Help me with a book a month gift please

[Celeriacacaca]

A friend is having a significant birthday so I thought I would send a book each month for the next year as their gift. Please help me to identify suitable books. Their interests are:
Food (they cook a lot from Delicious/Waitrose/Good Food magazines)
Antiques
Italy
Sudoko or similar puzzles
Crosswords
Travel

Names of any fiction and non-fiction books that you think would be good would be gratefully received!

Bump

Nigella’s How to Eat or (a new one) Felicity Cloake’s “completely perfect” are chatty recipe books.

Do you know if she has read the Elena Ferrante novels? They are set in Naples (called the Neapolitan Novels) and very evocative.

She may like Eat Pray Love? (covers travel and food)

Great suggestions, thank you. Keep them coming!

For info, it's for a he not a she, not that it makes much difference!

Have you seen this @Celeriacacaca

I nearly signed up myself but couldn't budget for it

readinginheels.com

What a fabulous idea.
'Together our community' cookbook created by women from Grenfell is full of lovely recipes, I saw it recommended on MN before Christmas and everyone I gave it loved it.

Midnight Chicken by Ella Rusbridger is a good one if she's into cooking. Also looks lovely on my kitchen shelves. Or anything by Nigella.

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.

Sorry, just seen that it's a 'he'. Shouldn't matter but maybe Mrs Beeton is less appropriate. Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries are also very good and would make a lovely gift.

Some great ideas, thank you!

Nigel Slater has two new books out this year. His Kitchen Diaries are excellent reads as well as cookbooks, and I loved his Christmas book in 2017.

I've just bought Margaret Costa's Four seasons Cookery Book, recommended by both St.Delia and Nigella, and The Country Kitchen by the late Jocasta Innes. Both are eminently mreadable and give little snippets of information not nornally found. The other book that is a history and food is Dorothy Hartley's Food In England, which is fascinating, both in terms of recipes and as a piece of public history.

Here are a couple of ideas

Headlong by Michael Frayn thriller about a lost Bruegel painting

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt about art theft and wheeler dealing.

• Antiques - what about the up-to-date Miller's Collectables Guide or similar?

Cookery - how about either one of the old Bero books as a tongue-in-cheek present (see abebooks.co.uk, they've got copies) or a home-made compilation along the lines of "favourite recipes from your youth". Abe would also be a great place to track down books from his year of birth, as a different way of approaching the year...

Cookery - www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/books/cookbooks/best-cookbooks-foodie-presents-gifts-2018-a8549086.html

Travel - www.amazon.co.uk/000-Places-See-Before-You/dp/0761104844?tag=mumsnetforum-21 - I had this book and regretted getting rid of it on one of my possessions purges....

Italy - www.ourescapeclause.com/best-books-about-italy/, lists titles like Under a Tuscan Sun and Room With a View as well as quite academic non-fiction

Crosswords and sudoku - www.waterstones.com/category/hobbies-quizzes-games/crosswords and www.waterstones.com/category/hobbies-quizzes-games/sudoku-and-number-puzzles

For someone who likes crosswords, sudoko, and travel, you get a combination of all three in The Ordnance Survey Puzzle Book ~ fantastic!

Oooh definitely the Goldfinch.

And an oldie that I've read and can recommend. There is a sumptuous film of it too with Juliette Binoche.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horseman_on_the_Roof_(novel)

And Il Gattopardo, the novel, (the leopard), of decaying grandeur in old Sicily. (Also a vintage film)

Also Goethe’s Italian journey, although most poets and writers went there as part if the grand tour, so you can find books on his favourite writer in Italy.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Journey

Also a classic by Alessandro Manzoni - The betrothed - Il Promessi Sposi ; this was referred to by Cecil Vyse in a Room with a View, one ofthe best books ever about English people and Italy.
Also by Forster is The Wings of the Dove - also about Italy.

Francesco’s Venice by Francesco da Mosto is fab too!

Gosh Harebellsies it’s years since I’ve read The Leopard, I must read it again, I’ll be looking out for The Horseman on the Roof too! Thanks!

ada Horseman on the Roof is set partly in old Piedmont. It is quite unknown and i wonder whether it is still in print?

There is a new cookbook coming out by Mimi Thorisson on Italian food. She posts updates of her family’s visits to Italy on Instagram and i look forward to the release. Her husband is a photographer and does the wonderful pictures.

Hmmm, Mimis book stil pre-publishing but i found this by Skye McAlpine who is renowned and famous.

Thank you all, some fantastic suggestions here. I've ordered some already!