"[The Lager Queen of Minnesota has] complex female characters, sudden tragedies, culinary descriptions that awaken all your senses." —Entertainment WeeklyA novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate and the secrets of making a world-class beer, from the bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great MidwestTwo sisters, one farm. A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make what most people would call a living. So she can't help wondering what her life would have been like with even a portion of the farm money her sister kept for herself. With the proceeds from the farm, Helen builds one of the most successful light breweries in the country, and makes their company motto ubiquitous: "Drink lots. It's Blotz." Where Edith has a heart as big as Minnesota, Helen's is as rigid...

From the New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal, a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them    Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she’s been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel’s grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed.    Ned is also an heir—to a chain of home-style diners—and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's...

"[Kitchens of the Great Midwest is] the first novel about the emergence and current state of foodie culture... Fundamentally, [it's] about what happens when opposing personalities coexist: those who bake with real butter versus those who don't, those who obsess over heirloom tomatoes alongside those who don't even know what they are. It uses these categories as a way to look at one of the most confusing, liberating truths there is, which is that often the people we think we're the least like are the ones we end up needing the most." –Book ForumKitchens of the Great Midwest, about a young woman with a once-in-a-generation palate who becomes the iconic chef behind the country's most coveted dinner reservation, is the summer's most hotly-anticipated debut. When Lars Thorvald's wife, Cynthia, falls in love with wine—and a dashing sommelier—he's left to raise their baby, Eva, on his own. He's determined to pass on his...

"A large portion of this money, we of course have now learned, was put toward the scientific enterprise of discovering a new planet in the solar system and then, no other way to describe it, blowing it up."A fun and poignant collection of real reviews of fake movies by some of today's best and brightest writers.What seems like a funny, whimsical book, is actually an acute look at how cultural criticism works, what we find important or unimportant, and how movies help shape our world.Featuring writers like, Kevin Wilson (author of The Family Fang), Antoine Wilson (author of Panorama City), Comedian Sofiya Alexandra, and many, many, more.