The Kabbalah of food

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T.C. Huo

A Thousand Wings moves seamlessly in time between present-day San Francisco and Laos in the Vietnam War era to tell the story of one man's courtship of another through food and the shared stories of their Southeast Asian heritage. For Fong Mun, a successful, thirty-something caterer and cookbook author, food is life; his precious cache of family recipes is inseparable from memory and personal history. But it is his coveted recipe for crispy egg rolls that becomes the catalyst for his fateful meeting with Raymond, a handsome and captivating young Asian who barely remembers his Laotian heritage, and who becomes Fong Mun's window on his own lost past. As a powerful attraction blooms between these two very different men, we savor Fong Mun's memories of Laos through the prism of exotic, mouth-watering Southeast Asian cuisine. In his compelling voice, stories and recipes entwine in a vivid, evocative narrative overlaid with both sorrow and humor.

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Darron Cardosa

Millions of people have, at some point in their lives, waited tables. Some only did it in college, or got out by sheer determination, good luck . . . or suicide. Others took it on as permanent employment. And many remain haunted by nightmare scenarios where they are the sole server in a restaurant packed with complaining patrons. For all those disenchanted current and former food service employees, Darron Cardosa has your back. His career began at a Texas steakhouse in 1984, and since 2008 he's vented his frustrations in the popular blog The Bitchy Waiter. Cardosa distills 30 years of food service into dark, funny tales--about crazy customers, out-of-control egos, and what really goes on in that fancy restaurant--that anyone who worked in the industry will recognize and relate to.

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Alison Jackson

"I know an old lady who swallowed a pie, a Thanksgiving pie, which was really too dry." And with that the feast begins! After the pie the old lady swallows a whole squash, all of the salad, and the entire turkey! As Mother and Father watch in shock, the two children are delighted to see the old lady growing fatter and fatter. And, in the end, the old lady makes a surprising and humorous contribution to the holiday festivities

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Barbara Park

Junie, a spunky, sometimes exasperating, kindergartener, looks forward to winning lots of prizes at the school carnival, but a fruit cake was not exactly what she had in mind.