Cinnamon and Gunpowder

(Paperback)

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The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by a beautiful yet ruthless pirate. He will be spared, Mad Hannah Mabbot tells him, as long as he can conjure an exquisite meal every Sunday from the ship's meager supplies. While Wedgwood attempts to satisfy his captor with feats such as tea-smoked eel and pineapple-banana cider, he realizes that Mabbot herself is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. Yet there is a method to Mabbot's madness, and as the Flying Rose races across the ocean, Wedgwood learns to rely on the bizarre crew members he once feared: a formidable giant who loves to knit; a pair of stoic martial arts masters, sworn to defend their captain; and the ship's deaf cabin boy, who becomes the son he never had. With Cinnamon and Gunpowder, Eli Brown has given us a swashbuckling epicure's adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story - with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written.

Reviews

"Food porn and rip-roaring pirate adventure are two great tastes that taste great together in Eli Brown's rollicking Cinnamon and Gunpowder." --Petra Mayer, NPR.org

"In the meantime, an unlikely respect blossoms between captive and captain. Quirky characters combined with the adventure of the high seas make for a novel unlike any other you've read." --BookPage

"[An] early 19th-century tale of culinary seduction and swashbuckling antics, featuring characters who evoke the desperate ingenuity of Scheherazade and the hell-bent ruthlessness of Ahab . . . Brown explores the mysteries of flavor with prose that any word-savoring foodie will delight in . . . The story, the characters, and the ingenious battle scenes are far too colorful for moral dilemmas, which are made irrelevant when Mabbot is revealed as something of a humanitarian out to reset the wrongs of British imperialism." --Publishers Weekly

"Brown concocts a clever tale in which history, ethics, action, and romance blend harmoniously. Tantalizing descriptions of the smells and flavors of the dishes Wedgwood creates may send readers running to their spice cabinets in search of the blends he exalts in, even as they are entranced by Brown's delectable tale." --Amber Peckham, Booklist

"Cinnamon and Gunpowder reads like Joss Whedon and Patrick O'Brian sailed to Copenhagen together and, after surviving a ninja attack and firefight at sea, fell in love over a seven-course meal at Noma." --Julie Powell, author of Julie and Julia

"Both sizzling and swashbuckling." --Kirkus Reviews

"Eli Brown's Cinnamon and Gunpowder [is] a most unusual sophomore effort featuring a pirate queen and a kidnapped chef. Think Babette's Feast meets Pirates of the Caribbean!" --Wilda Williams, Library Journal

"Accomplished and enormously powerful." --The Philadelphia Inquirer on The Great Days

"With lyrical, confident prose, Brown makes August's dark journey a harrowing, convincing look into the heart of cult life that should linger with readers." --Publishers Weekly on The Great Days

Author Bio

Eli Brown lives on an experimental urban farm in Alameda, California. His writing has appeared in The Cortland Review and Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader. His first novel, The Great Days, won the Fabri Literary Prize.