"It has been four and a half decades since Alice Waters opened the doors of Chez Panisse, the 'little French restaurant' in Berkeley, California, that has been at the leading edge of the American culinary revolution ever since. Fueled in equal parts by naïveté and a relentless pursuit of beauty and pure flavor, Alice transformed our relationship with food, fine dining, and what it means to eat well. In this book, Alice reflects on the desultory...

"A charmingly quirky seaside town offers a recently separated restauranteur a fresh start and possibly a new lease on love in A Season for Second Chances, by the author of The Twelve Dates of Christmas"--

A poignant, evocative story that celebrates the magic of motherhood, the joys of coming home, and the price we so willingly pay for love.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon...

"In his memoir Restaurant Man, Joe Bastianich charts his culinary journey from working in his parents' red-sauce joint to becoming one of the country's most successful restauranteurs. Joe first learned the ropes from his father, Felice Bastianich, the ultrapragmatic, self-proclaimed restaurant man. After college and a year on Wall Street, Joe bought a one-way ticket to Italy and worked in restaurants and vineyards. Upon his return to New York, he...

In Mildred Pierce, noir master James M. Cain creates a novel of acute social observation and devasting emotional violence, with a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.
Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce and poverty and to claw her way out of the lower middle class. But Mildred also had two weaknesses:...

Anthony Puckett was a rising literary star. The son of an uber-famous thriller writer, Anthony's debut novel spent two years on the bestseller list and won the adoration of critics. But something went very wrong with his second work. Now Anthony's borrowing an old college's friend's crumbling beach house on Block Island in the hopes that solitude will help him get back to the person he used to be. Joy Sousa owns and runs Block Island's beloved whoopie...

"Rodeo widow" Carly Beauchamp is ready to dump Austin Davis and find someone who will put her before his career, but Austin is determined to correct his mistakes and win Carly back. --

An influential chef and food thinker combines personal stories with explorations into the cultural, historical and botanical backstories of the food we eat and the ingredients we use.

Brown Sugar Kitchen is more than a restaurant. This soul-food outpost is a community gathering spot, a place to fill the belly, and the beating heart of West Oakland, a storied postindustrial neighborhood across the bay from San Francisco. The restaurant is a friendly beacon on a tree-lined parkway, nestled low and snug next to a scrap-metal yard in this Bay Area rust belt. Out front, customers congregate on long benches and sprawl in the grass, soaking...