The Chef's Garden is an “indispensable kitchen resource”

Farmer Lee Jones’ stunning, comprehensive guide to the modern world of common and unusual vegetables—written with fellow Straus Literary author Kristin Donnelly—is available now from Avery, highlighting wisdom and recipes from Jones’ renowned family-run specialty vegetable farm in Ohio.

This week, The New York Times published a glowing review of The Chef’s Garden, in which Florence Fabricant recommends making the book’s recipe for “luscious carrot pot roast”—that is, “if you make only one of them.” The book was also cited in how-to cooking guides by The New York Times’ Melissa Clark and Bon Appétit’s Basically, demonstrating the book’s power to be an “indispensable kitchen resource,” as Cleveland.com calls it.

The Chef’s Garden, with a foreword from José Andrés, is now available in bookstores everywhere.

The Lowering Days published to national acclaim

Since its March 2 publication by Harper, Gregory Brown’s novel set in Maine’s lush Penobscot River valley in the 1980s has received praise from the national press. The Boston Globe called it a “graceful and compassionate debut novel,” while the New York Times commended its “deep understanding of the history of anti-Native oppression in the region.” As the Bangor Daily News put it, The Lowering Days “tells a sweeping story with which many Mainers may be familiar — about family dynamics, about what happens to a town once its main employer closes, about environmental degradation and about the complicated relationship between Indigenous people and white settlers.” And, per Minneapolis’ Star Tribune: “Brown writes a fluid, lyrical prose that escorts us deep into the emotional lives of his characters.”

The Lowering Days is available now in the US, with the HarperCollins UK edition set to follow in April and a French edition from Gallmeister scheduled for fall 2022.

Jonah Straus to appear at Muse & the Marketplace writing conference

This year’s Muse & the Marketplace Virtual Enhanced Writing Residency is scheduled to take place online from April 21–25, 2021. During the conference, Jonah Straus will provide feedback to writers through the Manuscript Mart and host a small-group agent info session. Though both of these are now sold out, he will also host a session titled “A Nice Problem to Have: A Guide to Publishers and How to Compare Them” from 2 to 3:15 pm on Saturday, April 24, available to all attendees. Conference registration is open now.

Midnight in Vehicle City earns praise upon publication

The Chicago Review of Books recently gave an excellent review to Edward McClelland’s account of the 1936-1937 General Motors workers’ strike in Flint, Michigan, calling the book a “blueprint for better working conditions, and for a revival of the middle class.” The Christian Science Monitor also featured the book on its list of the ten best books of February 2021, praising its “vivid” recounting of “one of the biggest labor victories in U.S. history.”

Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike that Created the Middle Class is
now available from Beacon Press for purchase online
and in bookstores everywhere.

Emily Meggett's Gullah Cookbook Sold at Auction to Abrams

Emily Meggett has chosen Abrams to publish her cookbook on the history, food, and culture of the Gullah Geechee people of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. Meggett, a Gullah elder and culinary matriarch of South Carolina’s Edisto Island, has helped preserve the traditions, language, and foodways of her community’s West African ancestors. Her cookbook will feature some 150 recipes representing the heart of Low Country cuisine, including stuffed shad with parsley rice, deviled crab, okra soup, broiled quail, hoppin' john, and sour cream cake.

French edition of Cocktail Codex released today

Paris publisher Éditions First has launched the French edition of Death and Co’s Cocktail Codex. Originally published by Ten Speed Press, this comprehensive primer on the craft of mixing drinks won the James Beard Foundation’s Best Book of the Year in 2019 — the first drinks book ever to do so — and claimed the title of Best New Cocktail Book at Tales of the Cocktail. Foreign translation rights have also been sold to publishers in Italy, Russia, and China.

Maneet Chauhan's Chaat published today

Today marks the release of Chaat, Maneet Chauhan’s exploration of one of India’s most iconic and delicious styles of cooking. In this breathtakingly illustrated cookbook, Chauhan weaves in personal stories and remembrances as well as historical and cultural notes from a cross-country culinary journey by train, in which she and co-writer Jody Eddy sought out various types of chaat from local markets and street vendors, as well as in the homes of family and friends.

Having already earned press accolades in the New York Times, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, People, Parade, Travel & Leisure, and the Washington Post, Chaat is now available for purchase online.

Spanish rights sold for John Keene's Counternarratives

Barcelona publisher Pálido Fuego has licensed the right to publish John Keene’s acclaimed Counternarratives in Spanish. Originally published by New Directions, this masterful collection of thirteen stories and novellas spanning five centuries has already been sold into French, Turkish, Greek, and Swedish, with excerpts also translated into German and Japanese.

Maneet Chauhan featured in The New York Times

Today’s New York Times contains a tantalizing preview of chef Maneet Chauhan’s forthcoming book Chaat, co-written with Jody Eddy. The restaurant owner and Food Network personality dished out knowledge about the diverse genre of South Asian snacks in Priya Krishna’s article “Chaat Is More Than the Sum of Its Many Flavors.”

Chaat will be published on October 6 by Clarkson Potter.

Molly Yeh lands two-book, seven-figure deal with William Morrow

Molly Yeh, author of the IACP Award-winning Molly on the Range and star of Girl Meets Farm on the Food Network, will publish her next two books with William Morrow / HarperCollins after signing a seven-figure deal at auction. The first book, Home Is Where the Eggs Are, is slated for publication in fall 2022 and will tell the story of how she made her farm in northern Minnesota her home with her husband and young daughter. It will feature the approachable but inspiring recipes she likes to make for her family now that she’s a working mother, continuing to draw on her Chinese and Jewish heritage, but now more fully embracing the local Scandinavian and Midwestern traditions.