Grilled Cheese and Goblins (2018) Nicole Kimberling Keith Curry is a food inspector for NATO’s Irregulars Affairs Division (NIAD). He may carry a mage gun, but most of the time his tools are thermometers and glasses that allow him to see the supernatural. This book is six interlinked stories. “Cherries Worth Getting” “Cookie Jamboree” “The […]

Delivered Fast (2015) Annabeth Albert This is probably my least favorite book in this series so far, mostly because it starts with a hook-up, and a LOT of the story is centered around their boinking. That doesn’t make it a bad story, but it just isn’t my thing. Chris O’Neal is co-owner of The People’s […]

Baked Fresh (2015) Annabeth Albert Vic Degrassi is a baker with plans for the future–and he’s a man who does what he sets out to. After losing his job, he went to culinary school. After losing his cousin and best friend, he got surgery and lost 111 pounds and became fit. His next goal: a […]

Kneading You (2019) C.S. Poe Christopher Hughes always wanted to live in a small town. With a degree in literature, he’s delighted to take a job taking over the local library and help it recover from years of neglect. Unfortunately, a local Selectman wants the property for a building project, so Christopher has a tiny […]

Sweet Revenge (2011) Andrea Penrose Set in London in 1813. Arianna Hadley is working in Lady Spenser’s kitchen as a chef, in the hopes to find information about the men who murdered her father. The Earl of Saybrook was invalided out of the Army, and seems to spend most of his days in misery, escaping […]

Banquet of Lies (2013) Michelle Diener Set in London in 1812. This is my favorite book in this series–and I like the other two books quite well. Giselle Barrington has seen her father murdered for the secrets her carries. She manages to escape back to London, but does not know who she can turn to, […]

Nightingale’s Lament, Audio Edition (2004/2008) Simon R Green narrated by Marc Vietor Because I like to make things difficult for myself, while Michael and I are listening to the Felix Castor series in the car, my exercise / baking / cooking series is Simon Green’s Nightside. Both have a smart-ass protagonist who wears a long […]

Delicious (2008) Sherry Thomas Set in England in 1892. This was a fun story–and one full of loving descriptions of food. It also has main characters who are middle aged (30s may not sound middle aged nowdays, but it would have been at a time when most people died in their 50s and 60s.) Verity […]

Banquet of Lies (2013) Michelle Diener Set in England in 1812. Giselle Barrington has spent her life following her father around Europe, collecting folklore and working secretly for the Crown. She’s developed her own strange passion: food, recipes, and cooking. “What do you do with the recipes?” The woman looked genuinely interested now. “I’m compiling […]

Dessert For Two: Small Batch Cookies, Brownies, Pies, and Cakes (2015) Christina Lane Let me gush, for just a moment: I love this book. I love to bake, but I don’t love having more sweets than Michael and I should (or even can!) eat. But in baking, unlike cooking, you can’t just halve or quarter […]

Comfort and Joy: Cooking for Two (2015) Christina Lane After falling in love with Dessert for Two by Christina Lane, I snatched up Comfort and Joy. The section we use most frequently is Anytime Comfort Foods, and although they’re not necessarily my comfort foods, what we’ve made is super delicious. One-Skillet Beef and Cheddar Paste […]

The Complete Cooking For Two Cookbook (2014) America’s Test Kitchen In the past couple years I started to take cooking more seriously. I’ve always loved baking, but cooking? Not so much. On a whim I picked up a couple of cooking for two books, to see if not having to eat the same meal for […]

Banquet of Lies (2013) Michelle Diener Set in London in 1812 Giselle Barrington is the daughter of a folklorist with a fascination for cooking. “What do you do with the recipes?” The woman looked genuinely interested now. “I’m compiling a reference work of dishes from the cultures of Europe. But mainly I follow them.” “Follow […]

A Soupçon of Poison (2015) Ashley Gardener Set in London in 1880 Kat Holloway is a cook for Sir Lionel Leigh-Bradbury, and although the position isn’t ideal in pay, he agreed to her request for an unusual number of days out, so she stays, even when he begins to make unusual and ridiculous demands. But […]

Simply Sensational Cookies (2012) Nancy Baggett So, maybe I have a problem. This is the fourth cookbook–dessert cookbook (and third cookie book)–I’ve finished in a week. But I love baking. What can I say? And I’m always looking for just that perfect cookie. I have two other of Nancy Baggett’s dessert cookbooks, so when this […]

Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts (2012) Alice Medrich As I’ve noted before, I am very fond of Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies, so along with Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies I also picked up Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts. There are a lot of recipes I want to try here, though I have made only one […]

Rose’s Christmas Cookies (1998) Rose Levy Beranbaum You can tell it’s getting colder–I’m starting to obsess over baking books and looking and possible Christmas cookies. (NOTE: This is the ONLY Christmas thing I am interested in. I don’t want to hear Christmas music or see decorations until AFTER Thanksgiving.) I very much liked the pictures, […]

Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies (2010) Alice Medrich I love Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies so much that the pages fell out of my original copy. So how could I resist a new–and LARGER!–cookie book? So what do we have? ~340 pages of recipes with plenty of notes and pictures and options and alternatives […]

Baking (2009) James Peterson I love baking books, and I especially love baking books that focus on technique as well as recipes. I love to bake, and I want to become a better baker. Cooking may be an art and a science, but baking is far more science than art, and knowing the science makes […]

Fast Breads: 50 Recipes for Easy, Delicious Bread (2010) Elinor Klivans and Susie Cushner As much as I love my Kindle, I can’t say I’ve had much of a desire to read cookbooks on it. But this was a deal I could hardly resist, so I went for it. Yes I did, in fact, read […]

Tender at the Bone (1998) Ruth Reichl I’ve heard Ruth Reichl interviewed several times, and I’d heard her relate stories that were excerpts of the book, so I eventually picked up the book, but then it languished on the shelf for an embarrassingly long time. Here’s the bit I heard that first drew my attention […]

Food Matters (2009) Mark Bittman I really like Mark Bittman’s cookbooks. His How to Cook Everything is well written, clear and concise. So when I heard he’d written something of a food manifesto a la Michael Pollan, I was very curious to see what he had to say. First, if you’re a vegetarian or vegan […]

In Defense of Food: An Easter’s Manifesto (2008) Michael Pollan After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma I picked up In Defense of Food to see what he had to say about the Western Diet and what most Americans eat. OK. I have to admit that I didn’t particularly learn a lot reading this book, because I’ve […]

The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) Michael Pollan I picked up The Omnivore’s Dilemma a year or so ago, and it sat by the bed, waiting to be read for the longest time. However, once I gave up trying to finish Herodotus, I started to enjoy reading non-fiction again, and was able to pick-up and read The […]

The Snack Thief (1996) Andrea Camilleri translated by Stephen Sartarelli The third book in Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano series finds Montalbano investigating a man found murdered in an elevator, while Augello investigates a shooting on a fishing boat that left a Tunisian dead–shot ostensibly by a Tunisian police boat claiming the fishing boat was no […]

The All-American Dessert Book (2005) Nancy Baggett I love to bake. So when I come across interesting dessert cookbooks I tend to pick them up. I ordered this one on a whim, just because I was looking for something new. The first thing I noticed about this book is that is has gorgeous pictures. Gorgeous–but […]

Cookies and Brownies (1999) Alice Medrich This is, hands down, my favorite cookbook. I bought it on whim from a cookbook club, and when I pulled it out of the box, was slightly disappointed at how slender the book was. This was the only disappointment this book was ever to give. I have a lot […]

Luscious Lemon Desserts (2001) Lori Longbotham For the past couple of years I have been searching for the perfect lemon cake recipe. As a rule I prefer cakes from scratch, but when it comes to lemon cake, none of the cakes I made seemed quite as good. In my quest I’ve ended up with several […]

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (2001) Terry Pratchett The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is one of Terry Pratchett’s young adult books, are set in Discworld. Talking cats, talking rats, and an appearance by Death (as well as by the Death of Rats). Aside from being slightly shorter normal, this is a […]