Editorial Content for Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes
Teaser
SLOW NOODLES is a haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen.
Promo
SLOW NOODLES is a haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen.
About the Book
A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen.
RECIPE: HOW TO CHANGE CLOTH INTO DIAMOND
Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and 1 wholesale extermination. Subtract a reliable source of food, life savings, and family members, until all are gone. Shave down childhood dreams for approximately two decades, until only subsistence remains.
In SLOW NOODLES, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodian refugee who loses everything and everyone --- her home, her family, her country --- all but the remembered tastes and aromas of her mother’s kitchen. She summons the quiet rhythms of 1960s Battambang, her provincial hometown, before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart and killed more than a million Cambodians, many of them ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family. Then, as an immigrant in Saigon, Nguon loses her mother, brothers and sister and eventually flees to a refugee camp in Thailand. For two decades in exile, she survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture nurse and weaving silk.
Nguon’s irrepressible spirit and determination come through in this lyrical memoir that includes more than 20 family recipes, such as sour chicken-lime soup, green papaya pickles and pâté de foie, as well as Khmer curries, stir-fries and handmade bánh canh noodles. Through it all, recreating the dishes from her childhood becomes an act of resistance, of reclaiming her place in the world, of upholding the values the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy, and of honoring the memory of her beloved mother, whose “slow noodles” approach to healing and cooking prioritized time and care over expediency.
SLOW NOODLES is an inspiring testament to the power of food to keep alive a refugee’s connection to her past and spark hope for a beautiful life.
Editorial Content for The Summer Book Club
Book
Teaser
This summer, three friends find the courage to step into the next chapter of their lives in Susan Mallery's heartwarming novel, THE SUMMER BOOK CLUB.
Promo
This summer, three friends find the courage to step into the next chapter of their lives in Susan Mallery's heartwarming novel, THE SUMMER BOOK CLUB.
About the Book
The rules of summer book club are simple:
- No sad books
- No pressure
- Yessssss, wine!
Besties Laurel and Paris are excited to welcome Cassie to the group. This year, the book club is all about fill-your-heart reads, an escape from the chaos of the everyday --- running a business, raising a family, juggling a hundred to-dos. Even the dog is demanding (but the bestest boy).
Since Laurel’s divorce, she feels like the Worst Mom Ever. Her skepticism of men may have scarred her vulnerable daughters. Cassie has an unfortunate habit of falling for ridiculous man-boys who dump her once she fixes them. Paris knows good men exist. She’s still reeling after chasing off the only one brave enough --- and foolish enough --- to marry her.
Inspired by the heroines who risk everything for fulfillment, Laurel, Paris and Cassie begin to take chances --- big chances --- in life, in love. Facing an unwritten chapter can be terrifying. But it can be exhilarating, too, if only they can find the courage to change.
Editorial Content for Wandering Stars
Book
Teaser
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in THERE THERE --- warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts --- asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre.
Promo
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in THERE THERE --- warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts --- asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre.
About the Book
The Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of the breakout bestseller THERE THERE delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in THERE THERE --- warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts --- asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. WANDERING STARS is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.
Editorial Content for The Women
Book
Teaser
From the celebrated author of THE NIGHTINGALE and THE FOUR WINDS comes Kristin Hannah's THE WOMEN --- at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.
Promo
From the celebrated author of THE NIGHTINGALE and THE FOUR WINDS comes Kristin Hannah's THE WOMEN --- at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.
About the Book
From the celebrated author of THE NIGHTINGALE and THE FOUR WINDS comes Kristin Hannah's THE WOMEN --- at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.
Women can be heroes. When 20-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets --- and becomes one of --- the lucky, the brave, the broken and the lost.
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.
THE WOMEN is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, THE WOMEN is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.
Spring Preview Evening Program Signup
Shelby Van Pelt Book Group Event
February 29, 2024
I love to see how clever people are with the refreshments that are served at book groups. For our last meeting, where we discussed THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters, Julia, who feels like our book group’s honorary baker, made a berry torte, which was terrific. I brought out blue and white striped plates to go with it. For humor, we often use plates that are left over from the birthday party of someone’s child in the group. They always make me smile and remember the themed parties that I did with my boys.