While transforming Bella Vista, her childhood home, into a destination cooking school, chef Isabel Johansen finds her plans interrupted by war-torn journalist Cormac O'Neill who has arrived to dig up old history.

"A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world's troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body. In this atmosphere of hidden...

When Olivia Rawlings, Boston pastry chef extraordinaire, sets not only her flambé dessert but the entire building alight, she escapes to Vermont stay with her best friend, Hannah, who lives in a town famous for Bag Balm and contra dancing. Since her previous post at the exclusive Boston club has probably also gone up in smoke, Olivia gratefully accepts a job at the Sugar Maple Inn, not realizing at first that she's been hired to help the cantankerous...

Meet Odd Thomas, the unassuming young hero of Dean Koontz’s dazzling New York Times bestseller, a gallant sentinel at the crossroads of life and death who offers up his heart in these pages and will forever capture yours.
“The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why.” But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Sometimes the silent...

"In Cooked, Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements--fire, water, air, and earth--to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. In the course of his journey, he discovers that the cook occupies a special place in the world, standing squarely between nature and culture. Both realms are transformed by cooking, and so, in the...

When her family surprises her with a cooking retreat in Hawaii, Grace is pulled away from her predictable, safe life and thrown headfirst into the adventure of a lifetime. Max may make his living on the ice as a pro hockey player, but he feels most at home in the kitchen. Paired with Grace for a cooking competition, Max finds himself drawn to her passion, confidence, and perseverance. But just when Grace dares to dream of a future beyond her hometown,...

"Rising sous-chef Kelly Matlock's sudden collapse at work is a wake-up call. Disillusioned and burned out, she's retreated to her sister Jillian's house in Virgin River to rest and reevaluate. Puttering in Jill's garden and cooking with her heirloom vegetables is wonderful, but Virgin River is a far cry from San Francisco. Kelly's starting to feel a little too unmotivated, until she meets Lief Holbrook. The handsome widower looks more like a lumberjack...

"In downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Chef Lou Johnson works tirelessly to build her beloved yet struggling restaurant, Luella's, into a success. She cheerfully balances business, friends, and fiancé ... until fate intervenes. She's just baked her fiancé a rich, delectable coconut cake, but when she drops by his apartment with the birthday surprise, she discovers him in the buff--with an intern. Sardonic British transplant Al writes pseudonymous, scathing...

The truth could cost her everything.... Olivia Mott didn't intend to lie. Somehow, it just happened. And wasn't it all Lady Charlotte's fault anyway? Now Olivia's position as assistant chef at Pullman's elegant Hotel Florence is dependant upon her keeping her secrets. And sometimes lies have a way of leading to other lies. Should Olivia admit her real past and accept the consequences or keep quiet in order to preserve her comfortable new circumstances?...

New Jersey bail-bonds office worker Lula is a witness to celebrity chef, Stanley Chipotle, losing his head, literally. Now Lula and Stephanie Plum, a bond enforcement officer, are on the hunt to identify the killers before Lula is next on the chopping block. Meantime, security expert Carlos manoso, aka Ranger, has recruited Stephanie for a top secret mission. Someone on the inside at Rangeman is leaking client information, determined to bring the...