The School of Essential Ingredients

Erica Bauermeister's first novel is a feast for the senses. And torture if you are hungry while reading it. Through the chapters you meet all the members of a cooking class taught by an extraordinary restaurateur. One night they make ravioli "no thicker than paper, their edges crinkled, their surfaces kissed with melted butter, scattered with bits of shallots and hazelnuts, like rice thrown at a wedding." Bauermeister captures moment after moment of her characters being healed by the intersection of food and emotions. For fans of Like Water for Chocolate and The God of Small Things. -- Jenny H.

Request a copy of The School of Essential Ingredients from the Saint Paul Public Library.

A Carrion Death

This first book in a new mystery series by Michael Stanley introduces Detective Kubu. "Kubu" is the Setswana word for hippopotamus, and a fitting nickname for this large but tireless employee of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department. Kubu loves opera, food and drink in large quantites, and his wife Joy. Kubu dislikes being yelled at by his supervisor or his sister-in-law, but it happens with alarming regularity.

A deceptively slow pace brings the reader to the edge of her seat in this intricately plotted story featuring diamond smugglers and bushmen of the Kalahari. The details of modern life and landscape in Africa are worthy of any travel book.

Michael Stanley is the pen-name for the duo of Michael Sears and Stanely Trollip. Trollip divides his time between South Africa and Minneapolis--hence this first Detective Kubu story was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. --Jenny H.

Request a copy of A Carrion Death from Saint Paul Public Library.

The Dog Says How

This memoir by Minnesota playwright and storyteller Kevin Kling is as funny as it is poignant. "Christmas dinner. All the relatives start to arrive: Aunt Charlene and Aunt Floy, two aunts that hug me, call me by my brother's name and say how much I've grown." Boyhood memories include taxidermy, Lutheran guilt, drive in movies and snow days. But some of the chapters are an adult's perspective on topics like personal geography and losing a parent. Throughout, Kling writes with lyricism and a stand-up comic's sense of pace. He zooms from personal minutiae to universal insights with a smoothness that made the book a finalist last year for the Minnesota Book Award. --Jenny H.

Request The Dog Says How from Saint Paul Public Library.

The Tenderness of Wolves

First-time novelist Stef Penney won the 2006 Costa Award (successor to the Whitbread) for this chilly adventure. It is 1867 in Canada's Northern Territory and the Hudson Bay Company's fur trading posts are the going concern. When a murder happens in the tiny settlement of Dove River, it is men from the Company who come to investigate. Woven into this murder is a love story and an avalanche of history.

Readalikes: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje and The Master Butchers Singing Club and Louise Erdrich. --Jenny H.

Request The Tenderness of Wolves from the Saint Paul Public Library.

Body Movers

Twenty-something Carlotta loves good clothes, her younger brother Wes, and her ex-fiance who dumped her 10 years ago. She does not love that her parents skipped town (Atlanta) under the dark cloud of fraud charges against her father and she's raised Wes on her own. Now Wes is in trouble with the law for computer hacking and as part of his probation gets "gainful employment" as a body mover. Her employee discount at Neiman Marcus keeps her in fashion and her quick temper and mouth keep her in trouble. Carlotta proves irrepressible even when faced with a bully of a police detective and a possible serial killer. -- Jenny H.

Request Body Movers from the Saint Paul Public Library

The Liar's Diary

Patry Francis writes a chameleon of a book. It begins like women's fiction: shy school secretary Jeanne's life is shook up by the new music teacher--an intriguing, beautiful artist named Ali. The story's opening pace is slow, like Jeanne's life at that point, bouncing gently from her job to her roles as doctor's wife and mother to Jamie, a 16 year-old boy who is popular, but overweight. Jamie's the light of Jeanne's life and the tension between father, mother and son are just the usual adolescent tension, isn't it? Just as the reader is lulled by the somewhat sinister lullabye of the opening chapters, violence erupts. Like Jeanne, the reader is suddenly on a roller coaster with stomach-dropping turns. The physical locations may be an idyllic suburb and a remote cabin in New Hampshire, but prepare to also travel deep into Jeanne's psyche.--Jenny H.

Request The Liar's Diary from the Saint Paul Public Library.

Self Storage: A Novel

Gayle Brandeis imbues atmosphere into every page of her novel, which tells ths story of Flan, a young mother with a grad-student husband. Don't be misled by the lingerie cover. This atmosphere is unsettled as it veers between the issues of an Oprah book and some chick-lit humor. Flan supports the struggling family with finds from auctions of abandoned storage units. Funk is what she often finds in the storage units too, while searching for meaning among all the stuff. Beautifully written, the story hinges on an old copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and liberally quotes from it. The ending of the book is neither a triumph or tragedy, but it may leave you wanting to fill up on Whitman. --Jenny H.

Request Self Storage from the Saint Paul Public Library.

The Fortune Quilt

Lani Diane Rich's modern fairy tale centers on Carly, a 30-something television producer for Tucson Today who is used to being in control and who is not averse to bad puns. She has a good excuse for living at home--she's been acting as mom to her younger sister for the past 17 years after their real mom ran away from home. When a psychic quiltmaker "reads" Carly's quilt and predicts upheaval, Carly just laughs it off as another quirky person featured on her TV show. Multiple upheavals ensue, sending Carly to the small artists' community of Bilby, Arizona, and she finds herself rescued, at least temporarily, by the psychic quiltmaker. With colorful supporting characters, several love interests and a warm setting, this is just the book to curl up with by the fire to see how it will turn out happily ever after. -- Jenny H.

Request The Fortune Quilt from the Saint Paul Public Library.

A Spot of Bother

Mark Haddon is known for his book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. In A Spot of Bother, George Hall, the patriarch of a middle-class British family, is slowly becoming obsessed with his mortality. His family is too wrapped up in their own problems to notice that George occasionally has "a spot of bother." Bumping up against his unfaithful wife, his divorcee daughter and his uneasily gay son makes for poignant and funny moments. When daughter Katie announces she is marrying her boyfriend, it looks like the family could be united in disliking "that Ray," but the ensuing wedding plans instead splinter them further. Part drama, part farce, this book gives a light touch to serious problems.--Jenny H.

Request A Spot of Bother from the Saint Paul Public Library

Baker Towers

By Jennifer Haigh. Follow the sorrows and joys of the Novak family, living in a Pennsylvania mining town just after World War II. The ironies of life for the “Greatest Generation” are brought out in vivid detail. Haigh has an amazing skill for zooming from a single person’s thoughts to depicting the fate of an entire town without giving the reader vertigo. They may be details we’ve heard in other stories—the Polish and Italian families, the plight of the miners during a strike—but Haigh sews it all together into a larger vision. --Jenny H.

Request Baker Towers from the Saint Paul Public Library.

Free Food for Millionaires

This thick novel by Min Jin Lee is getting great reviews and deservedly so. Casey Han, a recent Princeton graduate, is determined to succeed in New York. The daughter of Korean immigrants, she has the cleverness and pluckiness of a Jane Austen heroine, not to mention the romantic soul. Surrounded by a large cast of supporting characters of two generations, many social and economic classes, the novel is cinematic in its writing, generous in plot, and offers by turns sly critiques and sincere homage to New York. --Jenny H.

Request Free Food for Millionaires from Saint Paul Public Library.
Read reviews from Min Jin Lee's official website.