76 books like Sourdough

The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living drops you into the action from word one and immerses you in the main character, Livvy’s, life (and the wreck she’s made of it) immediately. The story sucked me in, and rural Vermont as the setting made me wish I could be there. Then there’s the food… Oh man, I would have made a hundred apple pies if I’d headed into the kitchen every time I wanted to when I read this book. Martin is the perfect book boyfriend, too. Their relationship builds slowly, and he is so delicately written that he almost seemed ghost-like to me sometimes – a wonderful foil to the boisterous Livvy.

Louise Miller’s writing is straightforward, beautiful, and sticks with me way after I’ve finished reading. She’s one of the first authors I look for if I want something real but perpetually hopefully even at the bleakest momen… show more.

Speaking of weird…Kenny Shopsin is a force. If you haven’t seen it, there’s a documentary about his New York restaurant called “I Like Killing Flies” and it is like no other restaurant to ever exist. Shopsin breaks every restaurant rule that ever was. He makes “crepes” using flour tortillas. His specialty is a dish called “Blisters on my Sisters.” He’s hilarious, quintessentially New York, and absolutely bonkers. It’s one of my life’s regrets that I never got to eat at Shopsins. This book is the closest I can ever get.

P.S. The best part of the book is the absolutely priceless copy of the Shopsins menu which could take a week to read and a lifetime to digest. You could cook a different item from it every meal for five years and still not make it all the way through. 

Oh, and did I mention that his kitchen was approximately… show more.

I am in love with Paris. I went there once for work. I was there for four days and gained eight pounds. The pastries, the chocolate, the bread, the wine. Oh, the endless butter and sugar. So, a romance set in a Parisian Chocolaterie? I’m all in. There’s also a seduction set whilst walking up a staircase that’s the sexiest thing I have ever read and it’s not even close. 

Slyvain Marquis is every woman’s dream in that he woos them with chocolate. The descriptions of the flavors, textures, and smells are transporting. I’m so sad that a real box of his chocolates will never exist in the real world.

This book hit so hard. The main character just got away from an abusive relationship and opens a food truck. The food and cooking are a tool to help her find footing. She’s unsure of everything about herself except her food. I love her so much because she is so much stronger than she thinks and realizes it gradually through the book. 

And the love interest isn’t the typical sensitive boy an author would pair a damaged woman with, but a bossy, domineering Michelin-starred chef who grew up in foster care.

The food truck is great. The food sounds amazing and I’d be the first in line if I had one of these in my neighborhood. Especially those meatballs. Yum. You can tell that the author actually worked in a restaurant at some point. The descriptions of the kitchen sing with the reality of experience. That’s not always the case… show more.

An interesting thing about reading this book is that I had read a novel about Dorothea Lange only months earlier. But when Darznik’s publicist reached out and asked me to read it, I couldn’t resist! Why? Because I love Dorothea and can’t get enough of her.

Dorothea is exactly the kind of woman I want to be BFFs with. But whose story would give me the intimate connection I was looking for? Jasmin Darznik, in her enchanting new novel, The Bohemians, that’s who.

On page one, I stepped into the relationship of two daring and talented women who seem different as night and day. Dorothea, a blond from New York and Caroline Lee, a black-haired Chinese American, raised in an orphanage.

After wading through and translating the verbosity of Proust, she challenged herself to write very tiny stories. She is a pioneer in contemporary American literature and her work deals largely with the experiences of women, particularly those in domestic situations. Her work is sharp and pointed, often poetic and resonant. Her use of language really makes you interrogate how many words you truthfully need to tell a good story. This collection combines several of her earlier collections.

Redeeming Love is a retelling of the Biblical story of Gomer and Hosea, set during the California Gold Rush, with a heroine who was sold into prostitution as a child and a hero who heeds God’s call to marry her and love her unconditionally.

I have always been drawn to dark heroes, in both my reading and my writing, but this book is all dark heroine and after reading it I wanted to write a few dark heroines too. The characters in this book have stayed with me for years as I’ve endeavored to create something as powerful as Redeeming Love.

When asked if there is a common theme that runs through all my novels, I realized I write books where the characters will do anything for love. Sometimes “anything” isn’t pretty. Sometimes “anything” is scary. But love is worth the risk.

The Words We Lost is a powerful portrayal of the surprising gift of kindred spirits, of the trust required to grow deep friendships, and of the intense emotions when friendships are interrupted by death—all things I’ve been dealing with in the recent loss of a dear friend. 

This book is a beautiful study of the long and complicated, individual journey of grief, and of the persistence needed to restore broken trusts. Trust, friendship, betrayal, grief, and the journey to restoration of trust and friendship are all themes close to my heart—themes beautifully portrayed in the contemporary story of The Words We Lost.

The forthright honesty and the audacity of Nora Simms, narrator of Erika Mailman’s Woman of Ill Fame, is stunning and nearly as compelling as the murder mystery at the center of the novel. Set in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, the novel takes us into the city’s bordellos, which, like the rest of the state, have been infected by a get rich quick at any cost ethos. The cost for many of Nora’s colleagues is high. Women of ill-fame are being killed, one by one, and only Nora is capable and willing to wade through layers of deception to discover the identity of the killer and to save her own life. 

Nora is not your typical damsel in distress and that might be why I love this book so much. She’s not a “good” woman, by society's standards, but she is one of the most surprising… show more.

This story elicited every emotion: joy, excitement, yearning, jealousy, rage, hope, betrayal, relief, shock, bewilderment… it took my poor heart on a wild ride. However, there were two pieces that stand out in stark relief in my mind. First, the betrayal of the friendship in hopes of saving it. What a position to be in. Second, Nathan’s pain and confusion as he worked his way past his own assumptions. It’s never an easy journey to know oneself. Witnessing Nathan’s journey, because of the collateral damage to his most treasured relationship, stung. Compassion for both of them broke my heart. And isn’t that the whole point of a good story? To walk in someone else’s shoes and come away with more compassion, more wisdom, and a deeper capacity to love?