Country style is relaxed and embraces the idea of a quality of life that’s an antidote to the fast, noisy pace of the city. It’s a style often adopted by city dwellers who want to evoke a little bit of country no matter where they are living.

The country-style books in our collection are generated from all corners of the globe. A newer one, Tuscany: Artists at Home, combines the beauty of an area that is a magnet to travelers with the stories of lives devoted to art. And a delicious pairing it is.

Studios overlook countryside of heart-wrenching beauty with the hazy hills of 16^th Century landscape art. Vine-covered pergolas provide peaceful refuge for a glass of wine. There are terraces massed with lavender and punctuated by fountain or pool. Beyond the terrace, lie kitchen gardens and vineyards.

You learn of a life where time is divided between painting and gardening or perhaps sculpture and carpentry. You see tapestries on mellow stone, cool tile floors and sculptural stucco walls. Most of the homes have lovingly evolved over long, artistic lifetimes.

The artists have also applied their skills to walls and furniture, creating exciting murals and whimsical decoration. Sculpture dots the woods and gardens.

If you are looking for armchair travel and summer fantasy, let this book transport you to Tuscany.

-Jane

If you have a weakness for the English country style of decorating you will enjoy the newest book from veteran design writer, Ros Byam Shaw: Perfect English Farmhouse.

The homes presented are labours of love. She tells the stories of how they were acquired and the work that went into making them places fit for the glossy pages of a design book.

Often, they begin like the tale of a love story. The house is glimpsed and the person smitten. A house is pursued, or even “stalked”, until the buyer possesses the object of desire.

The houses presented are no longer part of working farms but have been separated from properties that are now consolidated into larger holdings to make them economically viable. The owners tend to be writers and artists, shop owners and antique dealers.

These homes have the character and patina that comes with age and feature many of the characteristics associated with the genre. There are mellow bricks and beams, tiled floors, enameled Aga cookers and faded chintz. Buildings are nestled into charming gardens where hybrid chickens scratch at the bricks in the sun-dappled courtyard.

For those who are fans of country-modern style, the section, No Frills Farmhouse, shows fabulous old houses with interior furnishings that are spare and contemporary.

I want Becca and Bill to invite me for tea in their lovely long kitchen/sitting room. Sigh. It’s all a fantasy world of idyllic English country living.

- Jane