The Mystery Feast


Book Description

‘In every moment, we are part of the infinite stories that the universe is telling us and that we are telling the universe.’ Packed with ideas and inspiration, The Mystery Feast offers numerous pathways into the magical world of storytelling. Beginning with a poem, ‘All we do’, Booker prize-winning novelist Ben Okri presents his considered thoughts on the purpose and meaning of stories, concluding with a series of condensed ‘Notes to the modern storyteller’. The collection is completed with a ‘stoku’ – a brief tale on the theme. Based on decades of honing his art, this stimulating booklet gives a glimpse into the mind of a master of contemporary storytelling.




The Feast


Book Description

"Kennedy is not only a romantic but an anarchist." —Anita Brookner Summer, 1947. A bizarre catastrophe rocks a seaside village in Cornwall when a cliff tumbles down on the Pendizack Manor Hotel. The hotel is obliterated, and seven guests are killed in the disaster. Everyone else makes a narrow escape. As the survivors tell their stories, the events of the previous week are revealed, and a parade of sins exposed. Gluttony, Lecherousness, Sloth, Pride, Covetousness, Envy and Wrath: all are in residence at Pendizack Manor, and as the day of the disaster creeps closer, it becomes clear that who’s spared and who’s lost might not be as arbitrary as first assumed. A modern upstairs-downstairs comedy with an old-fashioned morality play tucked away inside, The Feast is sly, kaleidoscopic, and utterly ingenious, a novel that only Margaret Kennedy could have written.




Mrs. Jeffries and the Feast of St. Stephen


Book Description

A Yuletide dinner in West Brompton should have been a festive occasion, until the host, wealthy Stephen Whitfield, dropped dead before the second course. Now Mrs. Jeffries and the busy sleuths must rally in support of their Inspector?especially since the clues are harder to find than a silver sixpence in a plum pudding.




Feast of Murder


Book Description

A former FBI agent gets entangled in a financial mogul’s murder in this “superior” whodunit series (Publishers Weekly). Once one of Wall Street’s most powerful forces, Donald McAdam’s life changed when he found himself in a tight spot with the SEC. Either give up everything, they told him, or inform on your friends. Never one for loyalty, McAdam chose the wire, and sent half the stockbrokers in New York to prison. Now he’s filthy rich, isolated, and so paranoid that he buys his cocaine laced with strychnine, in hopes of building up a tolerance for the poison. His caution doesn’t help him, however, when he tumbles off his high-rise balcony and falls headfirst back down to Wall Street. Soon afterward, one of the men McAdam put away invites ex–FBI investigator Gregor Demarkian on a very peculiar cruise—onboard a cramped precise replica of the Mayflower. But when the behavior of the passengers proves rather un-Puritan, Demarkian discovers something that would have shocked Columbus: a New World murder.




A Fatal Family Feast


Book Description

Angie Turner’s Idaho restaurant, the County Seat, is the perfect site for a picturesque country wedding, but the party planning skids to a halt when the groom-to-be is implicated in a murder investigation… When Angie’s best friend and business partner, Felicia Williams, picks the County Seat to host her upcoming nuptials, Angie wants it to feel like a family affair--especially since Felicia is set to marry the farm-to-fork restaurant’s talented sous chef, Estebe Blackstone. Unfortunately, the bride’s actual family is far less enthusiastic about the union. They’re pulling out all the stops to cancel the couple’s wedding, even arranging for a surprise visit from Felicia’s ex-fiancé (and her father’s current lackey). But when her ex is killed days before the ceremony and Estebe is framed for the crime, Angie and the County Seat crew must scramble to solve the murder and save the wedding . . . Praise for Lynn Cahoon's Mysteries “Well-crafted . . . Cat and crew prove to be engaging characters and Cahoon does a stellar job of keeping them—and the reader—guessing.” —Mystery Sceneon A Story to Kill “One Poison Pie deliciously blends charm and magic with a dash of mystery and a sprinkle of romance.” —Daryl Wood Gerber, Agatha winner and nationally bestselling author of the Cookbook Nook Mysteries and Fairy Garden Mysteries




A Bitter Feast


Book Description

"Crombie’s characters are rich, emotionally textured, fully human. They are the remarkable creations of a remarkable writer."—Louise Penny “Nobody writes the modern English mystery the way Deborah Crombie does—and A Bitter Feast is the latest in a series that is gripping, enthralling, and just plain the best.” — Charles Todd, New York Times bestselling author of The Black Ascot and A Cruel Deception New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie returns with a mesmerizing entry in her “excellent” (Miami Herald) series, in which Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James are pulled into a dangerous web of secrets, lies, and murder that simmers beneath the surface of a tranquil Cotswolds village. Scotland Yard Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his wife, Detective Inspector Gemma James, have been invited for a relaxing weekend in the Cotswolds, one of Britain’s most enchanting regions, famous for its rolling hills, golden cottages, and picturesque villages. Duncan, Gemma, and their children are guests at Beck House, the family estate of Melody Talbot, Gemma’s detective sergeant. The Talbot family is wealthy, prominent, and powerful—Melody’s father is the publisher of one of London’s largest and most influential newspapers. The centerpiece of this glorious fall getaway is a posh charity harvest luncheon catered by up-and-coming chef Viv Holland. After fifteen years in London’s cut-throat food scene, Viv has returned to the Gloucestershire valleys of her childhood and quickly made a name for herself with her innovative meals based on traditional cuisine but using fresh local ingredients. Attended by the local well-to-do as well as national press food bloggers and restaurant critics, the event could make Viv a star. But a tragic car accident and a series of mysterious deaths rock the estate and pull Duncan and Gemma into the investigation. It soon becomes clear that the killer has a connection with Viv’s pub—or, perhaps, with Beck House itself. Does the truth lie in the past? Or is it closer to home, tied up in the tangled relationships and bitter resentments between the staff at Beck House and Viv’s new pub? Or is it more personal, entwined with secrets hidden by Viv and those closest to her?




The Feast


Book Description

A story that would gather the Sins all under the roof of a Cornish seaside hotel managed by the unhappy wife of Sloth ... Among The Feast's entertaining cast of characters are a clergyman, a gaggle of adolescents and children, a quarter of lovers, and a clutch of frustrated husbands and wives - all serving Kennedy's dark and witty moral fable, which bears out the Biblical adage that many are called but only a very few chosen.




The Witch's Feast


Book Description

Discover the seductive art and ritual of magical cooking with this decadent recipe collection drawing on herbalism, kitchen witchcraft, and the occult The feast is a meeting place between family and friends, between humans and gods This enchanting collection of witchy dishes from Melissa Jayne Madara—witch, herbalist, chef and co-owner of Brooklyn’s popular occult bookstore Catland Books—is an indispensable companion to kitchen witchcraft. With this kitchen grimoire, explore 5 facets of the occult through food: traditional recipes, the wheel of the zodiac, devotional meals to the planets, seasonal feasts to celebrate solstices and equinoxes, and practical spell work. • Recreate a pagan feast of lamb roasted with milk and honey, with cheesecake baked in fig leaves for dessert • Celebrate a Gemini birthday with herbed fondue, followed by lemongrass pavlova • Align with the poetic pleasures of Venus with edible flower dumplings, or commune with Saturn over blackberry pulled pork sandwiches • Enjoy the vibrancy of the spring equinox with herb and allium quiche with a potato crust, radish salad with cherry blossom vinaigrette and jasmine tea shortbread • Share an evening of storytelling over mugwort and catnip divination tea, or embody an otherworldly spirit with ritual bread masks Packed with ancient knowledge, practical advice and witchcraft expertise, this book will help you develop your craft through culinary creativity and the divine indulgence of the senses and the soul.




The Peacock Feast


Book Description

From “one of the most perceptive, compassionate writers of fiction in America...immensely talented and brave” (Michael Schaub, NPR), a historical saga about love, class, and the past we never escape. The Peacock Feast opens on a June day in 1916 when Louis C. Tiffany, the eccentric glass genius, dynamites the breakwater at Laurelton Hall—his fantastical Oyster Bay mansion, with columns capped by brilliant ceramic blossoms and a smokestack hidden in a blue-banded minaret—so as to foil the town from reclaiming the beach for public use. The explosion shakes both the apple crate where Prudence, the daughter of Tiffany’s prized gardener, is sleeping and the rocks where Randall, her seven-year-old brother, is playing. Nearly a century later, Prudence receives an unexpected visit at her New York apartment from Grace, a hospice nurse and the granddaughter of Randall, who Prudence never saw again after he left at age fourteen for California. The mementos Grace carries from her grandfather’s house stir Prudence’s long-repressed memories and bring her to a new understanding of the choices she made in work and love, and what she faces now in her final days. Spanning the twentieth century and three continents, The Peacock Feast ricochets from Manhattan to San Francisco, from the decadent mansions of the Tiffany family to the death row of a Texas prison, and from the London consultation room of Anna Freud to a Mendocino commune. With psychological acuity and aching eloquence, Lisa Gornick has written a sweeping family drama, an exploration of the meaning of art and the art of dying, and an illuminating portrait of how our decisions reverberate across time and space.




Neo Phobe


Book Description

Fiction. A serial rapist terrorizes the streets of New York City, forcing a low-rent group of freelancers to go head-to-head with a Fundamentalist-Industrial Complex in a race to solve the crimes. "Neo Phobe aims directly at the paradox that lies at the center of all sexual liberatory writing. Often it suggests brilliant resolutions of this paradox; sometimes it falls victim to it. Everyone should read this book"--Samuel Delany. "This is one of the strangest books I've ever seen"--Barney Rosset. "NEO PHOBE is a playful mystery novel that smartly comments on what it means to be a working-class writer (and detective) in NYC battling nowhere temp jobs, indifferent literary journals, and Christian zealots, respectively. It's also a character sketch of The Unbearables, the anarchic group of verbo-visual terrorists and beer drinkers to which Feast and Kolm claim membership"--Brandon Stosuy.