Food Literature

Twentysomething Frida Rodriguez arrives in Paris in 1991, relishing the city’s butter-soaked cuisine and seeking her future as a war correspondent. But then she writes to a bookshop in Seattle, and receives more than just the book she requests. A friendship begins that will redefine the person she wants to become.

Shortly before turning the big five-oh, Cooking with Gusto! TV personality Augusta "Gus" Simpson finds herself planning a birthday party she’d rather ignore - her own. To make things worse, the network wants to boost her ratings by teaming Gus with the beautiful, ambitious, and younger Carmen Vega - the former Miss Spain, no less. But Gus isn’t going without a fight - whether it’s off set with her two demanding daughters, on camera with the vicious beauty queen herself, or after hours with Oliver, the new culinary producer.

Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming - mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account. Enter Jack, class clown and thorn in Pepper’s side. He works in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.

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?

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?

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.

Between developing her food blog, Hope at Home, and choosing low-cal recipes for a feature in Cooking Now! magazine, Hope has a full plate. Still, she's never too busy to compete in a Jefferson, Connecticut, tradition - the town's annual scavenger hunt. But as she races with her team to check off the next item, Hope discovers a grisly surprise - the body of shady real estate developer Lionel Whitcomb, shot in a parking lot. His wife Elaine, who's also in the hunt, gasps and nearly faints. But two other women on the scene cry out that their husband is dead.

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.

For the Nameless Restaurant, once a discreet hole-in-the-wall meant for a cast of supernatural regulars, the increasing levels of background magic has brought with it that most dreadful of locusts—new customers. The staff of the Nameless Restaurant are finding the influx of new customers—both mortal and magical—to be a challenge. They're reaching a breaking point, and something has to give. The only question is, will it be Mo Meng's rules on magic or the restaurant itself?

"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.

Fed up with dating after a disastrous setup, the only thing Hayley wants to snuggle up to is a box of made-to-order chocolates from plus-sized, plus-mouthed chocolatier Bessie Winthrop. But when Bessie is found dead in her kitchen, only Hayley suspects that Bessie's "heart attack" might actually be a candy-coated murder.

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.

Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs and quickly forms an addiction. One day she disappears without a trace.

This box set includes the first three books in Lucy Burdette's cozy culinary Key West Food Critic Mystery series: An Appetite for Murder, Death in Four Courses, and Topped Chef.

Nathanaël, je t'enseignerai la ferveur. Une existence pathétique, Nathanaël, plutôt que la tranquillité. Je ne souhaite pas d'autre repos que celui du sommeil de la mort. J'ai peur que tout désir, toute énergie que je n'aurais pas satisfaits durant ma vie, pour leur survie ne me tourmentent. J'espère, après avoir exprimé sur cette terre tout ce qui attendait en moi, satisfait, mourir complètement désespéré. Que mon livre t'enseigne à t'intéresser plus à toi qu'à lui-même, puis à tout le reste plus qu'à toi.

Of all the essentials for survival: oxygen, water, sleep, and food, only food is a vast treasure trove of memory and of sensory experience. Food is a portal to culture, to times past, to disgust, to comfort, to love: no matter one's feelings about a particular dish, they are hardly ever neutral.

Much to their surprise, the Peaches had a great summer running their food truck business selling their pies across the Mid-West, but they're happy to be back home in Duluth, Minnesota, where they can settle back into a routine just in time for the new school year. That is until Great Aunt Lucinda wants to gift them her historic mansion. But there are conditions: they're to turn it into a cozy bed-and-breakfast, something the Peach kids' mom always dreamed of before she passed away. And they only have until Thanksgiving to do the renovations and prove they can make the business work.

Who better than food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell to book a caterer for the Island Times holiday party? But Hayley's quest for a cook turns into the pursuit of a killer who caters to no one....

As a single mom, Hayley Powell already has a full plate - she's got deadlines to make and a teenage daughter with eyes for an aspiring singer-songwriter. But when country music superstar Wade Springer rolls into town, Hayley spies an irresistible side gig: personal chef to her all-American idol. After he tries her home cooking, Wade's so impressed that he hires her on the spot - and invites her to dine with him alone.