From its resourceful, resilient protagonist to its seamlessly constructed, au courant plot, everything about Ware’s newest novel is guaranteed to keep her fans up way past their bedtimes.
Peppered with fascinating tidbits such as Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts to spearhead a distaff version of the CCC for young women, this book is a tasty treat for anyone interested in how food fueled the United States’ Depression recovery.
While the book perfectly captures the near fatalistic tone of noir crime fiction at its best, Crane also gives world-weary readers a small measure of hope for the future with his pointed and poignant insights into life and love.
Not since Lisa Lutz’s The Spellman Files has there been such a delightful literary marriage of endearingly quirky characters and deliciously dry wit. Fans of Francine Prose’s The Maid or Meg Cabot’s Heather Wells mysteries will equally embrace the arrival of Charlotte and her cohorts on the detecting scene.
While there is no shortage of excellent guides to cookie baking, including Mindy Segal’s Cookie Love and Alice Medrich’s classic Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies, Mubarak’s tempting array of sandwich cookies will prove to be the stuff of sweet dreams for home bakers.
Slater’s warmly nourishing paean to the joys of food and cooking definitely earns its place on cook’s shelves next to other contemporary classics like Ruth Reichl’s My Kitchen Year and Nigella Lawson’s Cook, Eat, Repeat.
Not for the squeamish, but fans of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister the Serial Killer or of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels will be equally ensnared in DeStefano’s assured literary clutches.