'A richly researched food history, gentle memoir and left-field recipe book.' i newspaper 'A dazzling, thorny new essay collection.' Samin Nosrat, New York Times 'A beautiful, fascinating read full of surprises - a real pleasure.' Claudia Roden 'Inventive and charming . . . profound and deeply felt.' Buzzfeed Inspired by twenty-six fruits, essayist, poet and pie lady Kate Lebo expertly blends the culinary, medical and personal. A is for Aronia, berry member of the apple family, clothes-stainer, superfruit with reputed healing power. D is for Durian, endowed with a dramatic rind and a shifty odour - peaches, old garlic. M is for Medlar, name-checked by Shakespeare for its crude shape, beloved by gardeners for its flowers. Q is for Quince, which, fresh, gives off the scent of 'roses and citrus and rich women's perfume' but if eaten raw is so astringent it wicks the juice from one's mouth. In this work of unique invention, these and other difficult fruits serve as the central ingredients of twenty-six lyrical essays (and recipes!) that range from deeply personal to botanical, from culinary to medical, from humorous to philosophical. The entries are associative, often poetic, taking unexpected turns and giving sideways insights into life, relationships, self-care, modern medicine and more. What if the primary way you show love is to bake, but your partner suffers from celiac disease? Why leave in the pits for Willa Cather's Plum Jam? How can we rely on bodies as fragile as the fruits that nourish them? Lebo's unquenchable curiosity leads us to intimate, sensuous, enlightening contemplations. The Book of Difficult Fruit is the very best of food writing: graceful, surprising and ecstatic. Includes black and white illustrations.

Pie School is Now in Session! Since the first publication of Pie School in 2014, Kate Lebo has inspired bakers everywhere with her witty and encouraging lessons on all things flaky and sweet. This completely revised and updated edition includes 20 brand-new pies—including two new chapters, one on savory meat or vegetable pies and one on “difficult� (lesser-known) fruit pies—plus updates to the originals (80 in total). Her proven process to achieve flakiness and structure, along with recipes for delicious, inspired fillings, will give home cooks all the skills they need to make the best pie of their lives. Beyond the bake, Lebo also invites us to ruminate on the social history, the meaning, and the place of pie in the pantheon of favorite foods. Recipes include   Brandied Apple and Cracked Cardamom Pie                          White Peach and Raspberry Galette   Rosemary Rhubarb and Vanilla Chevre Galette   Winter Luxury Pumpkin Pie                Huckleberry Pie   Marionberry Pie with Hazelnut Crumble   Lamb, Pumpkin, and Quince Pie          Chicken Pot Pie

"an anthology that's ... eclectic, drunk and delicious." -The New York Times If you love pie, whiskey, and good writing, this collection of funny and heartbreaking stories, poems, and recipes serves up a plethora of pleasure. What happens when good writing is inspired by and served with a slice of pie and a shot of whiskey? Pie & Whiskey is a literary event series started in Spokane, Washington, where the idea was to serve good pie, good whiskey, and good writers reading prose or poetry about pie and whiskey. This collection features the best original work from the series by writers such as Anthony Doerr, Elissa Washuta, Kim Barnes, and more. Proving that good writing is best served with a slice of pie and a shot of whiskey, a smattering of pie recipes and whiskey-centric cocktails are included alongside dozens of surprising, funny, heartbreaking, fantastically written stories and poems by Jess Walter, J Robert Lennon, Kim Barnes, and ML Smoker and more. Full contributor list: Kim Addonizio * Steve Almond * Kim Barnes * Devin Becker * Judy Blunt * Anthony Doerr * Thom Caraway * Elizabeth J. Colen * Debra Magpie Earling * Christopher Howell * Sherrie Flick * Jacob H. Fries * Nina Mukerjee Furstenau * Margot Kahn * Meissa Kwasny * Kate Lebo * J. Robert Lennon * Samuel Ligon * Gary Copeland Lilley * Robert Lopez * Tod Marshall * Virginia Reeves * Laura Read * Paisley Rekdal * Nicole Sheets * M. L. Smoker * Alexandra Teague * Rachel Toor * Robert Wrigley * Ed Skoog * Jess Walter * Shawn Vestal * Elissa Washuta * Joe Wilkins * Nance Van Winckel * Kristen Millares Young * Maya Jewell Zeller