Memoirs: Chefs & Cooks

"Kitchen Confidential" reveals what Bourdain calls "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine." Last summer,The New Yorker published Chef Bourdain's shocking, "Don't Eat Before Reading This." Bourdain spared no one's appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike.

"Blood, Bones & Butter" follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; the soulless catering factories that helped pay the rent; Hamilton's own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton's idyllic past and her own future family--the result of a difficult and prickly marriage that nonetheless yields rich and lasting dividends.

In these pages, M. F. K. Fisher's letters are made public for the first time. Selected and compiled by her younger sister, her longtime secretary, and a close family friend, these highly personal pieces reveal some of Fisher's most private moments over six decades, giving ample display to her sharp wit and affectionate humor, her ongoing reflections on loss and the power to change.

In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child's years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found her true calling.

For better or worse, almost all of us grow up at the table. It is in this setting that Ruth Reichl's brilliantly written memoir takes its form. For, at a very early age, Reichl discovered that "food could be a way of making sense of the world . . . if you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were." "Tender at the Bone" is the story of a life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by unforgettable people, the love of tales well told, and a passion for food.

In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes the frenetic experience of working in Babbo's kitchen: the trials and errors (and more errors), humiliations and hopes, disappointments and triumphs as he worked his way up the ladder from slave to cook. He talks about his relationships with his kitchen colleagues and with the larger-than-life, hard-living Mario Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters.