We are now about halfway through the deterioration in export conditions that we first warned of in last July’s Economic Overview.

With 26 authors, 65 scenic drives, 103 maps, 105 weeks of research, and 1,200 pages of content, the new edition of Lonely Planet’s best-selling USA Travel Guide gets to the heart of the world’s third-largest nation.

Published in March 2012, this is the seventh edition of the most comprehensive guidebook to the USA currently available.

Global travel authority Lonely Planet presents an inspirational and informative new guide to The World’s Best Street Food, published this March.

As award-winning food writer Tom Parker Bowles explains in his introduction to the book: “Some travel to drink in the culture, others to lap up the sun. I travel to eat, preferably on the street. Because this is where you’ll find the real soul of a cuisine, somewhere among the taco carts and noodle stalls and baskets of herbs.”

In The World’s Best Street Food, Lonely Planet showcases:

Two New Holland cookbooks have been announced as winners in the national rounds of the 2011 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.

Julie Biuso’s Sweet Feast, a mouthwatering collection of her favourite and most popular dessert and sweet baking recipes from the past six years as contributing food editor of Taste magazine, has been selected as the Best Desserts Cookbook in New Zealand.

“There is literally nobody better in the world than James for getting a woman’s body into amazing shape”  Elle Macpherson

James Duigan, the man behind some of the world’s most beautiful bodies, has long been the go-to expert trusted by movie stars and super models to get them in the best shape of their lives. He is one of the world’s leading health and wellness guru’s and he is back, with the third part to his bestselling Clean and Lean series: The Cookbook.

On behalf of The Read Renée Lang talked to four booksellers about their picks for summer reading a little less than six weeks before Christmas.

Arty Bees, Wellington

First up was Matt Morris (pictured below)  from Wellington’s Arty Bees.