The Last Blue Plate Special

It seems impossible that two healthy female politicians could have both died from a cerebral hemorrhage within days of each other. The police hire Blue McCarron and Roxie Bouchie as consultants. The two women, who are involved professionally and personally, work with evangelical preachers, former convicts, and paintball playing plastic surgeons in order to find this unorthodox killer.

A delectable memoir about the transformative power of food, Blue Plate Special is a deeply personal narrative in which food becomes the vehicle for exploring a life. Here, novelist Kate Christensen tells her own story, from her unorthodox childhood in 1960s Berkeley as the daughter of a legal activist who ruled the house with his fists to her extraordinary success as a PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author. Hungry not just for food, but for love and a sense of belonging, Christensen writes honestly about her struggle to find the contentment she has always yearned for. A beautifully written account of a knockabout life, full of sorrows, pleasures—and, of course, food—Blue Plate Special is a delicious reading experience.

Agatha Award-winning author, Abigail Padget returns with Book No.2 of the Blue McCarron Mystery series. When two prominent female politicians die in San Diego of cerebral hemorrhages within days of each other, social psychologist Blue McCarron knows that their deaths are a statistical impossibility—they simply cannot be from natural causes. Within hours, a female evangelist almost dies, and threats from a religious fanatic, illustrated with blue willow plates, tie the three victims together. Blue and her lover, Roxanne, a criminal psychiatrist, are hired by the police as consultants and trace the three women to a posh plastic surgery clinic. As Blue and Rox investigate the clinic, the killer turns his attention on Blue, a strong, nontraditional woman who offends his ultraconservative religious beliefs. When Blue finds a blue willow plate on the doorstep of her isolated desert home, she knows the hunt has become a deadly game and that the unknown killer has every advantage.

An amazing gastronomic journey across America's heartland, this guide stops at the coziest, friendliest, and busiest diners, cafes and roadside stands in the country. Includes recipes and 75 photos.

Can Campbell McBride find her father before it's too late? Campbell McBride drives to her father's house in Murray, Kentucky, dreading telling him she's lost her job as an English professor. Private Investigator Bill McBride isn't home or at his office in town. His brash young employee, Nick Emerson, hasn't heard from Bill since the night before when he learned Bill was working on a new case.

In alternating chapters, the lives of three teenage girls from three different generations are woven together as each girl learns about forgiveness, empathy, and self-respect.

National Bestseller and Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Oscar Feldman, the renowned figurative painter, has passed away. As his obituary notes, Oscar is survived by his wife, Abigail, their son, Ethan, and his sister, the well-known abstract painter Maxine Feldman. What the obituary does not note, however, is that Oscar is also survived by his longtime mistress, Teddy St. Cloud, and their daughters. As two biographers interview the women in an attempt to set the record straight, the open secret of his affair reaches a boiling point and a devastating skeleton threatens to come to light. From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament, a scintillating novel of secrets, love, and legacy in the New York art world. "Mischievous...funny, astute...As unexpectedly generous as it is entertaining.... Christensen is a witty observer of the art universe." —The New York Times

This collection of more than 450 recipes from America's diners will make it possible to reproduce the comfort food provided in diners for more than 100 years. Interviews with diner employees and owners, articles about more than twenty diners, and more than 100 photographs.