Foodie Fiction - novels good enough to eat (2024)

The Lemon

by S. E. Boyd

While filming on location in Belfast, Northern Ireland, John Doe, the universally adored host of the culinary travel show Last Call, is found dead in a hotel room in an apparent suicide. As the news of his untimely demise breaks, a group of friends, fixers, hustlers, and opportunists vie to seize control of the narrative.

Recipe for a Perfect Wife

by Karma Brown

When Alice Hale leaves a career in publicity to become a writer and follows her husband to the New York suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. But when she finds a vintage cookbook buried in a box in the old home's basem*nt, she becomes captivated by the cookbook's previous owner--1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch. As Alice cooks her way through the past, she realizes that within the cookbook's pages Nellie left clues about her life--including a mysterious series of unsent letters penned to her mother.

The Family Chao

by Lan Samantha Chang

The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant's delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family's secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last.

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors

by Sonali Dev

A workaholic, socially inept Indian-American brain surgeon is caught off guard by her attraction to a Rwandan/Anglo-Indian chef in this rewrite of Pride and Prejudice. Trisha Raje and chef Darcy "DJ" Caine meet at a political event and sparks fly, but for all the wrong reasons. While the two try to smooth things over, subsequent encounters exacerbate their hostility and class divide. Yet, as any Austen fan knows, the fallout of their pride and biases will eventually be resolved.

by Kim Fay

Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column for a Pacific Northwest magazine, and while she can hunt elk and dig for clams, she's never tasted fresh garlic--exotic fare in the Northwest of the sixties. As the two women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the unexpected in their own lives.

Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame

by Olivia Ford

Nothing could be more out of character, but after fifty-nine years of marriage, as her husband Bernard's health declines, and her friends' lives become focused on their grandchildren--which Jenny never had--Jenny decides she wants a little something for herself. So she secretly applies to be a contestant on the prime-time TV show Britain Bakes.

Lessons in Chemistry

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with--of all things--her mind. True chemistry results.But like science, life is unpredictable.

Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake

by Alexis J. Hall

Following the recipe is the key to a successful bake . Rosaline Palmer has always lived by those rules--well, except for when she dropped out of college to raise her daughter, Amelie. Now, with a paycheck as useful as greaseproof paper and a house crumbling faster than biscuits in tea, she's teetering on the edge of financial disaster. But where there's a whisk there's a way . . . and Rosaline has just landed a spot on the nation's most beloved baking show.

Search : a Memoir With Recipes by Dana Louise Potowski : a Novel

by Michelle Huneven

Dana Potowski,a restaurant critic and food writer and a longtime member of a progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California, is asked to join the church search committee for a new minister. Under pressure to find her next book idea, she agrees, and resolves to secretly pen a memoir, with recipes, about the experience.

Settling His Hash

by William W. Johnstone

A chuckwagon cook who's also deadly with a pair of six-shooters, Dewey "Mac" Mackenzie is a man who has no qualms filling men's bellies with food--or lead. Finally cleared of a crime he didn't commit, he's able to enjoy the fruits of his labor on the trail without looking over his shoulder. But even his best served grub can be spoiled by those with evil appetites ...

Recipe For a Charmed Life

by Rachel Linden

American chef Georgia May Jackson has one dream - to run her own restaurant in Paris. And after a grueling decade working in Parisian kitchens, she is finally about to achieve her goal. But in one disastrous night, Georgia loses her sous-chef position, her French boyfriend, and her sense of taste! Suddenly, every morsel of food Georgia samples is bitter. Renowned for her exquisite palate and daring use of bold flavors in every dish she prepares, Georgia is devastated to discover her culinary gift has disappeared.

The Golden Spoon

Every summer for the past ten years, six awe-struck bakers have descended on the grounds of Grafton, the leafy and imposing Vermont estate that is not only the filming site for "Bake Week" but also the childhood home of the show's famous host, celebrated baker Betsy Martin.The author of numerous bestselling cookbooks and hailed as "America's Grandmother," Betsy Martin isn't as warm off-screen as on, though no one needs to know that but her. She has always demanded perfection, and gotten it with a smile, but this year something is off.

Battle Royal

When Dominic and Sylvie learn they will be fighting for the once in a lifetime opportunity to bake a cake for the upcoming wedding of Princess Rose, the flour begins to fly as they fight to come out on top.The bride adores Sylvie's quirky style. The palace wants Dominic's classic perfection.In this royal battle, can there be room for two?

The Thick and the Lean

In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God.But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known.

The Kitchen Front

by Jennifer Ryan

Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest--and the grand prize is a job as the program's first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives.

Sourdough

by Robin Sloan

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers quickly close up shop. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her--feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.

Cheat Day

by Liv Stratman

At 34, Kit is living in her childhood duplex in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with her kind but inattentive husband, David. She works as the general manager of Sweet Cheeks, her sister's bakery, and is constantly searching for the wellness regimen that will bring her fulfillment. As she embarks on the Radiant Regimen, an ultrastrict 75-day diet, Kit meets Matt--the handsome carpenter hired to build shelves for the bakery--and they quickly begin a passionate affair. The more Kit lies and cheats, the less she eats.

Family Meal

by Bryan Washington

When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Mealis a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love.

Black Cake

by Charmaine Wilkerson

Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Land ofMilk and Honey

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.