Aftertaste

(Paperback)

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Description

A food story to binge.
A ghost story to devour.
A love story to savour.

When dead-end dishwasher Kostya discovers the ability to summon spirits through the food he cooks, he embarks on a journey to open a New York City restaurant that serves closure something hes craved for as long as he can remember.

There are just three problems:

1. Kostya has some ghosts of his own.

2. His advancing menu of spirit cuisine is threatening the stability of the Afterlife itself.

3. Hes falling in love with Maura, a party psychic with her own secret connection to the Afterlife who also happens to be the one person who knows he must be stopped.

A bittersweet cocktail of humour and heart, Aftertaste is an imaginative odyssey through food and love, life and death: the things that sustain us, connect us, transport us, and remind us who we are.

Reviews

A decadent debut that marks the arrival of a sparkling new voice. Dark and delicious, sincerely moving and at times laugh out loud funny, a heady, bittersweet, beautiful novel about life and death, grief and closure, passion and hunger. A must-read -- Rachel Harrison, author of SO THIRSTY and BLACK SHEEP
A breathtaking novel. Combining the grit of the restaurant world with the magic of the afterlife, Daria Lavelle perfectly blends unexpected ingredients into a book youll want to savour. It's a story about grief that's filled with humour, warmth and astounding creativity -- Laura Hankin, author of ONE-STAR ROMANCE and THE DAYDREAMS
This is a terrific book. Aftertaste offers the glories of food and cooking all the yes-chef details we now love in a cool, brilliant and suspenseful novel whose spec-fic plot wants to talk about the mysteries of sense-memory and death. I could not put it down -- Joan Silber, author of SECRETS OF HAPPINESS AND IMPROVEMENT

Author Bio

Daria Lavelle writes fiction, most of which features at least one impossible thing. Her stories have appeared in Dark Matter, The Deadlands and Dread Machine, among others. She holds a BA from Princeton University and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and enjoys opera, escape rooms, and checking restaurants off her bucket list. She was born in Kyiv before immigrating to the US as a child, and currently lives in New Jersey with her husband, their hyperactive golden doodle, and their three magical children. Aftertaste is her first novel.