Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Check out upcoming Top Ten themes on Jana’s blog!
Today’s prompt is Books Involving Food – and you’re not allowed to use cookbooks! I’m absolutely one of those people who swoon for food in my fiction, so here are 10 of my faves that go decadent on the culinary description!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Representation: Desi MC and cast, Native American love interest
Goodreads
Tilo, an immigrant from India, runs a spice shop in Oakland, California. While she supplies the ingredients for curries and kormas, she also dispenses wisdom and the appropriate spice: for Tilo is a Mistress of Spices, a priestess of the secret magical powers of spices.
To those who visit her shop, Tilo prescribes coriander for the restoration of sight, chili for the cleansing of evil, fenugreek for the pain of rejection. But when a lonely American ventures into the store, a troubled Tilo cannot find the correct spice, for he arouses in her a forbidden desire - which if she follows will destroy her magical powers.
Compelling and lyrical, full of heady scents and with more than a touch of humour, this novel explores the clash between East and West even as it unveils the universal mysteries of the human heart.
If you want fantasy and food, the first book I think of will ALWAYS be Mistress of Spices! This is an absolutely gorgeous story following an Indian woman who uses spices to work magic for the Indian immigrants who visit her shop – but the spices aren’t just magical ingredients; they’re alive, and have Opinions on how they should be used. The prose is mouthwatering and I adored how Divakaruni delves into the mythological history and magical qualities of each spice.
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Bi/pansexual MC, Indigenous MC, secondary asexual character, minor disabled Indigenous character
Goodreads
In Lambda Award finalist Chana Porter’s highly anticipated new novel, an aspiring chef, a cyberthief, and a kitchen maid each break free of a society that wants to constrain them.
In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God.
But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known.
Elsewhere, Reiko Rimando has left her modest roots for a college tech scholarship in the big city. A flawless student, she is set up for success...until her school pulls her funding, leaving her to face either a mountain of debt or a humiliating return home. But Reiko is done being at the mercy of the system. She forges a third path—outside of the law.
With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written by a kitchen maid centuries ago, Beatrice and Reiko each grasp for a life of freedom—something more easily imagined than achieved in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed.
A startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter’s profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act.
Now for a very different book! This is set in another world, where there’s two moons and the tech is more advanced, but it’s more speculative fiction than outright sci fi. Here, the dominant religion – and therefore the culture it’s influenced – sees eating as shameful; many people won’t eat in public, and one of the main characters is raised in a religious community that wants everyone to take pills instead of eating real food. So she runs away to become a chef! The process of coming up with recipes, cooking, and eating are all described so lovingly and lusciously; definitely don’t start eating while you’re hungry!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: (some) queer MCs, (some) ambiguous MCs
Goodreads
Amal El-Mohtar's The Honey Month, with an introduction by Danielle Sucher, ranks among the year’s most exquisite treasures. This beautiful volume of short fictions and poems takes as its inspiration the author's tasting of 28 different kinds of honey, one per day. Each tasting leads to a different literary creation, each entry beginning with a description of the honey in terms that will be familiar to wine connoisseurs: "Day 3--Sag Harbor, NY, Early Spring Honey," which has a color "pale and clear as snowmelt" and the smell "cool sugar crystals," but also brings to mind "a stingless jellyfish I once held in my hand in Oman." The taste? "...like the end of winter...[when] you can still see clumps of snow on the ground and the air is heavy with damp..." The differences between the types of honey allow El-Mohtar to move back and forth between the poetic and the more casually contemporary, with the experiment of the tasting as the unifying structure. A perfect gift, a hidden treasure, a delight for the senses.
The Honey Month isn’t about food in the usual way; as the blurb says, this is a series of flash fictions and I think a poem or two inspired by different honeys – the taste, but also the colour and consistency and what flower/s they were primarily made of! Each story is like a dream; magical and hypnotic. I DEFY you to not carry this book around in your heart with you after you’ve read it.
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Queer (Chinese-American?) MC
Goodreads
The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world
A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.
There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.
In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.
Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.
Including this one is probably cheating, because I haven’t finished it yet, but if you want All The Delicious descriptions of ridiculously fancy food, THIS IS THE BOOK! I suspect it will NOT have a happy ending, but there’s a little bit of wish fulfilment in giving a down-on-her-luck(-like,-really) chef access to ingredients that are all but mythical. (At one point, there are mammoth steaks. You didn’t read that wrong: MAMMOTH. STEAKS.)
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Goodreads
A sweet sapphic romance takes a deadly dark turn in this sharp-as-a-knife novella from the New York Times bestselling author.
Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers’ market. Ash—precise, pretty, and practically perfect—sells bars of soap in delicate pastel colors, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey, and glossy green plants. Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she’s not the one doing the devouring…
Listen. LISTEN. This is horror. It is. The ending gave me nightmares. BUT. Everything up till that point is so incredibly delicious and sensual that I think it’s worth it. Like. My GODS, those cupcakes!!!
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Cast of colour, oppressed minorities, bi/pansexual cast, secondary asexual character, secondary F/F relationship, polyamory
Goodreads
From the author of the Maradaine saga comes a new steampunk fantasy novel that explores a chaotic city on the verge of revolution.
Ziaparr: a city being rebuilt after years of mechanized and magical warfare, the capital of a ravaged nation on the verge of renewal and self-rule. But unrest foments as undercaste cycle gangs raid supply trucks, agitate the populace and vandalize the city. A revolution is brewing in the slums and shantytowns against the occupying government, led by a voice on the radio, connected through forbidden magic.
Wenthi Tungét, a talented cycle rider and a loyal officer in the city patrol, is assigned to infiltrate the cycle gangs. For his mission against the insurgents, Wenthi must use their magic, connecting his mind to Nália, a recently captured rebel, using her knowledge to find his way into the heart of the rebellion.
Wenthi's skill on a cycle makes him valuable to the resistance cell he joins, but he discovers that the magic enhances with speed. Every ride intensifies his connection, drawing him closer to the gang he must betray, and strengthens Nália's presence as she haunts his mind.
Wenthi is torn between justice and duty, and the wrong choice will light a spark in a city on the verge of combustion.
Okay, not the point of the book at ALL, but Velocity of Revolution has the most DELICIOUS-sounding tacos EVER and three years after first reading this I’m still craving them!
(It’s also anti-colonial dieselpunk fantasy with magic motorbikes and an immensely sex-positive culture that has space for asexuals in it, so, you know, all the stars from me!)
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC, sapphic love interest
Goodreads
Daisy Ellery’s pies have a secret ingredient: The magical ability to avenge women done wrong by men. But Daisy finds herself on the receiving end in Misha Popp’s cozy series debut, a sweet-as-buttercream treat for fans of Ellery Adams and Mary Maxwell.
The first time Daisy Ellery killed a man with a pie, it was an accident. Now, it’s her calling. Daisy bakes sweet vengeance into her pastries, which she and her dog Zoe deliver to the men who’ve done dirty deeds to the town’s women. But if she can’t solve the one crime that’s not of her own baking, she’ll be out of the pie pan and into the oven.
Parking her Pies Before Guys mobile bakery van outside the local diner, Daisy is informed by Frank, the crusty diner owner, that someone’s been prowling around the van—and not just to inhale the delectable aroma. Already on thin icing with Frank, she finds a letter on her door, threatening to reveal her unsavory secret sideline of pie a la murder.
Blackmail? But who whipped up this half-baked plot to cut a slice out of Daisy’s business? Purple-haired campus do-gooder Melly? Noel, the tender—if flaky—farm boy? Or one of the abusive men who prefer their pie without a deadly scoop of payback?
The upcoming statewide pie contest could be Daisy’s big chance to help wronged women everywhere…if she doesn’t meet a sticky end first. Because Daisy knows the blackmailer won’t stop until her business is in crumbles.
This is a super fun contemporary fantasy-romance-mystery-THING, about a woman who makes magic pies. And what does she do with them? USES THEM FOR MURDER. Specifically, murdering men who hurt women. Is this the best use of her talents? Eh. Ymmv, but if I could, I might do it too! And I’m in LOVE with the idea of a pie-van…
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy, YA
Representation: Minor African-coded character
Goodreads
When Trei loses his family in a tragic disaster, he must search out distant relatives in a new land. The Floating Islands are unlike anything Trei has ever seen: stunning, majestic, and graced with kajurai, men who soar the skies with wings.
Trei is instantly sky-mad, and desperate to be a kajurai himself. The only one who fully understands his passion is Araene, his newfound cousin. Prickly, sarcastic, and gifted, Araene has a secret of her own . . . a dream a girl cannot attain.
Trei and Araene quickly become conspirators as they pursue their individual paths. But neither suspects that their lives will be deeply entwined, and that the fate of the Floating Islands will lie in their hands.
Filled with rich language, and told in alternating voices, The Floating Islands is an all-encompassing young adult fantasy read.
More food-magic, but different! Actually, quite a unique one: one of the main characters is (secretly!) studying to be a chef…but ends up learning magic instead. What’s especially cool is that, for her, magic is tastes – usually spices! And if I remember correctly (it’s been a while – I should really sit down and reread it!) she uses her chef’s skills to figure out how to make a spell ‘work’ – it needs to taste right, basically!
It’s not as much a focus of the book as I’d ideally like, but it’s in there and it’s VERY fun! (As is everything else about this one, honestly!)
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Nonbinary MC, sapphic autistic MC, secondary Latino character
Goodreads
Mars is a strange place these days. Corporate overlords, capitalism, and even aging are things of the past on a planet increasingly brimming with biodiversity - yet pizzerias are in short supply!
Siblings Hett and San set out to change that. But a roboticist and a bureaucrat can't run a restaurant alone, so they bring on some help - a bioengineer, a communications scientist, and an unlikely grad student from Earth. Together, this gang of geeks will brave the fires of small business.
But work is just a small part of life. People are complicated. Different brains, different wounds, different values, and one questionably tame wildcat will all collide as they try to grow and succeed together. What comes out of the oven, in the end, is anyone's guess.
Slice of Mars is about a lot more than just pizza…but it is, also, very much about pizza! You have a bunch of very different people working together to create a pizza parlour…on Mars…FAR in the future…and all of them are very unfamiliar with pizza. (I think only two of them have even tried it before? XD) They’re practically inventing it – or reinventing it? The sci-fi approach to pizza is fabulous, anyway, with ingredients grown in test-tubes and the parlour advertised by someone who’s profession is NARRATIVES (I officially want narrative science) – and oh, don’t forget the adorable doughbot!
Genres: Fantasy, MG
Representation: Secondary brown character
Goodreads
Aventurine is a brave young dragon ready to explore the world outside of her family's mountain cave . . . if only they'd let her leave it. Her family thinks she's too young to fly on her own, but she's determined to prove them wrong by capturing the most dangerous prey of all: a human.
But when that human tricks her into drinking enchanted hot chocolate, she's transformed into a puny human without any sharp teeth, fire breath, or claws. Still, she's the fiercest creature in these mountains--and now she's found her true passion: chocolate. All she has to do is get to the human city to find herself an apprenticeship (whatever that is) in a chocolate house (which sounds delicious), and she'll be conquering new territory in no time . . . won't she?
I couldn’t leave out Dragon with a Chocolate Heart!!! In which a young, fierce dragon gets turned into a human, and decides her Passion is now chocolate. And WOE BETIDE anyone who gets in her way! This is so heart-warming, and surprisingly deep (surprisingly because before this book, I didn’t realise MG books could be LIKE this!), and I think I cried TWICE reading it (once was happy tears!), and also here, have the US/German/UK covers, because they’re all wonderful and I can’t pick a favourite!
That makes 10! What are some of your fave delicious reads?
My word, you have some amazing-sounding books in this list! Thank you for all the delicious recommendations! Off the top of my head, Sunshine, by Robin McKinley, has a baker for a main character, and her creations are all mouth-wateringly described. All through the Vorkosigan saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold, a recurring character is the cook, Ma Costi, whose pastries are legendary. She has a role in the plot in A Civil Campaign, which is one of my favourite books of the series.
Thank you, and you’re very welcome!
Oh, I’ve read those!!! Sunshine’s cinnamon-rolls-as-big-as-your-head! And Civil Campaign is my favourite of the Vorkosigan saga too! Clearly you have excellent taste in books :D