Pepper’s Bookshelf – Between a Wok and a Dead Place

(With the Lunar New Year approaching, I went to the blog in search of this post to share it again and discovered I’d never posted it! But if you enjoy a bit of seasonal reading, then the timing is just right!)

Spice Shop readers tell me they love spotting names of books and authors they recognize and potential new reads on Pepper’s bookshelves, both in her loft and in the shop. And Pepper and Kristen, who handles most of the Spice Shop’s book buying, love creating seasonal book displays.

For the Lunar New Year, they’ve set out several foodie cozies with an Asian theme: Vivian Chien’s noodle shop mysteries, Jennifer Chow’s LA Night Market series, and Mia Manamsala’s Tita Rosie’s Kitchen mysteries, set in a family-run Filipino restaurant. I have read and enjoyed them all. And I’ll confess that I’m the customer who told them about The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones, a fascinating novel about an American food reporter who meets a Chinese-American chef in China, a man determined to keep alive an intricate, formal style of Chinese cooking far beyond what most of us can imagine.

Pepper forges a working relationship with the owner of the new cheese shop in the Market, Say Cheese!, and seals it by giving her copies of For Cheddar or Worse by Avery Aames and Cheddar Off Dead by Korina Moss, both mysteries set in cheese shops. Food puns rule.

The staff steered customers planning a trip to France to cookbooks by two American food writers who focus on French food, David Liebovitz and Dorie Greenspan, along with a shop favorite, The French Country Table: Simple recipes for bistro classics, by Laura Washburn. Not coincidentally, all are favorites in our home.

Between a Wok and a Dead Place -- book cover, showing shop interior decorated for the Lunar New Year, and an Airedale terrier
Book cover for Between a Wok and a Dead Place

The book Lena insists Pepper read is The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, set in Seattle’s Chinatown during World War II and the present day.

I discovered some terrific resources in my research, mentioned in the acknowledgments: Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels, by Marie Rose Wong, Ph.D., an account not just of the CID’s residential hotels but of the economic, political, and social forces that shaped it.

Two books provided helpful personal accounts, photographs, and historical research: Divided Destiny: A History of Japanese Americans in Seattle by David Takami, and Reflections of Seattle’s Chinese Americans: The First 100 Years by Ron Chew and Cassie Chin.

I was totally absorbed by the memoir Long Way Home: Journeys of a Chinese Montanan by Flora Wong and Tom Decker. The experience of American-born Flora, whose daughter is a friend of ours, in returning to China as a small child in the 1930s, enduring tremendous hardship on a small family farm, then returning to the US in the late 1940s through an arranged marriage pulled together all I had read, and helped me understand more about the hardships of life in China and the tug that many immigrants felt, even after making the difficult decision to leave.

Another interesting reference, though one I barely dipped into, is Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, Tamara Venit-Shelton, Ph.D. And while not part of my research, some readers may be intrigued by The Middle Kingdom Under the Big Sky: A History of the Chinese Experience in Montana by Mark T. Johnson. Both Professor Venit-Shelton and Professor Johnson speak widely about their research, and videos of their talks are available on YouTube and elsewhere on the Internet.

Finally, I always learn something interesting from Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City by David B. Williams.

The murder is fiction. The food is fact.

Countdown to the Lunar New Year!

Between a Wok and a Dead Place -- book cover, showing shop interior decorated for the Lunar New Year, and an Airedale terrier
Book cover for Between a Wok and a Dead Place

The Year of the Dragon! So fiery after the sweet and mild year of the Rabbit. (HA! Have you been paying attention to the world? The dragon it is!) The Lunar New Year arrives on Sat, Feb 10, so I’m celebrating with a countdown. After all, my latest Spice Shop mystery, Between a Wok and a Dead Place, is set at the Lunar New Year. For the next 10 days, I’ll be sharing snippets of the story and its origins, recipes, other books of the season, and more. And there will be giveaways — signed paperbacks and audio codes.

Ceremonial gate above street in Seattle's Chinatown International District
Ceremonial gate, Seattle’s Chinatown International District (author photo)

Here’s how it all started. A few years ago, Mr. Right and I visited Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum, chronicling the history of the Asian community in the Pacific Northwest, and toured the Kong Yick Hotel, a community center and residential hotel dating back to the 1880s. Naturally I started to wonder: What if a body was found in the basement of an old hotel? What other secrets might linger in a building where so many people had lived and worked—and died? So I created the Gold Rush Hotel on what was, when I last saw it, a vacant lot in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. 

The research was a book nerd’s dream. I pored over oral histories from early residents of the CID, as it’s called, along with maps and photos, and an intriguing account of the residential hotels, which were vital to the region’s culture and economy. 

When I read a historian’s account of traveling with her father as a child in the early 1970s delivering fruits and vegetables, and his visits to the old Chinese hotels and restaurants, I felt one of those satisfying clicks writers live for. Community is key to immigrants, but especially to those who have faced extreme prejudice and legal exclusion. That, I realized, was why Francis Wu, my fictional hotelier, held on to the Gold Rush long after it closed. Why he was so determined that it stay in the family, despite his son’s indifference. 

And why he did not destroy the apothecary in the basement, despite what it had cost him. 

Join me over the next week and a half to celebrate the Lunar New Year as only book — and food — lovers can!

(If you’re seeing this on my blog, please chime in on Facebook or Instagram for a fun conversation and a chance to win WOK.)

Pepper’s Bookshelf – Between a Wok and a Dead Place

Between a Wok and a Dead Place -- book cover, showing shop interior decorated for the Lunar New Year, and an Airedale terrier
Book cover for Between a Wok and a Dead Place

Spice Shop readers tell me they love spotting names of books and authors they recognize and finding potential new reads on Pepper’s bookshelves, both in her loft and in the shop. Pepper and Kristen, who handles most of the Spice Shop’s book buying, love creating seasonal book displays.

For the Lunar New Year, they’ve set out several foodie cozies with an Asian theme: Vivian Chien’s noodle shop mysteries, Jennifer Chow’s LA Night Market series, and Mia Manamsala’s Tita Rosie’s Kitchen mysteries, set in a family-run Filipino restaurant. I have read and enjoyed them all. I’ll confess that I’m the customer who told them about The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones, a fascinating novel about an American food reporter who meets a Chinese-American chef in China, a man determined to keep alive an intricate, formal style of Chinese cooking far beyond what most of us can imagine.

Pepper forges a working relationship with the owner of the new cheese shop in the Market, Say Cheese!, and seals it by giving her copies of For Cheddar or Worse by Avery Aames and Cheddar Off Dead by Korina Moss, both mysteries set in cheese shops. Food puns rule.

The staff steered customers planning a trip to France to cookbooks by two American food writers who focus on French food, David Liebovitz and Dorie Greenspan, along with a shop favorite, The French Country Table: Simple recipes for bistro classics, by Laura Washburn. Not coincidentally, all are favorites in our home.

The book Lena insists Pepper read is The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, set in Seattle’s Chinatown during World War II and the present day.

I discovered some terrific resources in my research, mentioned in the acknowledgments: Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels, by Marie Rose Wong, Ph.D., an account not just of the CID’s residential hotels but of the economic, political, and social forces that shaped it. Two books provided helpful personal accounts, photographs, and historical research: Divided Destiny: A History of Japanese Americans in Seattle by David Takami, and Reflections of Seattle’s Chinese Americans: The First 100 Years by Ron Chew and Cassie Chin.

I was totally absorbed by the memoir Long Way Home: Journeys of a Chinese Montanan by Flora Wong and Tom Decker. The experience of American-born Flora, whose daughter is a friend of ours, in returning to China as a small child in the 1930s, enduring tremendous hardship on a small family farm, then returning to the US in the late 1940s through an arranged marriage was heart-wrenching, and helped me understand more about the hardships of life in China and the tug that many immigrants felt, even after making the difficult decision to leave.

Another interesting reference, though one I barely dipped into, is Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, Tamara Venit-Shelton, Ph.D. And while not part of my research, some readers may be intrigued by The Middle Kingdom Under the Big Sky: A History of the Chinese Experience in Montana by Mark T. Johnson. Both Professor Venit-Shelton and Professor Johnson speak widely about their research, and videos of their talks are available on YouTube and elsewhere on the Internet.

Finally, I always learn something interesting from Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City by David B. Williams.

Check out Pepper’s Bookshelf from Peppermint Barked. Here’s what Pepper was reading in The Solace of Bay Leaves and Chai Another Day, along with Parts One and Two of Pepper’s Bookshelf, dishing on her discoveries in the first three books of the series, Assault and Pepper, Guilty as Cinnamon, and Killing Thyme.

I’ve just finished Book Eight as I write this, and I can tell you, the reading fun continues!

Between a Wok and a Dead Place is out today!

It’s the Lunar New Year, and fortunes are about to change.

Between a Wok and a Dead Place -- book cover, showing shop interior decorated for the Lunar New Year, and an Airedale terrier
Book cover for Between a Wok and a Dead Place

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. So what could be more fun than a food walk in the city’s Chinatown–International District, celebrating the Year of the Rabbit?

But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man’s body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out. Who was he? What was he doing in the dust-encrusted herbal pharmacy in the hotel’s basement? Why was the pharmacy closed up—and why are the owners so reluctant to talk?

With each new discovery, Pepper find herself asking new questions and facing more brick walls.

Then questions arise about Roxanne and her relationship to Pepper’s boyfriend Nate, away fishing in Alaska. Between her worries and her struggle to hire staff at the Spice Shop, Pepper has her hands and her heart full. Still, she can’t resist the lure of the Gold Rush and its tangled history of secrets and lies stretching back nearly a century.

But the killer is on her tail, driven by hidden demons and desires. As Pepper begins to expose the long-concealed truth, a bigger question emerges: Can she uncover the secrets of the Gold Rush Hotel without being pushed from the wok into the fire?

Out today in paperback, ebook, and audio. Links here.

Sending a new book into the world is always exciting — and a little scary!

I’m sure you understand. We work for something, look forward to it, and then all of a sudden — after what seems like ages — it’s here!

Between a Wok and a Dead Place is the 7th Spice Shop mystery. I love giving readers a tour of Pike Place Market, a place I fell hard for on my first visit as a college freshman. But I love taking readers to other parts of Seattle, too. The Chinatown-International District has a long history, and its residential hotels — some dating back to the 1880s — played a vital role in the city’s economic and cultural development. When Mr. Right and I toured one several years ago, I was struck by their rich history. What secrets did they hold? I could only imagine . . .

And so I spent months imagining. Reading. Poring over pictures and maps and more. All so I could bring my fictional Gold Rush Hotel to life, for me and you.
I hope you enjoy another visit to Seattle with me.

And if you would, friends, please spread the word, in person, on social media, any way you can. Publicity, interviews, events are very effective, but nothing is more powerful than passionate word-of-mouth.

LB Author

My thanks, always,

Leslie

If you’re in Western Montana, here’s where I’ll be the rest of the summer. Let’s get together!

Spotlight Sunday — Between a Wok and a Dead Place

Between a Wok and a Dead Place -- book cover, showing shop interior decorated for the Lunar New Year, and an Airedale terrier
Book cover for Between a Wok and a Dead Place

With the next Spice Shop mystery coming out in just a few weeks, it’s my turn to step into the spotlight at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, where twelve cozy authors cook up recipes — and crime. I’m telling a little of my own writing journey, and the inspiration and research for Between a Wok and a Dead Place. I hope you’ll hop over to the post and take a peek — and leave a comment for a chance to win a book and a Spice Shop prize package!

More about Between a Wok and a Dead Place, including where to find it in paperback, ebook, and audio, plus an excerpt and early praise, on my website

Spicing it up with a short story!

We all love a party, right? Join me for a party taking place over the next few weeks on my FB Author page, with fun posts, spice trivia, prizes — and you, I hope! It’s all in celebration of the upcoming launch of Between a Wok and a Dead Place, the 7th Spice Shop mystery. Each week until mid July, I’ll be talking about the origins of one book in the series, starting this week with my contribution to the newly-launched Murder at Sea: A Destination Murders anthology. In “Seafood Rub,” Pepper and Nate take a long weekend getaway, only to find that trouble boarded the same ferry, and that killer whales are not the only mammals who circle their prey.

Although I’ve written seven Spice Shop mysteries, this is Pepper’s first appearance in a short story. I enjoyed writing short — about 12K, compared to the novels at 75-80K — for several reasons. It’s always risky to take a series character with a strong tie to a particular place away from it, without losing part of what readers love. In a short story, I could take Pepper away from her shop, Pike Place Market, and Seattle, making references to it, but because of the compressed time and word count, readers know we’ll be back. I had an idea I wanted to explore — the not-uncommon experience of seeing a stranger repeatedly while traveling and wondering if there’s a reason — that I didn’t think would support a full novel. Only one recurring character, Pepper’s boyfriend Nate, is along for the weekend, so I was able to focus on a new cast — a tour group visiting the same island and making some of the same excursions as Pepper and Nate — without having to work in the usual cast of recurring characters.

I’m one of eight contributors, and of course, we’re all hoping that readers who pick up the book because they know and enjoy one author’s work will discover new-to-them authors and pick up our books.

Earlier Destination Murders volumes are Murder at the Beach (I’m not in it) and Murder in the Mountains, which includes my story “The Picture of Guilt,” featuring characters from my Food Lovers’ Village mysteries.

I hope you’ll take a little vacation on the page — and join me on Facebook as we celebrate the Spice Shop mysteries!

Ebook and Audio Deals! News from Author Leslie Budewitz

Cover of The Solace of Bay Leaves audio book, showing an Airedale Terrier, sunflowers, and a wall of spice jars

All this month, BITTERROOT LAKE is a $1.99 Kindle Deal! Talk about sweet, right? BITTERROOT LAKE is my first standalone suspense novel, written as Alicia Beckman. When a young widow returns to her family’s lakeside Montana lodge in search of solace, murder forces her to reconnect with estranged friends and confront everything she thought she knew about the tragic accident twenty-five years ago that tore them apart.  

But wait, there’s more!

The Solace of Bay Leaves is half price at Audiobooks.com, through February 24!

Pepper Reece never expected to find her life’s passion in running the Seattle Spice Shop. In The Solace of Bay Leaves, 5th in the Spice Shop series, evidence links a friend’s shooting to an unsolved murder, and her own regrets surface. Can she uncover the truth and protect those she loves, before the deadly danger boils over?

The audio, narrated by the fabulous Dara Rosenberg, is 50% off at Audiobooks.com, an independent audio bookseller, through Feb. 24.  

PEPPERMINT BARKED audio out today!

I love a good audio book, and I know many of you have been waiting eagerly for the audio of Peppermint Barked, narrated once again by the fabulous Dara Rosenberg. The cover is a little different from the paperback and ebook cover, and just as much fun!

By the way, if you’re a library user and you don’t see Peppermint Barked in your library catalog, please submit a request. Library staff LOVE to know what their patrons want to read—or hear!

Find it here (these links may take you to a different format, but will lead you to the audio — I’m typing with an injured wrist and giving myself a break.)

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Bookshop.org
Indie Bound
And your local booksellers!


Pepper’s Bookshelf — Peppermint Barked

Like me, Pepper Reece believes that every retail shop is a little sweeter — and a little more successful — when it includes books, whether it’s books on wine and wine country travel in a wine shop, regional art in a gallery, or local ghost stories in a coffee shop! In the Spice Shop, Pepper’s haven in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, you’ll find shelves and shelves of cookbooks, especially those that focus on spice or cooking for whatever holiday she’s celebrating! You’ll also find a healthy dose of foodie fiction, combining two of her favorite things — yours and mine, too!

In Peppermint Barked, Pepper sends a customer with a daughter just learning to cook home with Mark Bittman’s classic How to Cook Everything and Ian Hemphill’s go-to compendium, The Spice and Herb Bible. The customer adds a copy of Dorie Greenspan’s Dorie’s Cookies to the stack for a friend, then treats herself with David Lebovitz’s Drinking French. Not coincidentally, three of those four are go-to books in our house. And while we don’t have a copy of Dorie’s Cookies yet, I do love her classic Around My French Table, not least because it includes a recipe for a fabulous pepper steak from Bistro Paul Bert, a restaurant we discovered on our first trip to Paris in 2009 and revisited in January 2020. It also includes the marvelously simple recipe for chocolate mousse from the back of the Nestle’s chocolate bar sold in France, which we make often. (My girl Erin Murphy, from the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries, adds a Montana flavor to it with huckleberry syrup. Here’s the recipe for her Huckleberry Chocolate Mousse.)

Of course, Pepper loves a good mystery, too, especially one with a foodie theme. In Peppermint Barked, she’s enjoying the delicious combination of crime, retail, and food served up by Cleo Coyle, Ellen Byron who also writes as Maria DiRico, and Maddie Day aka Edith M. Maxwell.

Arf (cropped)

And as always, she calls on her spirit guide, the medieval monk and herbalist Brother Cadfael, from the oh so good series by Ellis Peters that she discovered in a box books and videos her parents left in her storage locker before heading off to Costa Rica.

Here’s what Pepper was reading in The Solace of Bay Leaves and Chai Another Day, along with Parts One and Two of Pepper’s Bookshelf, dishing on her discoveries in the first three books of the series, Assault and Pepper, Guilty as Cinnamon, and Killing Thyme.

I’m deep into Book Seven as I write this, and I can tell you, she’ll have some great fiction to recommend as well as some intriguing nonfiction diving into Seattle history.

The Saturday Creativity Quote — celebrating success and “failure”

Most of you read this blog for creativity sparks and writing advice, but once or twice a year, I let you know what’s new for me. Next Tuesday, July 19, my sixth Spice Shop Mystery, Peppermint Barked, launches! I‘m celebrating on my Facebook Author page with a Christmas in July party and presents. (“Beat the heat — pretend it’s December!”) If you’re in Western Montana, come join me for a book talk and signing at Bigfork Art and Cultural Center, in the Village, Sat, July 23, 12:30 – 2:00, followed by a signing at Roma’s Gourmet Kitchen Shop.

Just a pinch of murder . . . When her life fell apart at age 40, Pepper Reece never expected to find solace in bay leaves. But her impulsive purchase of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s famed Pike Place Market turned out to be one of the best decisions she ever made. Between selling spice and juggling her personal life, she also discovers another unexpected talent – for solving murder.

A Dickens of a Christmas turns deadly . . . In Peppermint Barked, the 6th Spice Shop mystery, Pepper investigates when a young woman working the Christmas rush in her friend Vinny’s wine shop is brutally attacked, on the busiest shopping day of the year.

So here’s the promised quote: “It’s easy to celebrate the publications, the performances, the exhibitions, compositions, recognitions and awards. All of the achievements that form into important lines on a professional resume…
“But what is also to be acknowledged are all the attempts that never find their way to this self-proclaimed piece of paper we’ve come to value as our calling card of worth to the world: countless hours spent in pursuit of your vision, researching, writing, creating a practice that creates myelin and muscle memory; time spent pushing away doubt and feelings of ineptitude; all the added up minutes spent pondering that gap between where you are and where you wish to be, who you are and who you know you can be… wanting to know in some unassailable way that your art makes a difference, that you matter.
“There are many tender moments in life that get tucked away into corners, shoved into closets and into boxes because they feel like failures. Yet I would suggest there is no such thing as a failure because these difficult moments have a rugged beauty and place in our lives. They provide contrast that leads us to a deeper understanding of ourselves, of our art, of the world we live in. They shape us as surely as each achievement.”

~ fia j. skye, Flying Edna newsletter, 3/31/22

Celebrate it all!

(P.S. Writing Wednesday is taking the summer off, because of my deadlines. It will return this fall.)