I love cooking, almost as much as I love eating. One of the great advantages of writing a series where the heroine is a jam maker is that it gives me a chance to experiment with jams, as well as other dishes Roxy shares with her family and friends. I live in a place where fresh fruit comes tumbling onto the market all summer: raspberries, peaches, apricots, blackberries, and cherries. You’re hardly through with one before the next appears on your plate. Making it into jam is fun, but writing about it is even better. And reading about someone else’s food loves is a special kind of pleasure. Bon appétit!
Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman books will make you long for some scrumptious whole-grain bread and a crock of creamery butter.
Not only do you get descriptions of Corinna’s bakery and its products, there are also the delectable meals she prepares for herself and her beloved. And, of course, the mysteries she solves along the way. That’s not to mention Corinna herself, a former lawyer and accountant, now happily baking bread in Melbourne as an unashamedly full-figured woman and resident of a delightfully quirky apartment building.
"Put on the coffee pot, whip up a batch of muffins (yes, two recipes are included), and enjoy this thoroughly original tale. Strongly recommended for fans of offbeat mysteries." ―Library Journal STARRED review
One day, Corinna Chapman, high profile accountant and banker, walked out on the money market and her dismissive and unpleasant husband James, threw aside her briefcase, and doffed her kitten heels forever. Now she is a baker with her own business, Earthly Delights, in Melbourne, Australia, living in an eccentric building on the Roman model called Insula with a lot of similarly eccentric people.
Burrowes’s Mischief in Mayfair series of regency romances specializes in strong heroines with unusual occupations (unusual for the regency period, anyway). For Ann Pearson it’s cooking.
Her luscious pastries attract the attention of Orion Goddard, a Waterloo veteran with a troubled past. Burrowes’s descriptions of Ann’s pies and tarts will send you to the kitchen, longing for some apple pie with lots of spice. And, of course, in the end Ann and Orion both triumph over the social forces opposing them, like any good romance couple.
Miss Ann Pearson has spent years learning the difficult art of the professional cook, and carefully guards her position in the kitchen of the fancy Coventry Club. When Colonel Sir Orion Goddard asks her to take on a young apprentice, Ann would rather refuse. But Orion is respectful, gruffly charming, and looking out for a girl whom others have neglected, and that is a combination Ann cannot resist.
Lingering scandal has taught Orion to make his way along the fringes of polite society without allies or entanglements. Then he meets Ann, who is fierce, passionate, and warm-hearted, and also worth…
All three books in the Liz Danger series are full of guilty food pleasures.
Liz and her beloved Vince chow down at the neighborhood diner, which leads to extended descriptions of burgers, tenderloins, fries, and onion rings. It’s just one of the attractions of Burney, Ohio—the small town Liz and company and determined to save from the sinister forces trying to loot its assets and transform it into another faceless suburb.
Make sure you have at least a bag of chips on hand, and an order of nachos wouldn’t go amiss.
From the NY Times Bestselling duo that wrote Agnes and the Hitman, the first book in a new series.
Liz Danger has come home after fifteen years to deliver a giant teddy bear for her mother’s birthday (color: Guilt Red) when a cop with a great ass picks her up for speeding, fixes the missing lug nuts in her back wheel, pulls her out of a ditch, doesn’t give her a ticket, and helps her avoid her family. This is a man with real potential.
Vince Cooper picks up Liz for speeding and his life gets a lot more interesting.…
This book about a creator of wedding cakes may well send you to the nearest bakery.
This is the third book in Roberts’s Bride Quartet series about four women who run a wedding and event center. But the heroine here is Laurel McBane, creator of sublime cakes, candies, and pastries for both weddings and hungry friends. The plot is charming (it’s Roberts in romance rather than thriller mode), and the cake descriptions are mouth-watering.
The entire quartet is a great example of contemporary romance, and I recommend them all. But it’s Savor the Moment that will have you dreaming of butter cream frosting.
New Love takes the cake in the third novel in #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts's Bride Quartet-in a stunning French flap edition
Wedding baker Laurel McBane is surrounded by romance working at Vows wedding planning company with her best friends Parker, Emma, and Mac. But she's too low-key to appreciate all the luxuries that their clients seem to long for. What she does appreciate is a strong, intelligent man, a man just like Parker's older brother Delaney, on whom she's had a mega-crush since childhood.
But some infatuations last longer than others, and Laurel is convinced that…
Yes, this book is over forty years old, but it’s still a delight to read.
Rachel, the heroine, is a food writer who discovers her husband is cheating. She leaves him with her young children in tow and a baby on the way. And yet the book is classic Ephron: funny, acerbic, and touching all at once.
So why is it on this list? Because Rachel, the food writer, peppers her story with recipes and descriptions of restaurant meals that will have you licking your lips and grabbing a pen to write down the ingredients. At the same time you’re hoping Rachel pulls it together (she does), you’re also thinking that pasta alla ceccia sounds delicious (it is). Read it for the story, stay for the food.
If I had to do it over again, I would have made a different kind of pie. The pie I threw at Mark made a terrific mess, but a blueberry pie would have been even better, since it would have permanently ruined his new blazer, the one he bought with Thelma ... I picked up the pie, thanked God for linoleum floor, and threw it' Rachel Samstat is smart, successful, married to a high-flying Washington journalist... and devastated. She has discovered that her husband is having an affair with Thelma Rice, 'a fairly tall person with a neck as long…
Jam maker extraordinaire Roxy Constantine is looking for a way to spend her winter down time. Her true love Nate Robicheaux has a suggestion: she can serve as his sous chef when he prepares a dinner party for possible investors. But when several guests become ill and the hostess herself dies after eating their food, Roxy and Nate could be in deep trouble. Now they need to find out what really happened, and who wanted their hostess dead, before their culinary reputations go down in flames and the murderer turns his attention to Roxy herself.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
