The Cut-Throat Cafe

The Cut-Throat Cafe
Author: Nicki Thornton
Publisher: Scholastic
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2020-04-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1913322084

Seth and his talking cat Nightshade arrive in the magical town of Gramichee to gain an apprenticeship. But when he discovered that the existing apprentices are under attack at the town's Scrumdiddlyumptious Café, he realises he has another murder mystery to solve ...

The Last Chance Hotel

The Last Chance Hotel
Author: Nicki Thornton
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1338323725

Readers looking for an enchanting read, a story of overcoming the odds, or a tale of suspense will love this traditional Agatha Christie, who-dun-it mystery, matched and raised by a hint of magic. Seth is a kitchen boy at the remote Last Chance Hotel. His father has long ago left, leaving him imprisoned until he is old enough to set out on his own. If there's any hope he has, it's to be the greatest chef that ever lived... just like his father. One night, a band of magicians begin to arrive to participate in a secret meeting -- a Prospect Selection Procedure to determine the most talented magicians in the world, judged by their leader Dr. Thallonius. Seth has one task: to make Dr. Thallonius the greatest dessert he's ever tasted. Then, maybe he will help Seth find a way to freedom. But when the doors to the private meeting open, and Dr. Thallonius lay dead on the floor, the group blames the dessert, which means that it's Seth who will pay the price. But Seth knows he's innocent, and only has so much time to eliminate each suspect and prove his innocence.

Cut-Throat Café

Cut-Throat Café
Author: Nicki Thornton
Publisher: Chicken House
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2020-08-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1760976318

The third magical murder mystery in the bestselling Seth Seppi series, which started with The Last Chance Hotel! Seth and his talking cat Nightshade arrive in the magical town of Gramichee to gain an apprenticeship: he's finally read to qualify as a magician. But he soon discovers that the existing apprentices are under attack at the town's Scrumdiddlyumptious Caf , which is far more deadly than it is delightful. Seth's got his hands full, as usual. Can he pass his exams, discover who's murdering the apprentices, and stop them before they strike again?

Hemingway Cutthroat

Hemingway Cutthroat
Author: Michael Atkinson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2010-07-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429907142

There were no bullfights in 1937 Madrid, just bombs, freedom fighters, journalists, and plenty of corpses. Ernest Hemingway, covering the Spanish Civil War for the American press, came looking for stories and danger, and found something else: a friend murdered amid the ruins. With a new novel stirring in his head and his veins pumping with booze, Hemingway sets out to find who killed José Robles Pazos, a bureaucrat in the Popular Front, and who's covering it up. There is, after all, nothing like risking death in a war zone if it means living fast, nailing the bastards, and avoiding a deadline. With the writer John Dos Passos at his side, Hemingway wades into the darkness, discovering that his old WWI buddy is no mere casualty of war---but victim of something far more terrible. Boisterous, bare knuckled, and stewed to the gills, Hemingway Cutthroat captures the writer at the height of his career and in a Europe teetering on untold cataclysm, struggling to find out not just for whom, but why the bell tolled.

The Sand Cafe

The Sand Cafe
Author: Neil MacFarquhar
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2007-08-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1586486004

Dhahran Palace Hotel, Saudi Arabia, 1991. The US forces are massing on the border with Iraq, preparing to throw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Men and material are arriving daily, helicopters and armor are training in the desert sand. There are rumors of Scud missiles, talk of the possibility of chemical attack, but in fact, nothing is really happening. With no story to report, the press is getting restive. The Sand Caf' is a satire of modern war reporting that mercilessly exposes the life of the foreign correspondent: endless scurrying trips in pursuit of a really big story, gathering frustration, brewing jealousy directed towards other reporters, especially those from better financed TV networks, and the stale smell of damp rot that comes from a combination of leaking air-conditioning and wretched carpeting in the hotel where the entire bedraggled press corps is housed. Boredom massages idle thoughts into wild excesses, even in a country that officially bans the sale of alcohol. Neil MacFarquhar, a veteran of the Middle East foreign press corps, has written a woundingly witty black comedy of those who bring us news from the front lines, exposing their vanities, rivalries and petty distractions. Love, lust for fame and the magnificent gilded hypocrisy of the regime in Saudi make this novel as revealing as it is compelling.

The Bad Luck Lighthouse

The Bad Luck Lighthouse
Author: Nicki Thornton
Publisher: Scholastic Australia
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1743837461

In solving the mystery of the Last Chance Hotel, Seth has discovered a bewildering new world of magic. But the truth about his mother’s fate remains, stolen away with the firefly cage by his nemesis, the wicked Tiffany Bunn. Determined to chase them down–and prove himself as a magician–Seth and his cat Nightshade are quickly embroiled in the latest MagiCon case, a murder investigation at a deserted lighthouse…

The Book of Broken Hearts

The Book of Broken Hearts
Author: Sarah Ockler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2013-05-21
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1442430400

When all signs point to heartbreak, can love still be a rule of the road? A “touching father-daughter story” (Kirkus Reviews) from the author of Bittersweet and Twenty Boy Summer. Jude has learned a lot from her older sisters, but the most important thing is this: The Vargas brothers are notorious heartbreakers. She’s seen the tears and disasters that dating a Vargas boy can cause, and she swore an oath—with candles and a contract and everything—to never have anything to do with one. Now Jude is the only sister still living at home, and she’s spending the summer helping her ailing father restore his vintage motorcycle—which means hiring a mechanic to help out. Is it Jude’s fault he happens to be cute? And surprisingly sweet? And a Vargas? Jude tells herself it’s strictly bike business with Emilio. Her sisters will never find out, and Jude can spot those flirty little Vargas tricks a mile away—no way would she fall for them. But Jude’s defenses are crumbling, and if history is destined to repeat itself, she’s speeding toward some serious heartbreak…unless her sisters were wrong? Jude may have taken an oath, but she’s beginning to think that when it comes to love, some promises might be worth breaking.

Prune

Prune
Author: Gabrielle Hamilton
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 619
Release: 2014-11-04
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0812994108

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From Gabrielle Hamilton, bestselling author of Blood, Bones & Butter, comes her eagerly anticipated cookbook debut filled with signature recipes from her celebrated New York City restaurant Prune. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE SEASON BY Time • O: The Oprah Magazine • Bon Appétit • Eater A self-trained cook turned James Beard Award–winning chef, Gabrielle Hamilton opened Prune on New York’s Lower East Side fifteen years ago to great acclaim and lines down the block, both of which continue today. A deeply personal and gracious restaurant, in both menu and philosophy, Prune uses the elements of home cooking and elevates them in unexpected ways. The result is delicious food that satisfies on many levels. Highly original in concept, execution, look, and feel, the Prune cookbook is an inspired replica of the restaurant’s kitchen binders. It is written to Gabrielle’s cooks in her distinctive voice, with as much instruction, encouragement, information, and scolding as you would find if you actually came to work at Prune as a line cook. The recipes have been tried, tasted, and tested dozens if not hundreds of times. Intended for the home cook as well as the kitchen professional, the instructions offer a range of signals for cooks—a head’s up on when you have gone too far, things to watch out for that could trip you up, suggestions on how to traverse certain uncomfortable parts of the journey to ultimately help get you to the final destination, an amazing dish. Complete with more than with more than 250 recipes and 250 color photographs, home cooks will find Prune’s most requested recipes—Grilled Head-on Shrimp with Anchovy Butter, Bread Heels and Pan Drippings Salad, Tongue and Octopus with Salsa Verde and Mimosa’d Egg, Roasted Capon on Garlic Crouton, Prune’s famous Bloody Mary (and all 10 variations). Plus, among other items, a chapter entitled “Garbage”—smart ways to repurpose foods that might have hit the garbage or stockpot in other restaurant kitchens but are turned into appetizing bites and notions at Prune. Featured here are the recipes, approach, philosophy, evolution, and nuances that make them distinctively Prune’s. Unconventional and honest, in both tone and content, this book is a welcome expression of the cookbook as we know it. Praise for Prune “Fresh, fascinating . . . entirely pleasurable . . . Since 1999, when the chef Gabrielle Hamilton put Triscuits and canned sardines on the first menu of her East Village bistro, Prune, she has nonchalantly broken countless rules of the food world. The rule that a successful restaurant must breed an empire. The rule that chefs who happen to be women should unconditionally support one another. The rule that great chefs don’t make great writers (with her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter). And now, the rule that restaurant food has to be simplified and prettied up for home cooks in order to produce a useful, irresistible cookbook. . . . [Prune] is the closest thing to the bulging loose-leaf binder, stuck in a corner of almost every restaurant kitchen, ever to be printed and bound between cloth covers. (These happen to be a beautiful deep, dark magenta.)”—The New York Times “One of the most brilliantly minimalist cookbooks in recent memory . . . at once conveys the thrill of restaurant cooking and the wisdom of the author, while making for a charged reading experience.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Sacred Cut

The Sacred Cut
Author: David Hewson
Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2018-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1448301521

Welcome to Italian police detective Nic Costa’s Rome: the side of the city the tourist board does not want you to see. “Hewson does more than provide a thrilling read. He saves you the airfare to Italy. When you turn the last page, you’ll think you’ve been there” LINWOOD BARCLAY “David Hewson’s Rome is dark and tantalizing, seductive and dangerous, a place where present-day crimes ring with the echoes of history” TESS GERRITSEN “David Hewson is one of the finest thriller writers working today” STEVE BERRY “No author has ever brought Rome so alive for me – nor made it seem so sinister” PETER JAMES “[Hewson is] a master plot maker” BOOKLIST _______________________ A shocking murder. A city under siege. A serial killer who’s leaving a mark all his own. It’s Christmas Eve and, for the first time in decades, Rome is paralysed by a blizzard. As the snow falls softly, a horrible discovery is made in the Pantheon, one of the Eternal City’s most ancient and revered architectural treasures. The body of a young woman carefully positioned on the marble floor, a gruesome carving on her back . . . But before Detective Nic Costa and his partner Peroni can begin a formal investigation, the US Embassy brings in its own people: FBI Agents, who want the case closed down as quickly and discreetly as possible. But Costa is determined to find out why – and as the FBI grudgingly admits to him that this corpse is not the first, the mutilations on the woman’s body point to Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man . . . and to a shocking international conspiracy that’s been festering for the past fifteen years. Fans of Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti, Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano and Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen, as well as Louise Penny, Jeffey Siger and Martin Walker, will love this thrilling mystery series – perfect for readers who enjoy dark and complex character-led mysteries with multiple twists. PRAISE FOR THE SACRED CUT: “Stunning . . . a masterful mix of the high-concept historical thriller and the cynical contemporary Italian procedural” Booklist Starred Review “Hewson's literate prose, bolstered by local color and historical tidbits, makes for top-flight entertainment” Kirkus Reviews “Hewson's solid writing and multidimensional characters command attention from start to finish of this smart, literate thriller” Publishers Weekly “Hewson is as adroit as ever in the crafting and characterizations in his tale” Rocky Mountain News “Fully satisfying” Detroit Free Press “A fast-paced procedural” The Sacramento Bee “Hewson’s characters are finely drawn and consistent from book to book. He is a master at characterization . . . I highly recommend The Sacred Cut to all lovers of a good detective story and to all armchair travelers who love Rome” Blair M., 5* GoodReads review “A must read if you like Rome, Italy or just a great thriller. You can't go wrong with this book!” Geoff, 5* GoodReads review THE NIC COSTA MYSTERIES, IN ORDER: 1. A Season for the Dead 2. The Villa of Mysteries 3. The Sacred Cut 4. The Lizard’s Bite 5. The Seventh Sacrament 6. The Garden of Evil 7. Dante’s Numbers (aka The Dante Killings) 8. City of Fear (aka The Blue Demon) 9. The Fallen Angel 10. The Savage Shore