Coming of age adventure feature following the experiences of a young woman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery when she goes to stay with her grandmother for the summer holidays. Nicole (Aimee Teegarden) is a quiet, slightly bookish teenager from New York. Her grandmother, Sue (Patricia Richardson), lives a very different life. As the owner of a California surf shop, she presents a fresh environment for her granddaughter and encourages her to try surfing herself. Nicole gradually begins to emerge from her shell and even plans a road trip to Mexico, where the discovery of a long-buried family secret shakes her world even more...

"Shapiro recounts the story of scientific cooking with a deft humor some might find unbecoming to a work of impeccable scholarship. Yet how else are we to think about a movement that upheld mayonnaise, cream sauce, and the extended boiling of vegetables as cures for every social ill, from drunkenness and degeneracy to feminism and labor unrest?.... My only disappointment with "Perfection Salad" is that it ends too soon." --Barbara Ehrenreich, "New York Times Book Review"

"A comprehensive, droll social history of a curious women's movement that's responsible for everything from nutritional education programs to TV dinners."--Maureen Corrigan, "Village Voice"

A biography of Julia Child from the award-winning author of "Perfection Salad"

One of the most beloved figures in 20th century American culture was Julia Child, the bouyant ?French Chef? who taught millions of Americans to cook with confidence and eat with pleasure. With an irrepressible sense of humor and a passion for good food, Child ushered in the nation's culinary renaissance and became its chief icon. Unlike the great cooking teachers who preceded her, she won her audience through the revolutionary medium of television. Millions watched as she spun threads of caramel, befriended a giant monkfish, wielded live lobsters, flipped omelets and unmolded spectacular desserts. Her occasional disasters, and brilliant recoveries, were legendary. Yet every step of the way she was teaching carefully crafted lessons about ingredients, culinary technique, and why good home cooking still matters.

Award-winning food writer Laura Shapiro describes Child's unlikely career path, from California party girl to cool-headed chief clerk in a World War II spy station to bumbling amateur cook and finally to the classes at the Cordon Bleu in Paris that changed her life. Her marriage to Paul Child was at the center of all her work. Unlike much of what has been written about Child, Shapiro portrays a woman who was quintessentially American, and whose open-hearted approach to the kitchen was a lesson in how to live.

Although "My Kitchen Wars" is a war story, this time the warrior is a woman and the battleground the kitchen. Her weapons--the "batterie de cuisine" of grills and squeezers and knives--evoke a lifetime's need to make dinner, love, and war. By prying open the past with these implements, Betty Fussell gives voice to a generation of women whose stories were shaped and yet simultaneously silenced by an era of domestic strife and global conflict, from World War II to Vietnam. "My Kitchen Wars" also is a love story, recounting Fussell's liberation from the tyrannical Puritanism of her family by a veteran of the "Good War," a young writer named Paul Fussell. But she soon finds herself captive again, constrained by the roles of faculty wife and mother. Still, she cannot stop hungering for both a life of the mind and carnal pleasures. Her inner war to unite body and mind brings down the marriage in a denouement as brutal as the whack of a cleaver. Yet Fussell, however bruised, emerges to cook another dinner and to tell her tale in this fierce and funny memoir. "My Kitchen Wars" was adapted into a one-woman play performed in Hollywood and New York.

The First Time I Got Paid for It is a one-of-a-kind collection of essays by more than fifty leading film and television writers, with a foreword by screenwriting legend William Goldman. Linked by the theme of a writer's "first time",usually the first time he got paid for his work, but sometimes veering off into other, more unconventional, "first times",these always entertaining (and sometimes hilarious) pieces share what it takes to succeed, what it takes to write well, and other aspects of maintaining creativity and integrity while striving for a career in Hollywood. Richard LaGravanese ( The Fisher King , The Horse Whisperer , Living Out Loud ) confesses that his first paid writing job was crafting phone-sex scripts. Nicholas Kazan ( Reversal of Fortune , Matilda ) explains why, in Hollywood, an oral "yes" often turns out to be a written "no." Peter Casey writes about the unparalleled pitch meeting for the award-winning series Frasier . Virtually every big-name writer in Hollywood has contributed to this collection, making it essential research material for anyone trying to make it in the entertainment industry, and a perfect read for movie and television buffs everywhere.

Author of the forthcoming What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories (Summer 2017) In this captivating blend of culinary history and popular culture, the award-winning author of Perfection Salad shows us what happened when the food industry elbowed its way into the kitchen after World War II, brandishing canned hamburgers, frozen baked beans, and instant piecrusts. Big Business waged an all-out campaign to win the allegiance of American housewives, but most women were suspicious of the new foods-and the make-believe cooking they entailed. With sharp insight and good humor, Laura Shapiro shows how the ensuing battle helped shape the way we eat today, and how the clash in the kitchen reverberated elsewhere in the house as women struggled with marriage, work, and domesticity. This unconventional history overturns our notions about the '50s and offers new thinking on some of its fascinating figures, including Poppy Cannon, Shirley Jackson, Julia Child, and Betty Friedan.