When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual inheritance: a one-way plane ticket and a note reading “Go to Paris.” When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes. Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store, where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella, and for the first time in her life Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress --- and embarks on an adventure. As weeks --- and many decadent meals --- go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed” at the famed bookstore Shakespeare & Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past.

When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. But Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no? This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat.

When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. But Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no? This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat.

MY KITCHEN YEAR follows the change of seasons --- and Reichl’s emotions --- as she slowly heals through the simple pleasures of cooking. While working 24/7, Reichl would “throw quick meals together” for her family and friends. Now she has the time to rediscover what cooking meant to her. Part cookbook, part memoir, part paean to the household gods, MY KITCHEN YEAR may be Ruth Reichl’s most stirring book yet --- one that reveals a refreshingly vulnerable side of the world's most famous food editor as she shares treasured recipes to be returned to again and again and again.

Soon after Billie Breslin takes a job at Delicious!, New York’s most iconic food magazine is abruptly shut down. Billie agrees to stay on in the empty office, maintaining the hotline for reader complaints in order to pay her bills. In a hidden room in the magazine’s library, Billie finds a cache of letters written during World War II. They provide her with a feeling of deep connection to the young writer whose courage in the face of hardship inspires her to come to terms with her fears.