Food Fiction

Meet Kylie Carson. She’s a fourth grader with a big problem. How will she make friends at her new school? Should she tell her classmates she loves monster movies? Forget it. Play the part of a turnip in the school play? Disaster! Then Kylie comes up with a delicious idea: What if she starts a cupcake club?

Nourish will guide you to transform your eating from self-control to self-love, using a 10-step healing process. In this book, Heidi Schauster, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S, founder of Nourishing Words Nutrition Therapy, shares 20 years of wisdom from her Boston-area practice treating disordered and emotional eating.

Freya Braithwaite knows she is lucky. Nineteen years of marriage to a man who still warms her soul and two beautiful teenage daughters to show for it: confident Charlotte and thoughtful Lexi. Her home is filled with love and laughter. But when Lexi's struggles with weight take control of her life, everything Freya once took for granted falls apart, leaving the whole family with a sense of helplessness that can only be confronted with understanding, unity and, above all, love.

Depression is a common and debilitating problem among women, though it rarely occurs in a vacuum. As Susan Nolen-Hoeksema's original research shows, overthinking, a tendency to ruminate on problems rather than seek solutions, often co-exists with unhealthy eating habits and/or heavy drinking. This groundbreaking audiobook explains how these three core problems reinforce one another, wreaking havoc on women's emotional well-being, physical health, relationships, and careers.

The Big Cheese is the best at everything, and brags about it, too. When the annual Cheese-cathlon comes around, the Big Cheese is prepared to win, as always. But what happens when the quiet new kid, Wedge Wedgeman, comes out on top? Is a slice of humility all the Big Cheese needs to discover that some things are better than being the best?

Erin Murphy, manager of Glacier Mercantile (a.k.a. the Merc), is tuning up for Jewel Bay's annual Jazz Festival. Between keeping the Merc's shelves stocked with Montana's tastiest local fare and hosting the festival's kick-off concert, Erin has her hands full. Discord erupts when jazz guitarist Gerry Martin plummets to his death from the rocks above the Jewel River. The one-time international sensation had fallen out of sync with festival organizers, students, and performers. Was his death an accident - or did someone even the score?

Enjoy the holiday season with three festive mysteries set in coastal Maine. This anthology includes "Yule Log Murder" by Leslie Meier, "Death by Yule Log" by Lee Hollis, and "Logged On" by Barbara Ross.

In life’s kitbag of essentials food and drink are right at the top. Their variety and ways to consume are a wonder, both of nature’s offerings and human creativity. For our classic poets ranging from Ancient Romans to Elinor Wylie and Rainer Maria Rilke, their recipes for verse using the simple ingredients of words and imagination are a wonderful and enduring example of their craft and art applied to the one thing mankind looks forward to each and every day.

Hayley Powell, food and cocktails columnist for Bar Harbor's Island Times, is...well, kind of broke. So when she's selected for that extreme coupon-clipping reality game show coming to town...she's thrilled, especially when her competition is nasty nurse Candace Culpepper. But when Haley stumbles across a face-down-in-the-snow Candace - scissors gleaming between her shoulders - she knows the next thing she'll be selected for will probably be a police line-up.

A classic of reportage, Oranges was first conceived as a magazine article, but John McPhee kept encountering so much irresistible information that he wrote a book. It is perhaps the last word on the subject (the first came in 500 BC and is attributed to Confucius). McPhee writes about the botany, history, and industry of oranges, from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida, who may be the last of the individual orange barons.

Since prehistory, humans have braved the business ends of knives, scrapers, and mashers, all in the name of creating something delicious - or at least edible. In Consider the Fork, award-winning food writer and historian Bee Wilson traces the ancient lineage of our modern culinary tools, revealing the startling history of objects we often take for granted. Charting the evolution of technologies from the knife and fork to the gas range and the sous-vide cooker, Wilson offers unprecedented insights.

Elizabeth is helping her friend, Anuska, forage for Yupik potatoes in the Alaskan tundra. To help her find the hidden potatoes, Anuska teaches her a trick—look for the trails the mice make. Will she be able to find her first potato?

The Couch Potato has everything within reach and doesn't have to move from the sunken couch cushion. But when the electricity goes out, Couch Potato is forced to peel away from the comforts of the living room and venture outside. Could fresh air and sunshine possibly be better than the views on screen? Listeners of all ages will laugh along as their new best spuddy learns that balancing screen time and playtime is the root to true happiness.

"In almost any culture, at any time, you can find food writing,” writes guest editor Mark Bittman in his introduction. “Food means growing and hardship, and health and medicine, and work and holiday. In its abundance it is a gift and a joy, and in its absence a curse and a tragedy. If a culture has writing, that culture has food writing.” The stories in this year’s Best American Food Writing are brilliant, eye-opening windows into the heart of our country’s culture.

The Great Eggscape is when the Good Egg and his pals escape their carton and drop into the store for a morning of fun, enjoyed by everybody. Well, almost everybody. Shel (an egg) isn’t a huge fan of group activities, especially when he’s made to be “It” for a game of hide-and-seek. Nevertheless, Shel doesn’t want to let his friends down, so he reluctantly plays, anyway. But after a morning of hiding and seeking, somebody’s still missing. Will the dozen eggs friends ever be reunited?

When twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter—as well as a gift of saffron—to fifty-nine-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column for a Pacific Northwest magazine, and while she can hunt elk and dig for clams, she’s never tasted fresh garlic--exotic fare in the Northwest of the sixties.

This classic follows coffee's journey around the world, from London to Brazil, telling in fascinating detail and amusing anecdote the singular history of the legendary commodity - from the discovery that chewing on the beans were keeping goats awake in Yemen to the author's own experiences with the bean in 1935.

The third in the Corinna Chapman series, Devil's Food is another irresistible, criminally entertaining read from the master crime writer, Kerry Greenwood. Corinna Chapman, baker extraordinaire and amateur sleuth, returns in another delicious mystery.

Do you know the stories behind delectable dishes—like the fun connection between scallion pancakes and pizza? Or how dumplings cured a village’s frostbitten ears? Or how wonton soup tells about the creation of the world? Separated into courses like a Chinese menu, these tales—based in real history and folklore—are filled with squabbling dragons, magical fruits, and hungry monks. This book will bring you to far-off times and marvelous places, all while making your mouth water.

Trapped between his unfulfilling career, a dwindling grasp on reality and his childhood memories, Jay Mackintosh takes the snap decision to buy a derelict French farmhouse, running from London to the village of Lansquenet. Returning to his childhood haunt, Jay is forced to confront a ghost from his past, a secretive widow and the terrible secret she's hiding.