We look ahead to studying close to a physique of water all yr, and this season’s food-themed releases don’t disappoint. A lot of them are transportive, so whether or not you carry them on trip or learn them at house imagining a trip, they’ll hopefully provide that wanted little bit of summer time escapism.
This season’s food-themed books mirror real-life tendencies. It looks as if everybody’s prepared as soon as once more for his or her “Euro summer time,” and that extends to our new slate of important characters. Italy, and particularly Sicily, proceed to have a second. And we’re nonetheless clearly thirsty for cooks — amid all these releases comes season 4 of The Bear on June 27. So whether or not you’re into historic fiction, household drama, memoir that looks like a romp, or fluffy and flirty romance, these are the food-related books you may wish to toss into your seaside bag this summer time.
Dutton, out now
Jo Piazza’s latest e-book has gotten loads of buzz, and for good cause. It’s an interesting mixture of romantic escapism, whodunit intrigue, and feminist introspection. Sara is a burned-out butcher-turned-chef who’s reeling from her failed marriage and shutting her Philly restaurant. When her great-aunt dies and leaves behind a plot of land in Sicily, Sarah travels to Italy hoping to seek out a simple answer to her monetary issues. It’s not so easy: She learns that her great-grandmother, Serafina, might need been murdered — a plotline impressed by Piazza’s circle of relatives historical past. In fact, this all occurs in Sicily, so there’s good meals, flirtation, and mafia drama, too. With components of historic fiction (Sara and Serafina’s tales are informed in alternating timelines), romance, and thriller, The Sicilian Inheritance has one thing for everybody. — Bettina Makalintal
Henry Holt & Firm, out now
Fiona Williams’s debut is for readers on the lookout for one thing extra severe. An approachable work of literary fiction, The Home of Damaged Bricks is an atmospheric, character-driven story of a household that’s falling aside. Tess, a Jamaican immigrant, lives within the English countryside along with her husband Richard and her twin sons Max and Sonny. Race and the tensions it causes are a throughline: Tess is Black, Richard is white, and Max and Sonny, regardless of being twins, current as completely different races. Because the household grapples with grief and tragedy, meals options incessantly, normally as an effort towards consolation and belonging, and Williams’s descriptions of meals (along with nature and setting) are vivid and straightforward to think about. The chapters, which alternate between relations, are brief and self-contained. That is one you may decide up and put all the way down to get pleasure from in small bites, lest seagulls or babies interrupt your studying. — BM
Berkley Books, out now
Homecomings are all the time a compelling premise, and Effie Olsen’s Summer season Particular isn’t any exception. It follows Effie, a chef, as she returns to her picturesque Maine hometown for what she’s satisfied shall be her final summer time there. She will get a job on the native, extremely sought-out Michelin-starred restaurant, Brown Butter, the place, it seems, her highschool finest buddy Ernie additionally works. After a combat, she hasn’t talked to or seen him in years. Naturally, Effie’s summer time affords her some surprises. With fizzy writing, a dreamy seaside setting, and hunger-inducing descriptions of meals, Bilow captures that sentimental craving of summer time and ticks all of the bins of a satisfying, read-in-a-weekend seaside e-book. — BM
Grand Central Publishing, out now
Los Angeles waitress Jory St. James is a wanderer — the kind of one that by no means needs to be pinned down in a single place for too lengthy. When she occurs upon a brochure promoting a yacht journey to Greece, she will be able to’t resist emptying her financial savings for a Mediterranean journey to fulfill her wanderlust.
When she will get there, with out her telephone or a single reservation, destiny lands Jory within the village of Potamia, the place she stays at a guesthouse surrounded by an olive grove. Jory shortly falls in love with Potamia’s quirky charms, a few of that are tinged with magic. And her arrival sparks huge change within the tiny village, particularly for Cressida Thermopolis, the guesthouse’s formidable proprietor. Cressida is a distinctly gifted baker who’s mourning the lack of her husband, and Jory exhibits up simply in time to vary Cressida’s — and Potamia’s — trajectory ceaselessly because the duo plans to open the guesthouse’s next-door taverna.
Stuffed with meals, humor, and an enormous pinch of romance, The Secrets and techniques of the Little Greek Taverna will immediately transport you to the tiny island of Naxos, even when a flight to the isles isn’t within the funds this summer time. And don’t skip writer Erin Palmisano’s decadent moussaka recipe, included on the finish of the novel. — Amy McCarthy
Atria Books, June 4
If in case you have throuples on the mind after watching Challengers (or studying all that polyamory discourse), may I like to recommend TJ Alexander’s Triple Sec? With their first two books, Chef’s Kiss and Chef’s Selection, Alexander proved themselves gifted in food-themed romance. With Triple Sec, they shift their focus to cocktail bars as they observe Mel, a bartender in New York Metropolis, as she makes her first foray into polyamory after assembly a married couple named Bebe and Kade. It’s not simply new romance maintaining Mel busy: She additionally enters a citywide cocktail competitors in hopes of profitable cash to open her personal bar. As with Alexander’s earlier books, Triple Sec is a enjoyable, flirtatious story that’ll pair effectively with a chilly drink loved poolside. Like an excellent cocktail, it goes down straightforward. — BM
Penguin Life, June 11
In 2021, after a yr of being caught indoors as a result of pandemic, author Glynnis MacNicol headed to Paris. She’d spent many summers within the metropolis, and following a yr of deprivation, she’s absolutely ready to take pleasure in its particular pleasures — good wine, French males, and naturally, unimaginable meals — with abandon. On this weak essay assortment, plates of ache perdu and mugs of chocolat chaud punctuate meditations on writing, courting, and financial uncertainty — you already know, all of the important existential crises of our period. Paris, with its beautiful surroundings and refined attraction, is the proper setting for MacNicol to assuage what ails her. — AM
Zibby Books, June 25
Pearce Oysters is a household drama centered round a Louisiana oyster-farming household within the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Even earlier than the oil spill occurs, the Pearces have been having a tough time. Jordan has taken over the household enterprise, which is struggling, after the surprising demise of his father; his brother Benny is adrift, residing in New Orleans till circumstances name him again house; and their mom Might feels misplaced with out her husband. Takacs’s debut novel is a considerate story of household and group that additionally considers necessary themes of company greed and environmental disaster. With so many fictional meals books targeted on cooks, it’s refreshing to see the main target shifted to farmers. Pearce Oysters is a reminder of the delicate ecosystem all of us reside in. — BM
Sourcebooks Landmark, July 2
Mae Townsend is getting married. That may usually be trigger for celebration, however the considered coping with her difficult household has her on edge. Mae’s mother and father cut up when she was younger, and he or she yearns for connection along with her late father’s facet of the household, who didn’t approve of his relationship along with her mom. And now she’s attempting to place all that apart so she will be able to marry her fiance Connor, who hails from a rich household of white wedding ceremony planners.
As they plan the large day — full with a deeply millennial doughnut wall — Mae acknowledges that her wedding ceremony is likely to be her solely alternative to heal her household’s decades-long estrangement, and unravel some lingering household secrets and techniques. A household tragedy spurs Mae to go to North Carolina looking for solutions, and when she arrives, she tries to construct connection the easiest way she is aware of how: by cooking for her estranged family members.
It’s after all rather more difficult than that, as Mae quickly learns. As she hones in on perfecting her grandmother’s famed mac and cheese, Mae will get a crash course in her household’s distinct dynamic. Like an excellent meal, don’t be stunned in the event you end The Townsend Household Recipe for Catastrophe multi functional sitting. — AM
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, July 16
Lizzy Dent’s The Summer season Job — which featured a lady who discovered love whereas impersonating her sommelier buddy at a Michelin-starred restaurant within the Scottish countryside — was considered one of my favourite gentle reads of 2021. Dent’s latest, equally food-related e-book, Simply One Style, didn’t disappoint both. It follows restaurant critic Olive, whose estranged chef father has simply died and, to her chagrin, left her his restaurant. Not solely that, however she should additionally journey to Sicily to complete the cookbook he was writing. And since Olive is a restaurant critic, not a recipe developer, she should work on it with Leo, her father’s former sous chef and her nemesis — you may in all probability inform the place that is going. Simply One Style had all of the issues I preferred a lot in The Summer season Job: bubbly writing, a humorousness, a dreamy setting, and page-turning chemistry. — BM
St. Martin’s Griffin, August 6
The latest from writer Casey McQuiston follows sommelier Theo and immensely flirtatious pastry chef Package, two exes who inadvertently find yourself on a meals tour collectively throughout Europe after years of no contact. As you may count on, The Pairing affords loads of trip inspiration as they journey by way of Bordeaux, Monaco, Florence, Naples, and extra. Attractive and queer, that is definitely a e-book for hedonists: Rounding out Theo and Package’s pleasure cruise of food and drinks is the hookup competitors that they’ve challenged one another to as they cross the continent. The Pairing has all of the sass and seduction that made McQuiston’s Pink, White & Royal Blue such a success, however with extra spice. It’s barely too dangerous that it comes out so late within the season, however reserve it for these last seaside days and let it information your plans for subsequent summer time. — BM
