Melissa Clark - Food Writer

Comfort Food: Pasta

You can toss pasta with practically anything edible and call it an easy meal, but even comfort food can be classy. This pretty book is filled with pasta recipes so simple, appealing and elegant that you'll want to try them all. Ranging from little-known Italian classics, to fresh, summery salads, to surprisingly easy yet impressive baked pasta dishes, to creative combos you can center a meal around, these straight-forward recipes and hunger-provoking photos make it clear that pasta is one of the best foods for every mood and season - as if you needed convincing.

Recipes include: Six-Herb Pasta Salad; Moroccan Vermicelli and Chickpea Soup; Pumpkin Tortelloni with Cilantro Vinaigrette; Linguine with Black Pepper Bread Crumbs; Salmon with Tagliatelle and Fried Leeks; Beef Daube with Rigatoni; Gemelli with Asparagus and Roasted Mushrooms; and Orzo Pudding with Pistachios and Raisins.

The Sweet Bread Machine Cookbook

This sequel to The Bread Machine Cookbook focuses in on the bounty of dessert, breakfast and tea, coffee, or snack-time sweet breads and pastries that you can create in your bread machine, or with breads you've made in your bread machine. Recipes are international in scope, with a variety of classics as well as all the inspired experiments that sounded weird but turned out great (we love weird experiments that turn out great - especially those involving canned lotus paste - you'll have to buy the book to see for yourself).

Recipes include: Quick Croissants; Chocolate Brioche; Butterscotch Pear Bread; Orange Blossom Tea Puffs; Glazed Chelsea Buns; Moravian Sweet Potato Sugar Cake; Maple Walnut Coffee Ring; Pistachio Rose Braid; Rum Babas; Sweet Lavender Focaccia; and Summer Pudding