Food Literature

For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.

Single mom Hayley Powell is barely keeping her leaking roof over her head in Bar Harbor, Maine, when her boss at the Island Times gives her a new assignment - taking over the paper's food column. Hayley's not sure she has the chops - she's an office manager, not a writer, even if her friends clamor for her mouth-watering potluck dishes. But the extra income is tempting, and Hayley's chatty first column is suddenly on everyone's menu - with one exception.

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.

This cookie has never felt like a smart cookie no matter how hard she tries, especially in comparison to all the clever cupcakes and brilliant rolls in the bakery. Will a dash of creativity and a sprinkle of confidence be enough to help her learn that perfect scores and having all the answers aren’t the only ingredients for intelligence?

This collection includes books 4-6 of Lucy Burdette's cozy Key West Food Critic Mystery series: Book 4: Murder With Ganache, Book 5: Death With All the Trimmings, and Book 6: Fatal Reservations, featuring sleuthing food critic Hayley Snow.

What’s worse than being fat your freshman year? Being fat your sophomore year. Life used to be so simple for Andrew Zansky - hang with the Model UN guys, avoid gym class, and eat and eat and eat. He’s used to not fitting in: into his family, his sports-crazed school, or his size-48 pants. But not anymore. Andrew just met April, the new girl at school and the instant love of his life! He wants to find a way to win her over, but how? When O. Douglas, the heartthrob quarterback and high-school legend, saves him from getting beaten up by the school bully, Andrew sees his chance to get in with the football squad.

For a sheltered mama's boy like Demarcus, everything was coming up roses until a life-changing experience showed him that every rose has thorns. After a well-orchestrated set-up, Demarcus' plans to go to college are derailed by a trip to state prison. It is while in the belly of the beast that the mama's boy has to make the choice between being a man - or being a victim. Upon his release, Demarcus tries to get his life back on track, but his felony conviction causes door after door to be slammed in his face.

When Kayla discovers that something is eating Daisy's cat food, she immediately calls the Pet Club to action. They grab their pets and start to gather clues. Will they solve the case of the cat food thief?

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.

Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner, run by Chef Nagare and his daughter, Koishi. The father-daughter duo have reinvented themselves as “food detectives,” offering a service that goes beyond cooking mouth-watering meals. Through their culinary sleuthing, they revive lost recipes and rekindle forgotten memories.

Nationally acclaimed storyteller J.J. Reneaux grew up Cajun for true, surrounded by the stories, music, food, and culture of rural communities in southeastern Texas and southern Louisiana. A traditional storyteller who collects by word-of-mouth, Reneaux has developed her repertoire over years of collecting: on front porches, school playgrounds, and her beloved fishing trips, as well as at nursing homes, airports, and at neighborhood fais-dodos.

Tess is a Londoner whose relationship with Richard transports her from a Jamaican diaspora in the city to the English countryside, where predatory birds hover over fields, buses run twice a day, neighbors barter honey for cider, and no one looks like her. As Tess and Richard settle in, the dramatic arrival of their fraternal twins—one who presents as black and the other as white—recasts the family dynamic, stirring up complicated feelings and questions of belonging.

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.

"Eggnog Murder": When a gift-wrapped bottle of eggnog proves to be a killer concoction for a Tinker's Cove local, all Lucy Stone wants for Christmas is to find the murdering mixologist who's stirring up trouble. "Death By Eggnog": Food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell has never cared much for Bar Harbor's grouchy town librarian, Agatha Farnsworth. But after the Scroogy senior has a fatal - and suspicious - allergic reaction to supposedly non-dairy eggnog, it's up to Hayley to ladle out some justice.

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!

It may not be front page news, but Island Times food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell is now happily married. Before she can set sail on her honeymoon cruise, however, Hayley's mom, Sheila, pays an impromptu visit - and promptly becomes the prime suspect in a murder. The victim is Sheila's old high school rival, Caskie Lemon-Hogg, known for her homemade blueberry pies and her home-wrecking flirtations. As Hayley teams up with her BFFs Liddy and Mona to clear her mother's name, Sheila reunites with Liddy's mom Celeste and Mona's mom Jane for their own amateur sleuthing.

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.

Goldy Schulz has a lucrative new gig, preparing breakfasts and conference-room snacks for a local law firm. It's time-consuming, but Goldy is enjoying it, until the night she arrives to find Dusty, the firm's paralegal, dead.

When Hope's elderly neighbor perishes in a home fire, she can't help but feel somewhat responsible. Only the day before, Peggy Olson had called her over, having burned a pot on the stove while she was sleeping and filling the house with smoke. In fact, she couldn't even remember cooking. Clearly, it was dangerous for the woman to live alone. But it turns out she wasn't alone. When a second body is discovered in the basement of the burned house, suddenly what appeared to be a tragic accident is beginning to look like premeditated murder.

Serena Peters has made her place in life writing an exclusive column for a popular foodie magazine. She has fame and fortune, what she doesn’t have is companionship or love. Chef Stuart Wellings comes from an embittered past and has had to fight for the simple way he lives. When Serena shows up to interview him and his small town diner, will an appreciation for food be the only thing they have in common, or will there be more?