Cookbooks Apr 23, 2026
The Best Cookbooks Make You Want to Clear the Counter
A good cookbook does more than photograph food beautifully. It gets you to set your phone down, make room, and actually start cooking.
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Chef LaLa's Cookbooks
Where great recipes meet great stories. Cookbook reviews, food memoirs, and culinary fiction served warm.
Latest Reviews
Fresh from the kitchen — the newest reads on our shelf
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Cookbooks Apr 15, 2026
I Love a Recipe Headnote That Actually Says Something
A tiny bit of scene, context, or honesty goes a long way. Good headnotes make a cookbook feel inhabited instead of assembled.
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Cookbooks Apr 8, 2026
The Cookbooks I Keep Near the Stove, Not on the Shelf
Some books live beautifully on a shelf. The real workhorses live close enough to catch steam.
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Book Reviews Apr 7, 2026
The atmosphere in Holler Whispers is half the fun
The flavor of a setting can carry a book, and Holler Whispers understands that.
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Blog Apr 14, 2025
Align Your Business with the Real You: Connect with Yourself, Create What Matters Most, and Define Your Success by Jennifer Musser
True leadership isn’t found in titles—it’s in how you show up when no one’s watching. Jennifer Musser’s Align Your Business with the Real You explores what it means to lead from within. Her years as a
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Christmas Blog Dec 14, 2024
The Crush of Wine and War by Molly Fumia
Summary: “Here is a book of exquisite honesty and profound depth… Along the way grief becomes a dance in the dark and suffering turns to love.” -Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Book of Longings, review o
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Christmas Blog Dec 13, 2024
Tangles: A Cold War Love Story and Mystery by by Kay Smith-Blum
Summary: “In a well-crafted debut, Smith-Blum provides the reader a ringside seat to the birth of the nuclear age…a beautifully written, important story…Tangles packs a punch and hits close to home.”
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Blog Dec 8, 2024
Here Lyeth by Johanna Frank
Book Summary: In Here Lyeth, Lexxie, feeling angry and heartbroken, leaves her home after learning that her biological father lives in a village called Vereiteln Dorf. There, she becomes intrigued by
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Christmas Blog Dec 5, 2024
Universe of Lost Messages (The Charismites) by Janet Stilson
Story Summary What if your child has special powers and can get people to do almost anything? What happens if the child is abducted? Izzie and Tristan were never mere humans. They are Charismites, wit
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Christmas Blog Dec 4, 2024
Champagne Widows by Rebecca Rosenberg
Summary: Sparkling Courage: Love, Loss, and the First Champagne Queen’s Daring Legacy France, 1800s. Young widow Barbe-Nicole Clicquot possesses an extraordinary gift: Le Nez, an exquisite sense of sm
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Christmas Blog Dec 3, 2024
Bones of the Apostle by John Amos
Story Summary: “Thomas, I’m bored. We need some excitement.” Back from their harrowing mission in the desert to recover a stolen statue of Aphrodite, detectives Flinders Petrie and Thomas Pettigrew ha
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Christmas Blog Dec 2, 2024
The Case of the Stolen Goddess by John Amos
Story Summary: Flinders smiled. “Once more into the breach, my friend.” Now famous after their previous quest to find Cleopatra’s tomb, detectives Flinders Petrie and Thomas Pettigrew begin their next
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