When sixteen-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways diner, they become involved with the diner owner's political campaign to oust the town's corrupt mayor.

Fred the ghost is perfectly happy haunting his ramshackle New Orleans house until Pierre and his daughter Marie move in and turn the house into a restaurant.

Years of trying unsuccessfully to conceive a child have broken more than Angie DeSaria's heart. Following a painful divorce, she moves back to her small Pacific Northwest hometown and takes over management of her family's restaurant. In West End, where life rises and falls like the tides, Angie's fortunes will drastically change yet again when she meets and befriends a troubled young woman. Angie hires Lauren Ribido because she sees something special...

Twenty-two-year-old Siobhán O'Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother. It's been a rough year for Siobhán, but it's about to get rougher. One morning they discover a man seated at a table with a pair of scissors protruding from his chest. It's up to Siobhán to solve the crime. Siobhán O'Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother, along with her five siblings. It's been a rough year for them, but it's about to get rougher...

A mysterious man enters a restaurant and pays for his dinner with a paper crane that magically comes alive and dances.

With Empire Falls Richard Russo cements his reputation as one of America's most compelling and compassionate storytellers. Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it's Janine, Miles' soon-to-be ex-wife, who's taken...

When Alberto opens his new restaurant, he welcomes only patrons without animals, and he has to continually send people and their pets away, losing business, until he and a young dog owner come up with an idea.

"Taking a holiday by the sea to eat enough fish and chips to support the struggling business of the aptly named Mrs. Chipper, newlyweds Siobhan and Macdara Flannery instead find the proprietor murdered and place their long-delayed honeymoon on hold to catch a slippery killer"--

Tired of always being told she is too little to help in the busy kitchen of her family's Italian restaurant, Sofia is inspired by a storm and a fig tree to come up with a delicious recipe of her own. Includes facts about the foods mentioned in the story.

Story of Bailey's Cafe and the various women who patronize it.