"You'll eat up every word of this spicy historical novel." — Real SimpleAuguste Escoffier (1846–1935) was the renowned French chef and restaurateur who gave birth to the way we eat today. The heart of Escoffier's story, however, lies in his love for two very different women: the beautiful, reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his wife, the poet Delphine Daffis. This lushly imagined novel transports us into Escoffier's private world, weaving a sensual tale ...

Take a slasher-movie actress, a Scottish circus clown, an FBI school dropout, a blind heiress, a junk-food-loving millionaire developer, and a Buddha-quoting bluesman, add a couple of murders in a normally sedate retirement community in south Florida, and you get an irresistible tale that’s part Carl Hiaasen and part Gabriel García Márquez. It all goes down as easy as a Key lime pie martini, the signature drink of the Bad Girl’s Bar & Grill.N. M. Kelby’s last three novels have rece...

The Fiction Writer's Guide to Creative SuccessFrom that first story idea to publication and beyond, being a novelist is an evolving process. The Constant Art of Being a Writer helps you discover the mindset and skills you need to confidently approach each aspect of writing and publishing.Award-winning novelist and short story writer N.M. Kelby explores core fiction writing techniques like idea generation, outlining, character devel...

One Christmas Eve, Whale Harbor is visited by a man who thinks he’s Jesus and claims to be looking for a game of poker. But, as usual, things are not quite what they seem. Having some version of the Lord in town for his birthday creates a strange effect on the locals: unlikely couples are breaking up and making up and making out; a luxury mobile home that belonged to an elderly couple from New Jersey (until they disappeared after a run-in with “the Lord”) is won by a down-on-his-luck gambl...

This compilation features a wonderful selection of travel stories from public radio's Selected Shorts, an award-winning series of classic and contemporary short fiction read by distinguished stage and screen actors and recorded live at Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City. Hilarity, suspense and high drama are offered up in this new mix of tales of travel to locales familiar and exotic. Take a trip in a time machine with Madame Bovary, join a father and son on a sailing voyage that...

One Christmas Eve, Whale Harbor is visited by a man who thinks he’s Jesus and claims to be looking for a game of poker. But, as usual, things are not quite what they seem. Having some version of the Lord in town for his birthday creates a strange effect on the locals: unlikely couples are breaking up and making up and making out; a luxury mobile home that belonged to an elderly couple from New Jersey (until they disappeared after a run-in with “the Lord”) is won by a down-on-his-luck gambl...

A breathtaking novel, rare and moving, about the world's greatest chef and his unruly heart.WHITE TRUFFLES IN WINTER imagines the world of the remarkable French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), who changed how we eat through his legendary restaurants at the Savoy and the Ritz. A man of contradictions—kind yet imperious, food-obsessed yet rarely hungry—Escoffier was also torn between two women: the famous, beautiful, and reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his w...

The Telegraph (UK) calls Aminatta Forna's Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning tale an "affecting, passionate and intelligent novel about the redemptive power of love and storytelling." In the aftermath of Sierra Leone's 1990s civil war, British psychologist Adrian Lockheart comes to work at the Freetown hospital. There he meets a dying elderly patient who confesses to Adrian his past crimes of passion and betrayal. ". stunning and powerful ."-Booklist

There is something very special about Agn├¿s Morel. A quiet presence in the small French town of Chartres, she can be found cleaning the famed medieval cathedral each morning and doing odd jobs for the townspeople. No one knows where she came from or why. Not Abb├® Paul, who discovered her one morning twenty years ago, sleeping on the north porch, and not Alain Fleury, the irreverent young restorer who works alongside her each day—and whose attention she catches with her tawny eyes and elu...

In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman—and never went home again.Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? Lunch in Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs—one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new ...

A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller’s search through time and the works of Shakespeare for his lost love. Charlie Lovett’s new book, The Lost Book of the Grail, is now available.Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman’s Tale is a former bookseller’s sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature’s most tantalizing mysteries with echoes of Shadow of the Wind and...

A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceA Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of YearA NPR Best Book of the YearIn Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, the Ibis began its treacherous journey across the Indian Ocean, bound for the cane fields of Mauritius with a cargo of indentured servants. Now, in River of Smoke, the former slave ship flounders in the Bay of Bengal, caught in the midst of a deadly cyclone.Th...