Summer Reads for Foodies

Portland chef Cathy Whims (of the beloved restaurant Nostrana) built her career on Italian cooking and trained directly under Marcella Hazan. This book is her love letter to la dolce vita - bright salads, seafood stews, and a final-course almond granita. Illustrated throughout, it's as much a book to flip through on a porch as it is to cook from.

Try it for: a dinner party that feels like a trip to the Italian coast without leaving home.

For Afro-Dominican chef Nelson German, drinks and food are about connection--whether it's sharing stories over cocktails on a stoop in Washington Heights or gathering with friends under the warm, buzzy lights of his restaurants. In Caribbean Cocktails, he brings the rich culinary history of the Afro-Latino diaspora straight to your home bar and kitchen, blending tradition, personal storytelling, and modern mixology. Inside, you'll find cocktail recipes easy enough for home bartenders yet inventive enough for seasoned mixologists, along with an ingredient index to help you make the most of every bottle on your bar cart, tips for batching drinks, plus low-ABV and alcohol-free variations for every kind of celebration.

Try it for: culturally rooted, flavorful cocktails and mocktails for your next gathering.

Named one of the best cookbooks of 2025 by Bon Appetite, The Washington Post, and Saveur, this follow-up to McKinnon's James Beard Award-winning Tenderheart is a full-throated argument for salad as a main event - globally inspired, vegetable-packed, main-meal bowls meant to be lingered over, plus a chapter of sweets. It's exactly the kind of book that makes a hot night's dinner feel like an occasion instead of a chore.

Try it for: turning "just a salad" into the whole meal.

Tinned fish had its moment and this book proves it's here to. stay - which is good news for anyone who wants a beach-bag-friendly, no-cook-required protein that still feels like a treat. From tinned octopus risotto to a smoked mackerel latke situation, this is a genuinely fun, snack-forward book with illustrations as playful as the recipes.

Try it for: picnics, boat snacks, and effortless summer entertaining.

An exhaustive collection of recipes (over 400!) covering everything from weeknight grilling to full-on regional barbecue, with America's Test Kitchen's typical rigor around technique, tools, and the science behind why the recipe works. It's the book to hand anyone leveling up their backyard setup this summer, whether they're smoking a brisket for the first time or want to perfect grilled corn.

Try it for: an all-in-one reference for anyone taking their grill seriously this summer.

An instant New York Times bestseller and about as food-soaked as beach novel gets. Rocky and her family return to the same Cape Cod rental they've visited for decades - and between the "Great meals," secrets, and generational chaos (kids on one side, aging parents on the other), food is the thread that holds the whole funny, tender story together. Ann Patchett and Elin Hilderbrand both loved it, and it's genuinely one of the best "beach vacation" novels of the last few years.

Try it for: the ultimate beach-bag novel about family, food, and summer traditions.

A warm, magical-realism novel about Lolly Blanchard, who gave up her dream of opening a restaurant to keep her family's Seattle diner running after her mother's death - and now bakes the diner's famous lemon meringue pies every morning while quietly wondering what might have been. When she's given three enchanted lemon drops that let her glimpse alternate versions of her life, she has to decide what she really wants. Later adapted into a Hallmark film, it's a sweet, hopeful, food-centered read about second chances.

Try it for: a hopeful, pie-scented read about the roads not taken.

Part Clue, part Great British Bake-Off - six amateur bakers arrive at a Vermont manor to compete on a beloved baking show, only for sabotage (then murder) to disrupt the proceedings. It's a fast, twisty, genuinely fun mystery with mouth-watering baking detail throughout. Perfect for a lazy afternoon when you want a page-turner that still smells like a bakery.

Try it for: a quick, addictive food mystery for a rainy summer day or a long flight.