Ruby Sisson Library

Isabel Johansen, a celebrated chef who grew up in the sleepy Sonoma town of Archangel, is transforming her childhood home into a destination cooking schools. Bella Vista's rambling mission-style hacienda, with its working apple orchards, bountiful gardens, and beehives, is the idyllic venue for Isabel's project . . . and the perfect place for her to forget the past. But Isabel's carefully ordered plans begin to go awry when swaggering, war-torn journalist...

After an extravagant honeymoon, Hannah's eager to settle down in Lake Eden and turn domestic daydreams into reality. But when her mother's neighbor is discovered murdered in the condo downstairs, reality becomes a nightmarish investigation. Victoria Bascomb, once a renowned stage actress, was active in the theater community during her brief appearance in town . . . and made throngs of enemies along the way. Did a random intruder murder the woman as...

Lillian and her restaurant have a way of drawing people together. Theres Al, the accountant who finds meaning in numbers and ritual; Chloe, a budding chef who hasnt learned to trust after heartbreak; Finnegan, who can disappear into the background despite his massive height; Louise, Als wife, whose anger simmers just below the boiling point; and Isabelle, whose memories are slowly slipping from her grasp. And theres Lillian herself, whose life has...

"Appetizer : Cal Buchanan needs a top-flight chef to take over his failing Seattle restaurant, The Waterfront. He can afford to hire the best in town -- the only problem is that the best happens to be his ex-wife, Penny Jordan. Entree: Penny really needs this opportunity, but she doesn't need the distraction of working with her ex. She's sworn off romance -- she's even having a baby on her own. But before she knows it, the heat is on . . . and the...

Hope Ladley roams the Texas countryside in 1891 as an itinerant cook. When she arrives at Stauffer farm, she knows this is the place the Lord wants her to be. Jakob Stauffer, while grateful for a cook to assist his sister and young daughter, is baffled by Hope's unconventional methods. Yet he can't deny that her sunny disposition is making changes in his own heart.

When Chef Gina Foxton, host of her own PBS show Fresh Start catches her producer boyfriend and the boss's wife in a compromising position and her show gets cancelled, she realizes she is meant for better things, namely a gig on national television's the cooking channel. But her competition for a spot on the cooking channel is a hunky guy who challenges her to the cook-off of their lives with a dash of romance.

"A Chinese American chef, ... lured to a decadent, enigmatic colony of the super-rich in a near future in which food is disappearing, discovers the meaning of pleasure and the ethics of who gets to enjoy it, altering her life and, indirectly, the world"--

With summer in bloom and tourists afoot, Allie is out walking her pup, Mal, when the curious canine digs up a bone from under a flowering lilac bush. The bone leads to a toe that's missing a body. For the successful confectionaire it's only the first in a series of sour events in the middle of the island's Lilac Fest. When her stint on a cooking reality show swirls up a trail of foul play, Allie will have to outwit a cunning killer if she wants to...

Nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell resolved to reclaim her life by cooking, in a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's 1961 classic, Mastering the art of French cooking. Her unexpected reward, a new life lived with gusto.

"Denver chef Rachel Bishop has accomplished everything she's dreamed and some things she never dared hope, like winning a James Beard Award and heading up her own fine-dining restaurant. But when a targeted smear campaign causes her to be pushed out of the business by her partners, she vows to do whatever it takes to get her life back... even if that means joining forces with the man who inadvertently set the disaster in motion"--Provided by publisher....