“Food is our common ground, a universal experience,” said James Beard, and these two delicious new books are cases in point. 

Both feature a protagonist chasing a food dream, one in the Big Apple and the other all over Europe. And both have enough mouthwatering descriptions of meals to send you rummaging for something to munch on.

The fun, frothy Food Whore has traces of The Devil Wears Prada, except instead of a cruel magazine editor, the villain is the entire Manhattan restaurant scene. Tia Monroe dreams of writing cookbooks and enrolls in the prestigious New York University culinary masters program. But when her bid for an internship with a famous cookbook author is botched, Tia begins ghostwriting columns for weaselly New York Times restaurant critic Michael Saltz, who has lost his ability to taste food. 

It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement: Saltz gets to keep his coveted job at the Times, and Tia gets the thrill of seeing her words in print, albeit under someone else’s byline. She also gets access to Saltz’s private account at Bergdorf Goodman. In no time, down-to-earth Tia becomes a fashionista who breaks up with her steadfast boyfriend and starts dating one of New York’s hottest chefs. But Tia quickly learns how brutal it is in the culinary world, where restaurants will do anything to get a good review. 

Food Whore is the first novel from Jessica Tom, a Brooklyn writer who graduated from Yale University and, much like Tia, wrote restaurant reviews for the school paper. Tom nails the dog-eat-dog restaurant world, whipping up a remarkably entertaining debut.

In Vintage, Bruno Tannenbaum is on the other side of his career from young Tia. After years as a food columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, Bruno is sliding into obsolescence. He once wrote a little-known novel he was proud of and a gimmicky best-selling cookbook he was less proud of. But now, he’s sleeping on his mother’s couch (wife kicked him out for cheating), unemployed (newspaper let him go) and drinking too much (see previous). When a Russian restaurateur enlists Bruno’s help in solving the mystery of a lost vintage of French wine, Bruno senses a story that could revive his career and prove to his family that he still has what it takes to provide for them.

Vintage is a whirlwind of a book, with the charmingly rough Bruno spinning through France, Moldova and Russia as he chases down the wine, which he believes was stolen by the Nazis during World War II. He finds romance with a French winemaker, intrigue in a Russian prison and answers where he never expected them. 

Author David Baker is the director of the documentary American Wine Story, and he delivers a walloping good time in Vintage. While the book is clever and funny, it’s also a tender meditation on the power of food and wine to heal even the sorest of hearts. Bruno is a character for the ages, a passionate foodie who finds his own winding road to redemption.

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Two historical novels offer searingly good stories set in the raw and dangerous American West.

Set in 1876 Wyoming, Dragon Teeth is a “found” manuscript from the great Michael Crichton, who died in 2008. Not a typical Crichton blockbuster, it draws from the best of Western fiction. (Think shootouts and a villain whose entrance makes the saloon music halt.)

On a foolish bet, sheltered Yale student William Johnson joins a summer expedition to Wyoming, where he assists a paleontologist digging up dinosaur bones. They hit the jackpot, unearthing a previously undiscovered skeleton. But Native Americans, water buffalo herds and a scheming, rival paleontologist send the expedition packing. Johnson is separated from the group and finds himself in a rough town with the deliciously perfect name of Deadwood. On his first morning, he steps outside the hotel to find a body in the street. “Flies buzzed around the body; three or four loungers stood over it, smoking cigars and discussing its former owner, but no one made any attempt to move the corpse, and the passing teams of horses just wheeled past it.” This is, needless to say, a long way from the rarified air of New Haven. Burdened with crates of fossils he feels compelled to protect, Johnson is challenged for the first time in his life to survive on his own wits, not his parents’ money.

Full of twists and a cool appearance by the Earp brothers, Dragon Teeth is both thrilling and thought-provoking.

Also fighting for survival is Dulcy Remfrey, the heroine of Jamie Harrison’s debut, The Widow Nash, set in turn-of-the-century Washington and Montana. Dulcy is fleeing her abusive ex-fiancé, Victor, but two factors complicate her efforts: One, Victor is her father’s business partner, and two, her dear father has just died after suffering for years from syphilis. While accompanying her father’s body on a train from Seattle to New York, Dulcy disappears—or so it seems.

Actually, Dulcy fakes her own suicide and slips off the train in windy Livingston, Montana, where she becomes Maria Nash, a recent widow. Although she tries to keep to herself in this “place where she’d stopped being herself,” Dulcy gradually becomes part of the colorful Livingston community, with its corrupt police, promiscuous innkeeper and gossipy women. After a lifetime of attending to her father while he searched the globe for a cure for his illness, this is the first time Dulcy has been truly alone. She buys a home and plants a garden, reads stacks of books and quietly starts a tentative romance with a writer.

“She had finally peeled off her old life, lost her ability to fret over secrets before this new one,” Harrison writes. But a slip-up in Dulcy’s carefully cultivated new life could lead Victor right to her door.

Richly descriptive, The Widow Nash is the luminous story of a woman suspended between two worlds, one promising, the other catastrophic.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Holiday preparations flood our hearts with the warmth of Christmases past—or the echoes of family dinners best forgotten. Wherever your memories lie, two debut works of Christmas fiction are sure to lighten your spirits.

First-time author Francesca Hornak has found the perfect recipe to sweeten our holidays. Seven Days of Us stirs together the problems of one family who makes half-baked attempts to reconcile when they’re forced to spend seven days together after years of chilly relationships. Each of Hornak’s well-developed characters narrates the week from his or her perspective, alternating chapters until secrets are divulged and lives are changed.

The Birches, a British family spending Christmas in their country home, are quarantined together on the estate when daughter Olivia returns from treating a life-threatening epidemic. Her affair with a fellow doctor won’t sit well with her family—or officials—since the couple dangerously breached a strict policy. Phoebe, Olivia’s materialistic younger sister, has as much patience for Olivia’s altruism as Olivia has for Phoebe’s chatter. Mother Emma spends the week preparing perfect meals and embracing her role as peacekeeper, and she is determined to keep her serious health concerns under wraps. Emma’s husband, Andrew, nurtures a chip on his shoulder about sacrificing his career as a war journalist to become a restaurant critic. Andrew spends his days writing sarcastic columns, but his life could change after he receives some shocking emails.

Sparks fly throughout the whole week, from the Birches’ first meal together until a surprise literally falls through the door. Can the chill in the air begin to warm before the New Year? Or will the Birches end their holiday as unhappy as ever?

THE SPIRIT OF SCROOGE
Christmas celebrations and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol have gone hand in hand for almost 175 years. Scrooge’s tale asks us to reconsider our lives and get our hearts ready for the season. In Mr. Dickens and His Carol, Samantha Silva dives into Dickens’ life a month before his Christmas book is due. Dickens is in debt, publishers are at his door, a brood of children is constantly begging him for presents and his wife is demanding a grander Christmas party than ever before. As the great author searches for a muse to cure his writer’s block, Silva evokes a Dickensian mood and takes readers on a stroll through 1840s London. Known for walking miles through his city’s streets in search of inspiration, Dickens finds the revelation he needs from a mysterious woman named Eleanor Lovejoy. Charmed by her provocative questions, Dickens spends a few days figuring out the meaning of his life, where he has been and where he is going.

Silva explains in an author’s note that she is not a Dickens scholar; there are liberties taken here. But her admiration for Dickens is obvious, and for readers who know Dickens’ story, her reimagining will not disappoint. In this exceptional work uncovering the grime and glitter of 19th-century London, readers will find another framework from which to examine their hearts before Christmas.

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Is there anything better than the tension and tremendous heart of a rousing wartime tale, especially when it recounts the experiences of courageous heroes? Through globetrotting stories of loyalty and love, three new historical novels deliver an unforgettable look at the sacrifices of women during World War II.

In her fast-paced blend of fact and fiction, The Atomic City Girls, Janet Beard uses the viewpoints of a diffuse group of characters to create an impressively realized portrait of life in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the makeshift city where uranium for the atomic bomb was secretly generated during the war. Eighteen-year-old June Walker is excited and nervous about working at Oak Ridge, but she doesn’t know what to make of Cici Roberts, her gorgeous, flirtatious dormitory roommate. Between tedious shifts monitoring big machines and evening dances where they blow off steam, the two girls form a friendship. Like nearly everyone else in the city, they’re kept in the dark about the purpose of their work. Joe Brewer, an African-American man who’s part of a labor gang at Oak Ridge, adds another layer to the novel, as he works to send money home to his family. Providing an outsider’s perspective is Sam Cantor, a Jewish scientist from the Bronx. June—hoping to learn the secrets behind Oak Ridge—begins a romance with Sam, who has the shocking answers she needs.

A native of East Tennessee, Beard brings a sure grasp of the region’s past to the narrative and infuses her central characters with a Southern sensibility that’s pronounced but never parody. In this compelling novel, she distills the essence of an era.

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS
White Chrysanthemum, Mary Lynn Bracht’s assured, atmospheric debut, takes place in 1940s Korea during the Japanese occupation. Hana is a haenyeo, or sea woman—a female diver who catches fish in the ocean. Hana learned the trade from her mother, and she uses her earnings to help her family make ends meet. One day, during a dive, a Japanese soldier appears on the shore. When she tries to protect her younger sister, Emi, from the man, Hana is captured and taken to Manchuria, where she’s made to work as a comfort woman for the Japanese.

Decades later, Emi comes to Seoul to try to locate Hana and to join in the protests near the Japanese embassy in memory of women enslaved as prostitutes during the war. Emi has long been haunted by Hana’s disappearance and hopes to finally discover the rest of her sister’s story.

Bracht, an author of Korean descent, has produced a psychologically acute, emotionally resonant novel. She skillfully develops separate plots for the sisters and, with remarkable depth, portrays both the oppression of daily life during the occupation and the haunting aftereffects of the experience.

Rich with historical detail, White Chrysanthemum is a compelling and important account of civilian women’s lives during wartime.

RIDING THE TIDES OF WAR
Sara Ackerman delivers a dramatic saga of motherhood, loss and the possibility of renewal in Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers. In Hawaii, as the war effort ramps up, Violet Iverson struggles to make sense of her husband’s disappearance. Rumors about his fate are on the rise, and some locals believe he is working for the Japanese. The one person who might have answers is Violet’s daughter, Ella, but no amount of coaxing will make her talk about what she has seen. It seems she’s been scared into silence.

Joining forces with her female friends, Violet starts a pie stand near Camp Tarawa—an undertaking that gives the enlisted men a taste of home. When the women are accused of spying, Sergeant Stone, a bold marine, lends a helping hand. Violet soon finds herself in the grip of a strong attraction, but she faces the possibility of another loss when Stone leaves for Iwo Jima.

With a sensitive touch and an instinct for authenticity, Ackerman depicts the fraught nature of wartime relationships. The letters Violet receives from Stone are filled with a sense of yearning, and her devotion to him as he risks his life is palpable. Born and raised in Hawaii, Ackerman mixes romance, suspense and history into a bittersweet story of cinematic proportions.

This article was originally published in the February 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Irish author Roddy Doyle delivers a daring narrative about the power of the past with his 11th novel, Smile. After a breakup with his wife, Victor Forde leads a solitary life as a writer, and he begins frequenting a local pub, where he meets a man named Ed Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick claims to remember Victor from school and is familiar with his personal history. After this strange encounter, Victor goes home to his apartment, where he’s soon lost in the maze of memory, recalling his student years at Christian Brothers school. In the days to come, as Victor continues to encounter Fitzpatrick and to recall his youth, an alarming discovery regarding his past brings about the book’s unforgettable finish. Doyle, the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, has written an electrifying novel that explores the importance—and imprecision—of memory. With its surprising conclusion, this haunting book will spur fascinating conversations.

RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
With the entrepreneurial culture of San Francisco as a backdrop, Robin Sloan’s second novel, Sourdough: or, Lois and Her Adventures in the Underground Market, tells the story of Lois Clary, a young woman whose existence is transformed by (believe it or not) bread. Two immigrant brothers cook up a special type of sourdough that proves irresistible to their restaurant’s patrons, including Lois. When the brothers are deported, they leave her their sourdough starter, and Lois begins baking in earnest. A colleague at the robotics factory where Lois works suggests that she sell the bread at a farmers market, and—one thing leading to another—she is soon invited to participate in Marrow Fair, a clandestine market involved in food experimentation. Lois makes for a witty, intelligent commentator in this skillfully constructed novel. Sloan, author of the bestselling Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, reinforces his reputation as a writer to watch with this rewarding read.

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS
Set in the early 2000s as the Iraq War amps up, Asymmetry, Lisa Halliday’s impressive debut novel, explores the complexities of relationships and the quest for creative fulfillment through three very different characters. In New York, Alice, an aspiring writer, gets involved with Ezra, an older, celebrated novelist. Living in the shadow of his literary fame proves difficult for Alice, and when health problems put Ezra in the hospital, she’s forced to come to terms with their relationship. The book’s second section focuses on Amar, an Iraqi-American economist who’s being interrogated at Heathrow Airport. Told in part through flashbacks, Amar’s narrative is dramatic and bleak. The novel’s third section unites the three characters, bringing their stories into penetrating focus. Halliday is a deft storyteller who provides remarkable insights into the human heart, and this book marks her arrival as an important new author.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Certain places have a tremendous power to influence people, informing their choices and inspiring their lives, past and present. For the lead characters in two remarkable novels from Jess Montgomery and Mesha Maren, the Appalachian Mountains hold sway.

In Montgomery’s The Widows, the coal mining industry of Rossville, Ohio, in 1925 serves as the ominous backdrop to the lives of Lily Ross and Marvena Whitcomb. The story opens with a catastrophic mining explosion of methane gas that kills Marvena’s husband, John, which is soon followed by the death of Lily’s husband, Sheriff Daniel Ross, at the hands of an escaped inmate.

While Marvena fights to unionize mine workers for safer conditions and better wages, Lily assumes the mantle of acting sheriff in order to track down and apprehend her husband’s killer. Unaware that Daniel has been killed, Marvena goes to his house to ask his help in finding her missing 16-year-old daughter, Eula. Lily promises to help in Marvena’s search, oblivious to the fact that Marvena sought out Daniel’s assistance because of their prior relationship. Standing in their respective ways is the coal company and its Pinkerton detectives, thugs hired as enforcers to keep the coal miners in line, even as local politicians and law enforcement officials look the other way.

Inspired by the real lives of Ohio’s first female sheriff, Maude Collins, and community organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, The Widows is told in alternating chapters from the two women’s points of view. This is the first book published by author Sharon Short under the pseudonym Jess Montgomery, and her writing is brisk, yet it lingers long enough to indulge readers with beautiful prose along the way.

In Maren’s debut novel, Sugar Run, characters looking for a fresh start are also drawn to the Appalachian Mountains, specifically a tiny village in rural West Virginia, where fracking and drug running have all but replaced coal mining and moonshining.

The novel follows two eras in the life of Jodi McCarty, with the bulk of the story set in 2007 as she tries to acclimate to freedom after 18 years in prison for manslaughter. Guilt-ridden over the death of her former lover, Paula Dulett, Jodi is compelled to seek out and then look after Paula’s younger brother, Ricky, now grown but mentally handicapped as a result of a beating he took at the hands of his abusive father.

Along the way, Jodi meets Miranda Matheson, the young mother of three children, who has left her country music-star husband and his drug-addicted lifestyle. Jodi, perhaps yearning for what she once had with Paula and a chance at a do-over, brings Miranda and her boys home with her. But Jodi’s hopes for a fresh start are almost immediately dashed when she learns that the West Virginia property her grandmother left to her has been snatched up by a Florida investor. As Jodi struggles to find a job and resorts to the drug trade just to make ends meet, Miranda once again falls for her former husband.

An accomplished short story writer, Maren makes her debut count with emotionally charged prose and a sense of the yearning we all have for home.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Behind the Book feature by Jess Montgomery on The Widows.

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.