The Blue-Ribbon Jalapeño Society Jubilee
by Carolyn Brown
Sourcebooks Landmark, March 2013
Paperback, 336 pp.
Genre: Contemporary/ Women's Fiction
Bestelling author Carolyn Brown makes her first foray into women's fiction with this poignant and hilarious novel about four friends in Cadillac, Texas—where the best jalapenos in the world are grown.
Everything is calm in Cadillac, Texas until Aunt Agnes declares war on Violet Prescott, the president of the Blue-Ribbon Jalapeno Society, just in time for the annual jubilee. But after the festivities—and the hostilities—are over, it's four friends who are left standing, proving once again that friendship is forever.
Miss Clawdy's Café has won the Jubilee blue ribbon every year since the dawn of time. This year, town matron Violet Prescott is going after that ribbon with an iron-clad determination only thinly disguised by her perfect coiffure and flawless manners, bless her heart.
It's time for café owners Cathy and Marty and their best friend Trixie to pull out their secret weapon. And this is where a lifetime of friendship, combined with just the right recipe at just the right time, might carry the day—or blow everything to smithereens.
Welcome to Cadillac, Texas, where the jalapeños are hot, the gossip is hotter, and at the end of the day, it's the priceless friendships that are left standing...
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| Pretty sure this isn't Phil. |
Click here to get your copy.“Jewish stories,” writes Adam Biro, “resemble every people’s stories.” Yet at the same time there is no better way to understand the soul, history, millennial suffering, or, crucially, the joys of the Jewish people than through such tales—“There’s nothing,” writes Biro, “more revelatory of the Jewish being.”
With Is It Good for the Jews? Biro offers a sequel to his acclaimed collection of stories Two Jews on a Train. Through twenty-nine tales—some new, some old, but all finely wrought and rich in humor—Biro spins stories of characters coping with the vicissitudes and reverses of daily life, while simultaneously painting a poignant portrait of a world of unassimilated Jewish life that has largely been lost to the years. From rabbis competing to see who is the most humble, to the father who uses suicide threats to pressure his children into visiting, to three men berated by the Almighty himself for playing poker, Biro populates his stories with memorable characters and absurd—yet familiar—situations, all related with a dry wit and spry prose style redolent of the long tradition of Jewish storytelling.
A collection simultaneously of foibles and fables, adversity and affection, Is It Good for the Jews? reminds us that if in the beginning was the word, then we can surely be forgiven for expecting a punch line to follow one of these days.
by Sloane Crosley. It's a collection of essays that are too DARN funny! It's a great summer read that doesn't involve an ounce of thinking. I'm all for not one iota of activity, even if it is just thinking. It's so dang hot. It feels like the sun has suddenly moved to within a mile of my yard. I had to change my shirt due to the unsightly armpit wetness that seeped its way down to almost my waist. Slight exaggeration. But still gross. It was a cute shirt too. Oh. Focus Angela. The book. Here's the description from the back: Happy reading and try to stay cool,From accidentally despoiling an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History to siccing the cops on the wrong neighbor, Sloane Crosley can do no right, despite the best of intentions - or perhaps because of them. In a sharp, original storytelling style that confounds expectations at every turn, Crosley recounts her victories and catastrophes with an irresistible voice that is all her own, finding genuine insights in the most unpredictable places.
