novel was once described as "the most sickening work of art of the 19th century.".
Price: $6.06 [Notify me when price goes down.]