Domestic Magic

A down-home story celebrating the enormous healing power of the Southern garden. Imogene Lavender, her daughter, Jeanette, and her niece, Loutishie, wage their individual battles with grief and find the answer to many of life's questions deep in the red-clay dirt of Euharlee, Georgia. (from summary)

38-year-old Angela Malone abandons a successful advertising career in Seattle to find comfort in West End, the small Pacific Northwest coastal town where she grew up...Her big, warmhearted Italian family welcomes her with open arms, and she throws herself into revamping the family restaurant, DeSaria's. (from Publishers Weekly)

Eating the cake her mother has prepared for her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein discovers she has a gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the food she prepares. Soon, every bite Rose takes is filled with feelings not just her mother's but those of other people as well and what might have been a gift becomes a burden and then, perhaps, a curse. (from BookList)

Kurlansky reveals the bond that can hold people together, tear them apart, or make them become vegan: food. Through muffins or hot dogs, an indigenous Alaskan fish soup, a bean curd Thanksgiving turkey or potentially toxic creme brulee, a rotating cast of characters learns how to honor the past, how to realize you're not in love with someone any more, and how to forgive. (from summary)

Managing sudden widowhood and joblessness by cooking bounteous and sumptuous feasts that she shares with her neighbors, Angelina D'Angelo is offered a job as cook for a retiree and his elderly sister and finds her culinary talents winning her a circle of friends and protectors. (summary)

Ruth loves to bake cakes. When she is alone, she dreams up variations on recipes. When she meditates, she imagines herself in the warm, comforting center of a gigantic bundt cake. If there is a crisis, she bakes a cake; if there is a reason to celebrate, she bakes a cake. Ruth sees it as an outward manifestation of an inner need to nurture her family--which is a good thing, because all of a sudden that family is rapidly expanding. (from summary)

Nacib Saad has just lost the cook at his popular cafe and in desperation hires Gabriela. To his surprise she turns out to be a great beauty as well as a wonderful cook and an enchanting boon to his business. (from summary)

La Cucina, the heart of the family's lush estate, was a place where generations of Fiore women prepared sumptuous feasts and where the drama of extended family life was played out around the age-old table. When Rosa was a teenager, her own cooking became the stuff of legend in this small community that takes pride in the bounty of its landscape and the eccentricity of its inhabitants. (from summary)

When the beautiful and mysterious Vianne moves to Lansquenet and opens a chocolate shop across from the church, the inhabitants of the tiny village find themselves torn between the solemn law of religion and the joyful rewards of Vianne's confections. (from summary)

"That skinny Indian teenager has that mysterious something that comes along once a generation. He is one of those rare chefs who is simply born. He is an artist." And so begins the rise of Hassan Haji, the unlikely gourmand who recounts his life's journey in this novel. (from summary)