FROM SCRATCH

A down-home, feel-good Southern contemporary romance, FROM SCRATCH is the perfect beach read!

Thirty-year-old Lillie Turner grew up with maple syrup stuck to her skin and bacon grease on her clothes courtesy of working in the family diner. Thank goodness she escaped all that when she moved to Chicago five years ago. Now a successful strategy consultant and newly engaged to a man who complements her like biscuits and gravy, she has everything she wants.

When an urgent phone call about her father's health pulls Lillie back to Dallas, she soon learns it was a ruse to bring her home so she can compete in the Upper Crust, an annual baking competition, with no option to withdraw. Lillie's furious and ready to run back to Chicago, but her father’s haggard appearance makes her wonder if he’s hiding something. Things go from bad to worse when Nick, her handsome ex and the only man she every truly loved, reappears, looking as scrumptious as ever.

Lillie's trip home forces her to question the path she's chosen, her place in the family she abandoned, and whether if the life she left behind is what she really wants after all.

FIRST IN A SERIES: Both books are set in Texas and center around good friends, great food, and once-in-a-lifetime love.

Rachel Goodman was raised in Colorado on her mother’s award-worthy cooking and Roald Dahl. Now an engineering professor at her alma mater, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, she has not lost her passion for culinary discovery or a well-told story. A member of RWA, she continues to hone her craft through the Writer’s Path at SMU while seeking to create the perfect macaroni and cheese recipe.