by Maryline Desbiolles (2001)
"With precision, candor, and gentle seduction, Maryline Desbiolles transports us to the privacy of a houshold kitchen, where the aromas, tastes, and textures of food evoke a woman's most intimate thoughts. Searching for mastery over the unique ingredients of her identity, she is beckoned by a richly-drawn cast of characters in her life and is pulled deeply within to confront the haunting dreams and the sublimated traumas of her childhood.". "Over the course of creating her delicacy, a recipe she lovingly follows in anticipation of her guests' arrival, the narrator is by turns nervous, sensual, and powerfully psychoanalytic. As she reveals in the magic of cooking, she expounds on the combination and transmutation of the various ingredients, especially the diaphanous cuttlefish - as elusive and delicate as the feminine self she strives to capture."--BOOK JACKET.
Kevin Sylvester
The sudden disappearance of fifteen-year-old Neil Flambé's skills as a world-class chef leads to the closing of his restaurant, a cook-off to save his reputation, and the discovery of a dark curse that has plagued Flambé cooks for centuries.
Mo Yan
When special investigator Ding Gou'er hears persistent rumors that there is cannibalism in the province called the Republic of Wine, he goes to learn the truth. Beginning at the Mount Luo Coal Mine, he meets Diamond Jin, legendary for his capacity to hold his liquor and fondness for young human flesh. A banquet is served during which the special investigator, by meal's end in an alcohol-induced stupor, loses all sense of reality. Interspersed are stories sent to Mo Yan himself by Li Yidou (aka Doctor of Liquor Studies), each one more mad than the next. Wild and politically explosive, The Republic of Wine proves that no regime can stifle creative imagination.
Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert
Wezielee, the youngest child in a sharecropper's family, longs to go to school, but during harvest season Papa insists that she stay home and prepare the midday meal while he and the others work in the fields.
J.B. Stanley
The Flab Five team up to help James discover who is sending him threatening messages and find out the truth about the deaths of a local councilman and a young animal rights activist.