Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Delicious
    Delicious
    Delicious
    Audiobook8 hours

    Delicious

    Written by Mark Haskell Smith

    Narrated by Peter Berkrot

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    When the greedy owner of a Las Vegas movie catering company tries to muscle in on a local, family-owned business in Honolulu, it leaves a very bad taste in the mouths of the natives, and the battle for paradise begins for Joseph, a young Hawaiian chef. As far as Joseph's father Sid is concerned, this is an invasion on par with Captain Cook and the mainlanders have to be stopped at all costs. As Joseph defends his family he encounters a TV producer rebounding from a bad breakup and suffering from an unrelenting chemically induced erection, the producer's androgynous New Age-y assistant, and a trash-talking lap-dance-addicted stroke survivor. Adding to this frenetic luau is Joseph's old-school Polynesian uncle, his bodybuilder cousin, and his politically correct, retro-Hawaiian girlfriend. With the lines drawn and the locals breathing fire down their necks, the Sin City boys decide to enlist the services of an ecstasy-popping ex-Marine hit man. Then things go horribly wrong-or, depending on how you look at it, just right. Mark Haskell Smith's Delicious is an uproarious, delectably dark mystery that offers a take on Hawaii that definitely hasn't been endorsed by the tourist bureau. "Delicious is engrossing from page one. This is a deft and wild comic novel drawn from utterly fresh material. I look forward to anything Mark Haskell Smith writes." -Jim Harrison "Haskell Smith writes well, especially about sex and food, and the multilayered plots move so fast they feel fresh. Think Elmore Leonard meets Mario Batali." -Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times "Rated NC-17 for intermittent comic violence, good-natured swearing, cannibalism, humorous amorality, and some truly perverse sex." -Kirkus Reviews "Hits exactly the right spot. . . . Haskell Smith smartly keeps the action lively by cutting back and forth between viewpoints while tossing off hilarious one-liners and situations that would be over-the-top if they weren't so hilarious. But what really makes this novel work is its deft touch with serious themes of displacement and relationship changes. Deliciousis not for those with weak stomachs, prudish minds or delicate ears, but that leaves the rest of us to savor the novel's many twisted charms." -Baltimore Sun "Smith writes like Carl Hiaasen's oversexed cousin. . . . [He] excels at cooking up a supremely weird atmosphere and spicing it up with equally weird sex and violence." -Booklist "At once sexy and repulsive, the novel manages to plant sharp moral and cultural barbs in its gorge-feast of a plot." -Publishers Weekly "Perverse black humor and sensuality, totally unexpected situations. Murder and gore abound but are presented so matter-of-factly, with such sly, lazy humor, that they are not repellent. . . . This is spare, stylish writing. Not a wasted word. . . . Believe me, Smith makes sure the reader has an immediate connection to each character. There's no stopping after the first couple of pages. Smith wittily displays an intuitive sense of human nature; how variable, vulnerable, changeable and dangerous the mind of man (and woman) is. Some of the plot turns are simply breathtaking. But unlike other twisty thrillers, you're never confused or exasperated. You go right along with Smith, and accept what he decides is the fate of this or that one." -Liz Smith, New York Post
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 23, 2015
    ISBN9781490693927
    Author

    Mark Haskell Smith

    MARK HASKELL SMITH is the author of six novels with one-word titles including Moist, Salty, and Blown; as well as the non-fiction books Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup and Naked at Lunch: A Reluctant Nudist’s Adventures in the Clothing-Optional World. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, Vulture, Alta, and Literary Hub. He is an associate professor in the MFA program for Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Center.

    More audiobooks from Mark Haskell Smith

    Related to Delicious

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Bluff Stuff

      Mar 7, 2021

      The Bluff Stuff
      2 min read

    • Article

      What Scientists Found Trapped In A Diamond: A Type Of Ice Not Known On Earth

      Mar 9, 2018

      Trapped in the rigid structure of diamonds formed deep in the Earth's crust, scientists have discovered a form of water ice that was not previously known to occur naturally on our planet. The finding, published Thursday in Science, represents the fir

      3 min read

    • Article

      American Guy

      Jun 28, 2023

      Be Mine By Richard Ford Bloomsbury £18.99 ‘When you're young, your opponent is the future. But when you're not young, your opponent's the past.’ Frank Bascombe came up with that fretful axiom in Independence Day (1995), the second of Richard Ford's n

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Four Best Audiobooks Of June To Take You Places

      Jun 23, 2020

      Hardboiled mysteries, obscure farming communities, and tales of home and family provide ample entertainment in June’s audiobook roundup.

      2 min read

    • Article

      How to Eat a Really Big Lunch with Jim Harrison

      Mar 24, 2017

      In November of 2003, less than a month before his 66th birthday, the poet and writer Jim Harrison—who died last March at the age of 79—left his farmhouse in Montana’s Paradise Valley and drove some 25 miles through the state’s aspen and fir woodlands

      10 min read

    • Article

      Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures Series Is Joyous Dad-Joke Fantasy

      Aug 16, 2019

      Robert Asprin's rollicking Myth Adventures books get their laughs from whimsy, lightheartedness, buddy-movie banter, and, um, comic myth-understandings. They're a welcome antidote to grimmer series.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Low Expectations

      Feb 1, 2019

      Low Expectations
      7 min read

    • Article

      Hogwash!

      May 17, 2021

      Hogwash!
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Magic of Fairhope

      Sep 18, 2023

      The Magic of Fairhope
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Women Of The Palace

      Sep 19, 2022

      At Georgia’s ragged edge stands a causeway made of earth piled by hand atop bricks and tires, long grown over with grass and sandspur and sea oxeye. It is a tenuous ribbon of stability cutting through mud and salt and spartina, connecting land and ri

      11 min read

    • Article

      Hogwash!

      May 17, 2021

      Hogwash!
      3 min read

    • Article

      The best bad things

      Sep 29, 2020

      The best bad things
      12 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2022

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Delicious

    4/5

    154 ratings12 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      What did I think, Goodreads?

      That this book was weird. But I really really respected it. I did find it a bit contrived the parallel relationships and both happily falling in love sadly too convenient. But also, we're pretty much warned it's a fairy tale so I guess whose fault is that?

      There's so much I liked: the writing, the intensity, the food, the secondary relationships.

      But most of all the writing. And I will always, always appreciate that Thomas does something different. That something always feels quite romantic.
    • 3/5
      More like 3.5 stars. The story starts out slow and does a lot of flashback chapters to piece parts of the backstory together. Once the OTP meets in the backstory, though, things pick up speed and improve. At the end, I liked the book, but to be honest, I thought the chemistry between the side couple was better. I kept waiting for their chapters.
    • 4/5
      I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to read this. It's been in my TBR pile since it released, but I kept skipping over it. What an excellent read! I loved the writing - Thomas really draws the reader in with bold descriptions and beautiful prose.

      The characters were unconventional and lovely - a cook and a barrister in a historical novel? Wonderful. I can't wait to pick up another Thomas book.
    • 4/5
      what a fun book. This was a great weekend read, made me laugh out loud...the golashas!!
    • 4/5
      This was my second book by Sherry Thomas. She is one of my new favorite authors!! I really enjoyed this book!! It was a fun read with plenty of tension and suspense. I loved Verity's spunk! The story did feel a little forced and unbelievable at times. But, I'm reading a historical romance, so who cares, right?!?!? I can't say I enjoyed this book as much as I enjoyed Private Arrangements, but it was still good book! I can't wait to read another by Sherry Thomas!!
    • 4/5
      Not a great a "Not Quite a Husband," but another good book from Sherry Thomas. The theme of separated lovers that have difficulty reuniting is well done, but some incredible culinary descriptions. Didn't make me cry like some of her others, but I liked it a lot.
    • 2/5
      This one was a disappointment. If it had been written by someone else I would have given it a higher rating but Sherry Thomas is an amazing writer and this book wasn't on par with her other work.
    • 4/5
      Sherry again delights (maybe shocks) us by breaking from the mold of run-of-the-mill historical romance novels with Delicious. Verity and Stuart brought forward some toe-curling tension as they played cat-and-mouse with each other, although Stuart has been otherwise spoken-for. I enjoyed watching Verity bring some color into Stuart's monotonous life. While the main story is not quite the fairy tale that opens the Delicious, it falls into play when the secret of Verity's past was finally revealed toward the end.
    • 4/5
      Would it be too easy/awful of a pun to say that I devoured this book? It is, but I did - or at least most of it. With a title like Delicious and a prefatory quote from M. F. K. Fisher about hunger and love, I should have realized what the book would be like. But even if I had anticipated food to be the theme of this romance, nothing could have quite prepared me for how Sherry Thomas writes about food, love, desire, and hunger - all mixed up in a sensual, sensuous concoction in which I was delighted to indulge. I love how Thomas writes, and when such technical skill is paired with a story that surpasses her debut effort, I'm a very happy customer. Now for the "but's". Even though I liked this story better than Private Arrangements, I still found the construction and execution of the plot here awkward, particularly near the end, when false notes start clanging everywhere. The hero, Stuart Somerset, is engaged to another woman, a Lizzy Bessler, for much of the story. I thought this obstacle between Stuart and the heroine Verity Duran, what with all the other things that stand between them, was superfluous. Stuart's anguished resistance to Verity on the grounds of his promise to Lizzy seemed exaggerated and unconvincing. When he suddenly gives up on his excuse of "honor," and returns to Verity after angrily and dramatically tossing her to the curb a mere few pages earlier, he sounds trite and wooden in his easy declarations of love and devotion, and I wasn't as excited to see them finally together as I should have been. Nor was I all that interested in the secondary romance between Lizzy and Stuart’s secretary Will Marsden. But the plot really stumbled in the final pages of the book, when we're treated to a lengthy and awkward exposition on the mystery (that wasn't really that mysterious) concerning Verity's past and identity. At this point the pace was brought to a staggering halt. I thought this aspect of the book could have been handled a lot more smoothly and gone that extra length to really get at the heart of Stuart and Verity’s love for each other. As it stood, though, I felt something lacking in their romance.Besides these complaints, it was still a very well written book. I've got to love an author who can come up with a line like: "what was the taste of falling off a cliff?" (93) If you just go with how important food is in this book, its artistry and eroticism, then you’ll mostly likely enjoy Delicious. And I really liked the characters. This book returns to the format of Private Arrangements, jumping back and forth in time, building up a sense of history and character development infused with lyric, fairy tale cadences that are enthralling - the opening sentence sets you up for a Cinderella story that plays with the familiar tropes without being derivative in the least. Thomas recreates late Victorian society so vividly here. Verity and Stuart are products of their time and circumstances as much as they are individuals who have suffered and/or been punished for their nonconformity, be it inherited stigmas or more active transgressions. Not the stuff of fairy tales, surely. I just wish Delicious could have maintained its momentum in the end and fulfilled its promise. The author provides a couple of very interesting characters, but the way in which she brings them together could have used some fleshing out. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.
    • 3/5
      Difficult book to follow, I suspect I might like it better on second reading, but on first reading it really didnt' work - and yet, I finished it, didn't I...Set in 1892, so victorian rather than Regency, it tells the tale of Verity, a woman who 3 times loved when she shouldn't. At 16 she loved a stable boy (who frankly wasn't given enough story or personality for her to have done what she did) and fell pregnant. At 22 she fell in love iwth an earl who rejects her and forces/permits (? wasn't clear which) to remain as his cook once the affair was over. Adn she also fell in love with her lover's hated cousin. We meet at the second lovers death when the hated cousin inherits everything, including the cook. They have this game where he doesn't see her for nearly 2/3 of the book, she's in shadow or with a mask on, but when he does see her, he still doesn't recognize her.Not very explcit though with one great bath scene, I liked the lovers but I never could suspend my disbelief and sink into the book, too many jarring things kept happening. The book was very disjointed to start, but got better, but the end was just ridiculous - the duchess completely changed character for no reason at all.
    • 5/5
      This book has a somewhat convoluted novel--there are twists in relationships everywhere, and unexpected things happen and people have unexpected motives frequently. Toss that in with the hero not knowing that the woman he's falling in love with is the woman he fell in love with years ago, and it's drama-rific.Despite all that, it's a well-written novel. Thomas has a good writing style, and her writing is such that it brings you in to the immediate presence. She handles the plot twists and turns adroitly, never getting so mired in them that the reader can longer find her way out. Dialogue stays true to character, for the most part, and the details and descriptions are enough to pull you in without making your eyes glaze over from too much information.I greatly enjoyed reading this novel. The only thing that keeps it from getting a full 5 stars is that the food aspect of things is just ridiculous. If this were a fantasy novel with magic, it would fit in just fine. But it's not; this is a romance novel without magic, and a cook is not able to really imbue her food with such feelings as longing and despair and new love. Everytime I came to another passage about Verity's food, I mentally rolled my eyes and moved on. It just didn't pass the suspension of disbelief test.Despite that, however, I love this novel and would definitely recommend it to romance lovers, particularly those who also love their food or have a penchant for Cinderella-type stories.
    • 5/5
      Verity Durant is a good cook - the best, second only (possibly) to Escoffier - with a secret. Her employer (and former lover) Bertie Somerset recently passed away, leaving her in the employ of his half-brother Stuart. What Stuart doesn't know is that his new cook is the same Cinderella he had a one-night love affair with ten years ago and has yearned for ever since.Delicious is put forward as a Cinderella story of sorts. It starts out framed as a Cinderella story, and the author as well as the characters themselves reference the famous fairy tale throughout the novel. This not only works, but adds tremendously to the romance building between Stuart and Verity.I loved the entire thing. Not only was I intrigued by the Victorian setting, I wanted to know if Cinderella got her prince, and what happened to the prince's fiancee. And what of Cinderella's stepmother? The prince's family? Delicious answers all of these questions, all the while drawing you into not only the romance between the characters, but into a new love affair with food - for that is how much of Verity's passion is shown: through her food.Anyone looking to read a romance novel: I highly recommend this! It's delightful, satisfying, and all-around lovely. I know I gush, but I think, in this case, the work deserves the praise.