Dean Koontz's beloved character Odd Thomas returns in his fifth book, Odd Apocalypse, and if you're a fan of the series you won't be disappointed. Unfortunately, things aren't looking up for our poor hero, Odd Thomas, the twenty-something fry cook from Pico Mundo, California, who has the unfortunate ability to interact with the dead. Ever on the move in order to evade lethal pursuers, Odd Thomas finds himself being confronted by the ghost of a woman on a horse who leads him to the mysterious and haunting Roseland, an impeccably splendid mansion in the Hollywood Hills. At first, Odd and his traveling companion Annamaria find solace in Roseland and its reclusive billionaire owner, but as dusk settles it's obvious that the estate isn't everything that it appears and that Odd isn't as safe as he thought.

Odd Thomas has become one of the most well-known and best-selling characters today; if you're not familiar with him, you can read up on his backstory in the first book, Odd Thomas. Because of his special ability, he is frequently visited by ghosts who have unfinished business, which he always feels obligated to resolve. This has led Odd to abandon his hometown in pursuit of life answers, but trouble always seems to follow wherever he turns up. Further complicating the situation is the fact that the needy spirits can't speak to him, forcing him into a constant game of charades. Odd Thomas has become so well known that the spirits of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and even Alfred Hitchcock have turned to him for help.

Despite every effort to simplify, Odd Thomas's life becomes more complicated at every turn, but he continues on with an upbeat outlook and a sense of humor. Odd Apocalypse doesn't fail to once again up the ante, making the game all the more challenging and putting poor Odd Thomas in yet another perilous position he couldn't possibly get himself out of.

Find out more about Odd Thomas here.

Today is Julia Child's birthday, and I'm celebrating by digging into Bob Spitz's new definitive biography of her life and career, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child. If you've read her memoir, My Life in France, you know Julia's life in her own words, but Spitz's loving biography is truly an all-encompassing companion, giving you full insight into the truly great things for which Julia Child is known.

In that spirit, here is my list of ten things we have Julia Child to thank for:

1. Accessibility
Cooking didn't have to be a scary complicated process left to the professionals. We learned that all we had to do was pick up a knife.
2. Variety
Home cooks were relying on the convenience of prepackaged food before Julia introduced new ways of cooking that incorporated a variety of fresh ingredients.
3. Flavor
Wine, Butter, Cheese, Sautéed Onions, Bacon, Fresh Herbs … I could go on.
4. Appreciation for International Culture
Julia helped Americans be more comfortable with the ways in which other cultures perceived food, introducing us to new methods and behaviors.
5. Food Network
She truly was the first televised celebrity chef (I don't know where I'd be without my daily dose of Food TV).
6. Women's Rights
Julia blazed trails for women in an industry that skewed very male, earning considerable respect along the way.
7. Boeuf Bourguignon
Okay, the French invented it, but she made it accessible and unpretentious, and there is truly no dish more satisfying on a winter's eve with a glass of red wine.
8. Cookbooks
Before Julia's great tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, home cooks were only relying on The Betty Crocker Cookbook. Julia helped drive demand for a whole new category of books that continues to thrive today.
9. Personality over Perfection
Julia showed us that it was okay to be ourselves and that life wasn't perfect. If you drop that chicken breast on the floor, no need to worry, just rinse it off and throw it back in the pan!
10. A Plethora of Famous Quotes
(I suggest keeping one of these posted on your refrigerator at all times):
• "I was thirty-two when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate."
• "If you’re afraid of butter, just use cream."
• "The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken."
• "The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook."

Happy Birthday, Julia.

In Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Harold's life has grown quite ordinary and uneventful since retirement. At the beginning of the novel, we catch Harold at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with nowhere to go and nothing planned for the day. His loving but somewhat absent and nagging wife, Maureen, is puttering around their quiet little house in Kingsbridge, England, keeping busy as always.

Harold is just staring at a piece of toast when Maureen drops a letter from Berwick on Tweed in his lap. It's from an old friend, a woman named Queenie. She's dying of cancer and just wanted Harold to know. Moved by the letter and not having thought of her for a number of years, he quickly decides to respond. Scribbling a letter to Queenie, donning his boat shoes, and with a quick "Cheerio!" to Maureen, he's out the door to the corner mailbox.

It's this moment that sparks Harold's life into motion again. Once on the corner, Harold realizes he can't go back and makes the decision to walk a few blocks further to the next mailbox. From the next to the next, he finds himself moving forward until he has decided to walk the entire way to Queenie's hospice to deliver the letter in person, believing that she will stay alive as long as he keeps walking.

Google Maps lists the walk from Kingsbridge to Berwick as over 900 miles. It says it will take almost five days, but I'm guessing it would be more like five weeks. In those five weeks, Harold continues to meet characters who are taken by his story and moved to good deeds of their own, and who help him to realize what he has been missing and what's truly important in life. Meanwhile, Maureen, slowly realizing that Harold is gone and dealing with her own personal demons, slowly realizes that she has not been a good wife and sets out to make up for the time she has lost, before it's too late.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is an utterly endearing and enchanting debut novel that will appeal to anyone who was charmed by Major Pettigrew's Last Stand or overwhelmed by the emotion of Olive Kitteridge.

The epigraph at the beginning of John Irving's new novel quotes William Shakespeare: "Thus play I in one person many people, and none contented." I came back to this quote a number of times while making my way through In One Person, impressed that Irving was able to sum up the lives of his characters so well. These are complex individuals, playing many roles, all of them conflicting and competing to dominate. It's something that we can all relate to.

If you're a longtime reader of Irving, you learn to look for the common themes across his novels: a young boy coming of age, an absentee father, a dominating mother. Often there's focus on the sport of wrestling and the setting almost always takes place in a boarding school. All aspects are present here, but this is a very different novel for the author. Many have said John Irving doesn't know what he's doing, writing a book about a bisexual man. In many interviews the author defends himself by very poignantly stating that as an adolescent he was interested in sexuality, in whatever form it took, and that is truly what this book is about.

Each character in this novel has some sort of ambiguity around their sexuality, from the lumberjack grandfather who always insists on playing female roles in the community theater, to the very masculine librarian, Miss Frost, on whom Billy, the main character, has his first adolescent crush. It's through the eyes of Billy -- who narrates for us the lives of his family and his many lovers, both male and female -- that Irving really dives into the complexity of human sexuality. This complexity creates a psychological landscape where we play many characters throughout our lives. How appropriate, then, that Irving chooses to start the novel with a quote from Shakespeare, and that much of the story takes place around rehearsals and theatrical performance.

It's this turmoil within all of us that truly drives the narration of this story, something I think John Irving knows a little bit about.

Dark, funny, compassionate, and grotesque are the words to describe what is filtered out of Rajesh Parameswaran's imagination in his first collection of short stories, I Am An Executioner: Love Stories. Dropped into complex situations, these tragic and strangely loveable characters are deeply confused about the choices they are making. You'll want to reach out to each of them, grab them by the shoulder and say, "Friend, please, take a second to look at what you’re doing here." But I assure you they won't listen.

In The Infamous Bengal Ming, the young tiger, Ming, is happy with his life in the zoo. His keeper, Kitch, keeps him well fed and his only concern is what to do about his desire for the lovely Saskia. But life changes in an instant when one poor decision leads to another and Ming finds himself outside of his cage and experiencing the freedom of a real wild animal for the first time.

In The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopalarajan, Gopi finds himself in a precarious situation with his wife when he is fired from his job at CompUSA. Desperately needing to keep her happy, he decides to open his own medical practice despite his lack of experience. With a few medical books from the library and a converted veterinary office, Gopi (aka "Dr." Raju) is open for business. How hard can it be?

In the title story, a seasoned executioner turns to the comfort and safety of his job on death row in order to escape the new challenges of his recent marriage. Generally optimistic by nature, he doesn't understand why everyone finds him and what he does so repulsive. When a young girl is brought into the prison, he's left to reevaluate what is important in life.

In the end, these are all truly love stories, as it's love that drives the conflicted to be less than clear in what they do. Parameswaran's stories have appeared in McSweeney's, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Fiction. He writes with a fun, unique voice that gives his characters and their surroundings a closeness that is perhaps too intimate. You'll be left cringing, but still peering through your fingers, from one story to the next.

In 2008, I decided to make a life change and go to culinary school. I thank Bill Buford and his perilous attempts to survive as an amateur chef for my rash decision. We were both under the impression that the skill and talent we believed we had in our own kitchens would give us overnight success in the intense and competitive restaurant industry. We were both sorely delusional. In Heat, New Yorker editor Bill Buford takes us on a fast-paced insider account of life as a line cook, pasta maker, and Tuscan butcher.

Cooking has always been a lifelong obsession for the author, so when a casual dinner party puts Buford next to Mario Batali, the opportunity is taken to grill the celebrity chef for all that he knows. After a night of decadent eating and drinking, Batali invites the author to come work for him in the kitchen of his newly opened and hugely successful Babbo Restaurant.

As Batali's newly appointed "slave," Buford learns the secrets from grilling meat to dealing with dirty pasta water, and fills his story with sage advice (never order the special on Sunday, never order pasta later in the evening) and cringe-inducing anecdotes (Batali screaming in his face and forcing him to stand back and watch the rest of the night). Despite the constant humiliation, intense work environment, and hard-living coworkers, Buford manages to survive with some of his spirit intact. Working his way up the ladder, the author decides to take his adventure to the next step, to truly understand the Italian art of food.

From the Babbo kitchen, he moves to a remote Italian village where he learns that the art of truly authentic handmade pasta is a lifetime cultivation. After being told that his hands haven't been correctly developed to handle the intricacies of pasta, Buford is off to the Chianti region to learn the art of butchery, a pursuit that eventually leads him to the purchase of an entire pig and the inevitable attempt to properly divvy it up in his small New York City apartment kitchen.

Heat is a fun, fast-paced memoir that will appeal to food lovers and travel enthusiasts alike. Like me, you'll want to jump right in or run away screaming. Either way, this harrowing and revealing look at the world of food is a delicious and satisfying meal.

Hi there. Have you found yourself unexpectedly dead? Do you have some lingering anger or unfinished business that you just can't let go of which is keeping you from moving on? Just so you know, there's a guy who can help. They call him Odd Thomas; he lives out there in Pico Mundo, California. You can usually find him working over in the diner, back behind the grill. He has a reputation for helping out the recently dead. He can see things that others can't. Just to warn you though, he's young — only twenty years old — and honestly looks like he should be hanging out at the beach rather than helping out ghosts, but he has other things up his sleeve and is definitely more than he seems.

If you don't believe me, there are a couple of celebrity endorsements you can look into. Elvis Presley, for one, has been hanging around for years trying to get Odd to understand. Oh, right, one big rule. You're not allowed to talk to Odd. I don't know why, you just can't, so do the best you can with those pantomime skills you've developed over the years. Anyway, good luck.

Oh, wait. Before you go, there are a few other things you should probably know:

1. Odd has issues. What twenty-year-old doesn't, right? Just saying, he's dealing with some stuff so it may be difficult to keep him focused. Do the best that you can.
2. If you're really desperate and really need to get him to pay attention, you can pull out all the stops and become a poltergeist. If you end up with enough pent-up anger, this will give you the ability to start throwing things around. It's very effective, but only use it as a last measure. It's very dangerous and you could end up hurting someone.
3. Very important. There are bad things out there. He calls them Bodachs. They basically look like moving piles of smoke. If you see these guys, run. If you see a lot of them, run really fast. They are attracted to evil and if they're hanging around, you know something awful is about to happen.
4. Fortunately, if you need more information, Dean Koontz has written a number of books about Odd's experiences. You can start with the first book, Odd Thomas. If you feel the need to keep going, you can read Forever Odd, Brother Odd, and Odd Hours. There's also the Odd Thomas Series of all four books if you want to get through them all at once.

As I said, good luck! See you on the other side!

In Jennifer DuBois' debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, the lives of two characters are intertwined by their search for meaning. It is a beautifully told story that will appeal to fans of Julie Orringer's The Invisible Bridge or Katherine Neville's The Eight.

In present-day Cambridge, Massachusetts, Irina Ellison is a thirty-year-old lecturer mourning the loss of her beloved father to Huntington's disease. A great lover of chess, her father was particularly fascinated with the internationally renowned Russian chess champion, Aleksandr Bezetov. So much so, that his final act is to compose a letter to Bezetov asking, "How does one proceed against a lost cause?" Upon finding that she has also inherited her father's grueling disease, Irina makes a life-changing decision: to walk away from everything she has ever known, travel to St. Petersburg, Russia, to find Aleksandr Bezetov -- and an answer to her father's question.

In Cold War-era Russia, young Bezetov, setting foot into the square of St. Petersburg for the first time, meets a group of boys tired of the lives they are forced to live and rumbling for change. A prodigy from the country, he arrives to play chess and quickly becomes known as a fierce and unbeatable competitor. However, calls for rebellion are too intoxicating to ignore, and he quickly finds himself rising in the ranks and leading an uprising that will change history forever.

In present-day Russia, the once-great chess champion Bezetov awakens one day in his lavish surroundings to find the fires of change behind him, and with them, any purpose for living. As he struggles to understand his worth and place in the universe, he is confronted at his doorstep by a young, lost Irina. With this encounter, both characters find they need something that exists in each other to remember what keeps them going every day.

Jennifer DuBois is a truly talented young writer whose words are epic, beautiful, and mesmerizing. This is a truly heartfelt novel that will resonate with you well beyond its perfect ending.

Check out an excerpt of A Partial History of Lost Causes here.

Last Saturday, I conveniently found myself at home opening a bottle of wine and tackling one of my favorite dishes, Coq au Vin, from the Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook. Nothing gets me in the mood for French cooking more than spending a couple of hours revisiting France through Julia Child's eyes, so before I rolled up my sleeves, I cracked open my well-worn copy of her memoir, My Life in France. If you think you know her story because you’ve seen the movie, I guarantee nothing compares to Julia’s words in her own voice (sorry, Meryl).

When she first set foot on the shores of Le Havre, France, on November 3, 1948, Julia Child was admittedly nervous. But rather than feeling out of place, an awkward American in a strange land, she found herself fitting right in with the culture. Despite U.S. perception at the time, she found France to be a warm and welcoming country, but it wasn’t until she sat down to her first meal, sole meuniere “perfectly browned in a sputtering butter sauce with a sprinkling of chopped parsley,” that she truly fell in love.

Accustomed to working hard (as a WWII spy nonetheless), and not one to be idle, Julia quickly made herself busy. After tackling the French language and learning her way around Paris, it was time to master the food. She enrolled in the world-famous Le Cordon Bleu, where despite some initial cultural barriers, she developed her greatest passion. This passion led to what would become her life’s work, immersing herself in the creation of a French cookbook that would be accessible, easy to follow, and appealing to the American housewife (whose culinary abilities were quickly becoming obsolete as a result of modern conveniences). With the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and the eventual launch of her cooking show, Julia would become our first nationally recognized celebrity chef and forever change the way Americans perceive food.

Julia’s writing is as naturally appealing as her cooking, with her quirky, charming style shining through on every page. Her descriptions of France make you feel like you’re there, and her passages of food make your stomach rumble: “wonder sauces of wine and cream,” “cheeses, soft to the point of oozing,” potatoes roasted in pan juices, “big juicy pears you can eat with a spoon,” warm breads, and rich desserts.

As Julia would say, “The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken,” so whether you’re a weekend gourmet chef, lover of all things French, or just looking for a good book, pop the cork off a bottle of Pouilly-Fume and reminisce with My Life in France or dig in with Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Either way, bon appétit!