Reading is the New Cooking?

Downright chilly temps and swifter nightfall find Cafe Drake HRV under the covers earlier and earlier, and despite rumors, of course we don't read cookbooks in bed. Fiction, essays, biography and journals inspire our kitchen ventures the following days in ways mysterious and sometimes, obvious. Below are books that re-charged our batteries in the last few weeks and pretty sure they'd do the same for you.

There have actually been trashier biographies spilling plenty more Tinseltown dirt but this one is special because her life story spills out directly from Ava's lips. Drunken, late-night ramblings peppered with the jazzy slang of Hollywood's heyday reveal a damaged soul coping with Life's disappointments and triumphs.

Physical and spiritual pain are recurrent themes in the first collection of Caitlin Kiernan's dark fantasy stories, Two Worlds and In Between, but the real horror lies in the characters we identify with most - those struggling on society's periphery for acceptance. Keiernan's genius lies in the panoply of metaphors she invents to convey deep emotional dislocation.

Downright chilling new life is blown into the Cosmic Horror mythos of ancient and evil deities lurking just beyond our consciousness. Barron's refined prose separates his fiction from 95% of other horror scribes around today.

Color Cafe Drake HRV blue and very sad when we run out of Brookner novels to discover.