The Art of Baking Blind - Tapa dura

Warm, wise and inspiring, an utterly delicious novel. "Polly Williams, author of The Rise and Fall of a Yummy Mummy"

Clever and compelling. I loved this! Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina

How I loved this lush, true, heartfelt novel about baking--all kinds of confections and a life itself--and believing in yourself. A book to savor along with a cup of hot tea and something sweet and decadent. Melissa Senate, author of The Love Goddess' Cooking School

An ambitious story . . . engaging and perfect for book clubs "Romantic Times""

Warm, wise and inspiring, an utterly delicious novel. Polly Williams, author of The Rise and Fall of a Yummy Mummy

Clever and compelling. I loved this! Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina

How I loved this lush, true, heartfelt novel about baking--all kinds of confections and a life itself--and believing in yourself. A book to savor along with a cup of hot tea and something sweet and decadent. Melissa Senate, author of The Love Goddess' Cooking School

An ambitious story . . . engaging and perfect for book clubs Romantic Times

There are many reasons to bake: to feed; to create; to impress; to nourish; to define ourselves; and, sometimes, it has to be said, to perfect. But often we bake to fill a hunger that would be better filled by a simple gesture from a dear one. We bake to love and be loved.

In 1966, Kathleen Eaden, cookbook writer and wife of a supermarket magnate, published The Art of Baking, her guide to nurturing a family by creating the most exquisite pastries, biscuits and cakes. Now, five amateur bakers are competing to become the New Mrs. Eaden. There's Jenny, facing an empty nest now that her family has flown; Claire, who has sacrificed her dreams for her daughter; Mike, trying to parent his two kids after his wife's death; Vicki, who has dropped everything to be at home with her baby boy; and Karen, perfect Karen, who knows what it's like to have nothing and is determined her facade shouldn't slip.

As unlikely alliances are forged and secrets rise to the surface, making the choicest pastry seems the least of the contestants' problems. For they will learn--as Mrs. Eaden did before them--that while perfection is possible in the kitchen, it's very much harder in life, in Sarah Vaughan's The Art of Baking Blind.