Peggy Lampman will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
Simmer and Smoke is such a fun read. It has been a long time since I read a book and truly enjoyed it. Usually I complain about the author’s lack of knowledge of the subject matter, grammar, pacing, and unlikable characters, at least to myself.
Ms. Lampman creates a likable underdog in Shelby who can cook, but comes from a poor background. In Mallory, she creates a driven woman who leaves her daughter with her mother to enter the culinary world. A great balance of internal and external conflict as the characters work their way through myriad challenges and temptations in the food industry.
The struggles of the two women is reminiscent of The Valley of the Dolls if it happened south of the Mason-Dixon Line and food was involved.
The author must be a wonderful Southern cook by her loving description of food. If she isn’t, then she’s one of the best researchers in town. Simmer and Smoke made me hungry just reading it. Ms. Lampman uses words, dreams, and raw emotions to cook up an amazing tale.
Simmer and Smoke is a wonderful gift for your imagination. It allows you in a matter of hours to live out a dream. It also satisfies an internal yearning for the characters to realize what's important in life. The reader may also have an epiphany in the course of the book too.
Author Lampman had me at bacon.
Ms. Lampman creates a likable underdog in Shelby who can cook, but comes from a poor background. In Mallory, she creates a driven woman who leaves her daughter with her mother to enter the culinary world. A great balance of internal and external conflict as the characters work their way through myriad challenges and temptations in the food industry.
The struggles of the two women is reminiscent of The Valley of the Dolls if it happened south of the Mason-Dixon Line and food was involved.
The author must be a wonderful Southern cook by her loving description of food. If she isn’t, then she’s one of the best researchers in town. Simmer and Smoke made me hungry just reading it. Ms. Lampman uses words, dreams, and raw emotions to cook up an amazing tale.
Simmer and Smoke is a wonderful gift for your imagination. It allows you in a matter of hours to live out a dream. It also satisfies an internal yearning for the characters to realize what's important in life. The reader may also have an epiphany in the course of the book too.
Author Lampman had me at bacon.
GENRE: women's contemporary fiction
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
A single mother who dreams of becoming a chef.
A food writer who just lost the love of her life.
Two women discover what's worth fighting for in this deliciously rendered novel that illuminates the power of food, love, friendship and family on the human heart
1. ASSEMBLE INGREDIENTS:
Shelby Preston--a young, single mother trapped in a hardscrabble life in rural Georgia--escapes her reality as she fantasizes herself a respected chef in a kitchen of gleaming stainless steel and pans shimmering with heat. Mallory Lakes--an Atlanta newspaper food writer--may lose her job, and searches for her muse in a shot glass of illusion.
2. SIMMER:
Mallory secures her job by crafting a zealous doppelgänger to satisfy the expectations of an illusive cyber audience. This also mollifies the memories of her lover who recently bolted; no warning. Shelby persuades her mother to take care of her daughter so she can pursue her dream of going to chef school in Atlanta. She cooks them a special dinner said to bring good luck; Lord knows her family could use a pot of something good.
3. SMOKE:
Chasing desires and ambitions, the women's lives unravel down a path beyond the kitchen, then weave together in an unsettling culinary landscape of organic farms and shadowy borders--some borders not meant to be crossed. As Mallory combats her demons with booze and pills, and Shelby battles the odds stacked against her for becoming a chef, the women discover what's really worth fighting for.
Excerpt Two:
Mallory
Memos from the edge, self-help hieroglyphics, throwaway lines galloping off paper, most of them unfinished. These are the words I should have said to Cooper the day he left, bade farewell, adios, arrivederci—however you say goodbye. Itchy, my dearest friend, is returning a platter and will ignore them, assuming they are recipe scribbles. But if these tourniquets had a voice, their banshee wail would rant, rage and scream, shaking the foundations of Atlanta.
Dearest Cooper. What a splendid feast you made of me. A sprinkle of salt, a grind of pepper, you chewed me up then spit me out. Was I that abhorrent?
Visceral, grisly, teeth-gnashing words; much better script. I write, post, then return to my cutting board. Chopping furiously, I collect, examine, and discard words much too ordinary to assuage my grief. Words...words...I need more words; what words can I write that will ease the pain of what you’ve done?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
A single mother who dreams of becoming a chef.
A food writer who just lost the love of her life.
Two women discover what's worth fighting for in this deliciously rendered novel that illuminates the power of food, love, friendship and family on the human heart
1. ASSEMBLE INGREDIENTS:
Shelby Preston--a young, single mother trapped in a hardscrabble life in rural Georgia--escapes her reality as she fantasizes herself a respected chef in a kitchen of gleaming stainless steel and pans shimmering with heat. Mallory Lakes--an Atlanta newspaper food writer--may lose her job, and searches for her muse in a shot glass of illusion.
2. SIMMER:
Mallory secures her job by crafting a zealous doppelgänger to satisfy the expectations of an illusive cyber audience. This also mollifies the memories of her lover who recently bolted; no warning. Shelby persuades her mother to take care of her daughter so she can pursue her dream of going to chef school in Atlanta. She cooks them a special dinner said to bring good luck; Lord knows her family could use a pot of something good.
3. SMOKE:
Chasing desires and ambitions, the women's lives unravel down a path beyond the kitchen, then weave together in an unsettling culinary landscape of organic farms and shadowy borders--some borders not meant to be crossed. As Mallory combats her demons with booze and pills, and Shelby battles the odds stacked against her for becoming a chef, the women discover what's really worth fighting for.
Excerpt Two:
Mallory
Memos from the edge, self-help hieroglyphics, throwaway lines galloping off paper, most of them unfinished. These are the words I should have said to Cooper the day he left, bade farewell, adios, arrivederci—however you say goodbye. Itchy, my dearest friend, is returning a platter and will ignore them, assuming they are recipe scribbles. But if these tourniquets had a voice, their banshee wail would rant, rage and scream, shaking the foundations of Atlanta.
Dearest Cooper. What a splendid feast you made of me. A sprinkle of salt, a grind of pepper, you chewed me up then spit me out. Was I that abhorrent?
Visceral, grisly, teeth-gnashing words; much better script. I write, post, then return to my cutting board. Chopping furiously, I collect, examine, and discard words much too ordinary to assuage my grief. Words...words...I need more words; what words can I write that will ease the pain of what you’ve done?
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Peggy Lampman was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in communications, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a copywriter and photographer for Hill and Knowlton, a public relations firm. She moved back to Ann Arbor, her college town, and opened up a specialty foods store, The Back Alley Gourmet. After selling the business, she wrote under a weekly food byline in The Ann Arbor News and MLive. This is her first novel.
Amazon Buy Link
http://www.amazon.com/Simmer-Smoke-Southern-Tale-Spice-ebook/dp/B0128KSSLW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1447022165&sr=1-1
Goodreads Link
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25826817-simmer-and-smoke?from_search=true&search_version=service_impr
Author Page
http://dinnerfeed.com/simmer-and-smoke-a-culinary-tale/
Blog
http://dinnerfeed.com
Peggy Lampman was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in communications, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a copywriter and photographer for Hill and Knowlton, a public relations firm. She moved back to Ann Arbor, her college town, and opened up a specialty foods store, The Back Alley Gourmet. After selling the business, she wrote under a weekly food byline in The Ann Arbor News and MLive. This is her first novel.
Amazon Buy Link
http://www.amazon.com/Simmer-Smoke-Southern-Tale-Spice-ebook/dp/B0128KSSLW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1447022165&sr=1-1
Goodreads Link
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25826817-simmer-and-smoke?from_search=true&search_version=service_impr
Author Page
http://dinnerfeed.com/simmer-and-smoke-a-culinary-tale/
Blog
http://dinnerfeed.com
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