Skip to content
Responsive image
Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Weblink
catalog.simonandschuster.com/Tit …

THE CHEF'S SECRET

Crystal King

From the author of FEAST OF SORROW, a captivating and suspenseful historical novel about the real-life chef and cookbook author Bartolomeo Scappi, and the fictional nephew who sets out to discover his late uncle's secrets--and the noblewoman Bartolomeo loved until he died.
When Bartolomeo Scappi, chef to four popes, dies, he leaves his vast estatenumerous previously unknown properties, a large sum of money, and his positionto his nephew and apprentice Giovanni on the condition that he take the Scappi name. He also asks Giovanni to burn his journals, most of which are written in cipher. Instead, Giovanni reads them and learns that he is the product of a passionate love affair between Bartolomeo and a noblewoman his father called "Stella." No one, including Giovanni's adoptive mother Caterina, knows her true identity.

As Giovanni pieces together the sordid details of Scappi's past, he must contend with two rivals who have joined forces--his brother Cesare, who has always suspected that Giovanni was not his true brother, and Scappi's former protégé, Domenico Romoli, who will do anything to get his hands on the late chef's recipes. A new threat emerges when Gionvanni learns that his love interest, Isabetta, is the daughter of the mid-wife who birthed him and that Scappi killed Isabetta's mother to protect his secretand Isabetta's family wants revenge.

So Giovanni and his best friend Valentino, scion of a powerful and wealthy noble family, head off to Venice, where his parents met, in hopes of uncovering his mother's true identity.

Crystal King is a social media marketing and communications veteran, freelance writer, and Pushcart-nominated poet. She has taught classes in writing, creativity, and social media at Harvard Extension School, Boston University, Mass College of Art and Design, UMass Boston, and GrubStreet, one of the leading creative writing centers in the United States. A former co-editor of the online literary arts journal Plum Ruby Review, Crystal received her MA in critical and creative thinking from UMass Boston, where she developed a series of exercises and writing prompts to help fiction writers in medias res. She considers Italy her next great love after her husband, Joe, and their two cats, Nero and Merlin.
Available products
Book

Published 2019-02-12 by Touchstone

Book

Published 2019-02-12 by Touchstone

Comments

King (Feast of Sorrow, 2017) once again atmospherically captures the spirit of Italy. ...With adventure, engaging characters, and an absorbing mystery, King expertly blends fact with fiction, intrigue, and a powerful love story. Well written and perfectly paced...a fascinating immersion into sixteenth-century Italian life, an introduction to the world's first celebrity chef, and a reminder of the power of food to influence a civilization.

A veritable feast for the senses, The Chef's Secret is part mystery, part love story, and all sumptuous sixteenth century Italy. This tale of one of the world's first celebrity chefs - Bartolomeo Scappi, a DaVinci of Renaissance cuisine - sent me on a quest to know more, and to my kitchen to experiment - a sign of a great historical novel. Readers will delight in a plot as juicy as Scappi's braised beef!

Italy: Piemme

In The Chef's Secret, Crystal King serves up a delectable read stuffed with passion, danger, and a plot worthy of Dan Brown. This fast-paced, engrossing novel brings Renaissance Rome and the Vatican to life through the eyes of a famous papal chef. You won't be able to put it down.

The Chef's Secret is a sumptuous buffet, serving up a love story (two of them!); mystery and suspense so thick you could cut it with, well, a chef's knife; and such a vibrant panorama of Ancient Rome you'll feel you've walked its streets and inhabited its kitchens. Anyone who loves history, food, a great story - read this novel! Warning: it will make you hungry.