Ready to Go Display: Read Dessert First

Welcome to our series, "Ready to Go!" Book Display. Once a month we'll highlight the latest or greatest for every age group that you can promote within your library or order for your collection. Here's some tasty books without the calories.

Recommendations for Adults:

Sprinkle with Murder by Jenn McKinlay (Mar 2010)

In the first book of Cupcake Bakery mystery series, Melanie Cooper and Angie DeLaura, the proud owners of the Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery, race against time to save their business and catch a killer who used their cupcakes to kill a famous fashion designer.

Éclair and Present Danger by Laura Bradford (June 2016)

When her elderly neighbor, a widower named Bart, is found dead, smothered by a pillow, bakery owner Winnie Johnson, while comforting her frightened and grieving neighbors with baked goods, decides to stir things up to catch a killer who preys on the helpless.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (Oct 2010)

Discovering in childhood a supernatural ability to taste the emotions of others in their cooking, Rose Edelstein grows up to regard food as a curse when it reveals everyone's secret realities.

How to Eat a Cupcake by Meg Donohue (Mar 2012)

When childhood friends, Annie and Julia, reconnect as adults and decide to open a cupcakery, they must overcome old betrayals, first loves, and a dangerous threat.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke (Mar 2011)

Cookie-baking sleuth Hannah Swensen must protect her reputation when a popular delivery man is found murdered behind her bakery with Hannah's cookies scattered around him.

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman (June 2014)

Russian immigrant Malka arrives in 1913 Manhattan, where she struggles to survive and learns trade secrets from an Italian ices peddler before setting off across America in an ice cream truck with a handsome, illiterate radical to seek their fortunes.

The Cake Therapist by Judith Fertig (June 2015)

A pastry chef with an uncanny ability returns to her hometown to make sense of her future while delving into the past.

Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich (June 2012)

Dazzling her patrons with scrumptious cupcakes at her Salem, MA bakery, Elizabeth Tucker continues to fall for the irresistible Diesel, who protects her from a villain who is seeking mystical stones tied to the seven deadly sins.

Recommendations for Teens:

Dessert First by Dean Gloster (Sept 2016)

High school sophomore Kat struggles with her twelve-year-old brother's recurring leukemia and likely death while coping with mean girls at school and possible romance.

Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler (Jan 2012)

Hudson Avery gave up a promising competitive ice skating career after her parents divorced when she was fourteen years old and now spends her time baking cupcakes and helping out in her mother's diner, but when she gets a chance at a scholarship and starts coaching the boys' hockey team, she realizes that she is not through with ice skating after all.

Cake Pop Crush by Suzanne Nelson (Feb 2016)

While working at her family's small bakery making her specialty cake pops, Alicia develops a secret crush on the son of the new coffee-shop owners from across the street who are threatening her family's business.

The Cupcake Queen by Heather Hepler (Sept 2009)

While longing to return to life in NYC, thirteen-year-old Penny helps her mother and grandmother run a cupcake bakery in Hog's Hollow, tries to avoid the beastly popular girls, to be a good friend to quirky Tally, and to catch the eye of enigmatic Marcus.

Close to Famous by Joan Bauer (Feb 2011)

Twelve-year-old Foster McFee and her mother escape from her mother's abusive boyfriend and end up in the small town of Culpepper, West Virginia, where they use their strengths and challenge themselves to build a new life, with the help of the friends they make there.

Recommendations for Kids:

The Cookie Fiasco by Dan Santat (Sept 2016)

There are only three cookies and four hungry friends to share them with. This is not good. This is not equal!

Katie and the Cupcake Cure by Coco Simon (May 2011)

Disappointed because she's been ostracized by the popular girls' club that has given entry to her best friend, Katie forms a new baking club with fellow outsiders Mia, Emma and Alexis.

A Fine Dessert by Emily Jenkins (Jan 2015)

This book follows families from England to California and from 1710 to 2010, preparing and enjoying the dessert called blackberry fool.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff

A young and very accommodating boy discovers you can never tell where it will stop if you give a lively, but demanding, mouse a cookie.

The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? by Mo Willems (Apr 2012)

Pigeon is very angry when the duckling gets a cookie just by asking politely.

Ice Cream Summer by Peter Sis (May 2015)

A little boy writes a letter to his grandfather about all the reading and studying he is doing this summer - but all his activities revolve around ice cream.

Save the Cupcake! by Lisa Papademetriou (May 2012)

Hayley's world is far from perfect: her parents have divorced, her mom has lost her job, and she and her sister Chloe are stuck sharing a bedroom in their grandmother's apartment. Luckily, Hayley has a knack for baking cupcakes - and cupcakes always make life just a little sweeter.

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass (Oct 2010)

When four twelve-year-olds, including Logan, who has grown up never leaving his parent's Life Is Sweet factory, compete in the Confectionary Association's annual contest, they unexpectedly become friends and uncover secrets about themselves during the process.