Today, there are two new books I want to tell you about. I have a connection to both, but they're very different.

The first one is Kristin Harmel's The Sweetness of Forgetting.

Marie Claire magazine recommends it on its 2012 summer reading list. Here's how they describe it:

“Hope, a divorced mother who runs a bakery on Cape Cod, reconnects with her grandmother, whose onset of Alzheimer's spurs the revelation of a family secret about the Holocaust.”

Kristin is a very popular and prolific writer of women’s fiction. This is her seventh novel and she’s only 33 years old!

I had the privilege of taking a writing workshop taught by Kristin, and I found her to be a wonderful teacher as well as writer.

Watch for The Sweetness of Forgetting, coming out on August 7^th.

My second recommendation is for a coffee table book called Meanwhile Back at Café Du Monde, created and edited by my dear friend, Peggy Sweeney-McDonald.

Peggy had the brilliant idea of producing a show comprised of an evening of food monologues accompanied by actual delicious food. There have been many such evenings in New Orleans, Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and Los Angeles.

Most monologues are written by their performers—chefs, restauranteurs, and other foodies who have an interesting tale to tell. I was fortunate to have two of my monologues performed in several shows by the talented Caroline Fogerty in Los Angeles and Nancy Litton in Louisiana.

The shows were a huge success and prompted what promises to be an equally fabulous book. It’s number one on Amazon’s Hot New Releases: Best Louisiana list and comes out on September 15^th.

I hope you’ll check out both of these books, enjoy them, and tell your friends.