The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

This Seattle author's first novel is a treat! The premise is familiar if not predictable: diverse, likeable characters gather for a weekly cooking class and come away with more than good recipes. Members of the ensemble wend their various ways (via some lip-smacking edibles) from despair to hope, from grief to consolation, from stodginess to passion. What elevates this from a pleasant story to a delectable read is the author's luscious, loving rendering of each act of...cooking! From (killing) crab to white on white cake; from pure olive oil to tiramasu; from red sauce to chocolate; each element and every morsel is described with sensuous celebration. Mouth-watering, heart-warming...what more do you need? Warning: Don't read this without some food or drink within reach.

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers

Set in Nebraska along the Platte River, this award-winning novel is a masterful, lyrical weave of cranes and brains, consciousness and memory, science and love, fame and forgetting. It's the story of Mark, a young man who survives a serious, mysterious accident, but with a brain injury that makes him believe that his sister, Karin, is an imposter. She appeals to a famous neurologist, Gerald Weber, who agrees to consult in order to see the rare syndrome for himself. The author brings to vivid life these three characters and a motley crew of Mark's friends and caretakers. The pages of this book are dense with the marvels of human brain science, the plasticity and tyranny of the mind, and the ways we humans perceive ourselves and each other. One mystery gets solved as a dozen more are revealed. Love it or not, you won't regret reading this book.