Food Literature

Explore the life and achievements of Wallace Amos, entrepreneur and founder of Famous Amos cookies.

Laura Patterson is an American exchange student in Rome who, fed up with being inexpertly groped by her young Italian beaus, decides there's only one sure-fire way to find a sensual man: date a chef. Then she meets Tomasso, who's handsome, young, and cooks in the exclusive Templi restaurant. Perfect. Except, unbeknownst to Laura, Tomasso is in fact only a waiter at Templi; it's his shy friend Bruno who is the chef.

There once was a very hungry king. Who needed a cook like anything...but the king is very fussy; he tries all the cooks in the kingdom, but no one is good enough. Then he spots Wobbly Bob. Maybe Bob can whip up his favourite dinner? But how will Bob be able to cook for the king when he’s scared of...well, everything?!

Since its earliest days, The New Yorker has been a tastemaker: literally. As the home of A. J. Liebling, Joseph Wechsberg, and M. F. K. Fisher, who practically invented American food writing, the magazine established a tradition that is carried forward today by irrepressible literary gastronomes, including Calvin Trillin, Bill Buford, Adam Gopnik, Jane Kramer, and Anthony Bourdain. Now, in this indispensable collection, The New Yorker dishes up a feast of delicious writing on food and drink.

Sofarende is at war. For 12-year-old Mathilde, it means food shortages, feuding neighbors, and bombings. Even so, as long as she and her best friend, Megs, are together, they'll be all right. But the army is recruiting children, and paying families well for their service. If Megs takes the test, Mathilde knows she will pass. Megs hopes the army is the way to save her family. Mathilde fears it might separate them forever.

"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.

It's New Year's Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Kirshenbaum's protagonist - an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer - fully unravels. Propelled by stand-up comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw. Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of - or into - the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief.

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.

GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine anonymously. There is her stint as Molly Hollis, a frumpy blond with manicured nails and an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque. The result: her famous double review of the restaurant: first she ate there as Molly; and then as she was coddled and pampered on her visit there as Ruth, New York Times food critic.

In a remote Sicilian mountain town, four women arrive at a cookery school, each at a turning point in their lives. Moll is a foodie and an exhausted working mum on the holiday of a lifetime. Tricia, a top London lawyer, is taking a break from the demands of her job and her family. Valerie, consumed by grief following the death of her partner, is trying to figure out how to live a life without him. And recently divorced Poppy has come to Sicily to learn about the place where her grandfather was born before emigrating to Australia.

For close to a decade, the barbarian known as Thule the Vanquisher traversed the lands of Lemuria, thwarting wizards and warlords alike. But in the midst of his latest clash with his arch-nemesis, the Scorpion Sorcerer Riven Kul'Doom, things got a little out of hand.

Mahalia's Sweet Tea boasts the most flavorful soul food in all of Prince George's County, Maryland. But as events at the beauty industry's leading trade show turn ugly, owner Halia Watkins needs to bite into an unsavory new item on the menu - murder!

Food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell doesn't know what to believe when Lydia Partridge, the put-together owner of gourmet Bar Harbor Ice Cream, suddenly reveals fears that her husband may be having an affair. There's no other way to explain why Jamie, a respected professor, was spotted in a remote part of town with a much younger woman. But instead of learning the truth about the secret meeting, Lydia opens her freezer truck to find another surprise—the dead body of a summer employee . . .

Would you like to master the art of making guilt-free, lip-smacking fried foods? Do you want to become an air fryer virtuoso and amaze your family and friends with your skills using the air fryer? If you do, then listen to find out more... Everybody loves fried foods. Crunchy, crispy, or buttery soft, fried food has always appealed to the modern populace and with good reason.

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.

Food of Love tells the story of Regina, a former supermodel, now princess of a tiny European principality, who has lost her skeletal figure and finds herself threatened by an unknown assassin. Fearing her royal husband wants to kill her now that she’s not model-thin, she seeks protection from her estranged African-American foster sister, conservative Christian television pundit, Rev. Cady Stanton.

The first volume in the best-selling Letters of Note series was a collection of hundreds of the world's most entertaining, inspiring, and unusual letters, based on the seismically popular website of the same name - an online museum of correspondence visited by over 70 million people.

Three boys, two dogs and a whole lot of trouble! Jordan, Ryan and Boy Dave always get blamed for EVERYTHING. And OK, most of the time it is their fault - but this is one time it definitely wasn't! How could they have known that trying to save the world and being accidental reality TV stars would end in DISASTER?

It's a proven fact that people who eat a raw vegan diet live longer, never age, and make approximately a million dollars or more each year (eat more greens, make more green). Now you, too, can learn the secrets of the perfect human diet in The Raw Vegan Bible by esteemed author (and super cool musician), Dr. David "Greens" Connor. Learn why enzymes are the key to increasing vitality and raising your Kundalini energy.

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.