A Certain Hunger

(Paperback, Main)

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Dorothy Daniels has always had a voracious - and adventurous - appetite. From her idyllic farm-to-table childhood (homegrown tomatoes, fragrant cassoulets) to the heights of her career as a food critic (caviar and foie gras washed down with champaign straight from the bottle) Dorothy has never been shy about indulging her exquisite tastes - even when it lead to her plunging an ice pick into her lover's neck.

There is something inside Dorothy that makes her different from everybody else. Something she's finally ready to confess. But beware: her story just might make you wonder how your lover would taste sauted with shallots and mushrooms and deglazed with a little red wine.

'One of the most uniquely fun and campily gory books in my recent memory ... A Certain Hunger has the voice of a hard-boiled detective novel, as if metaphor-happy Raymond Chandler handed the reins over to the sexed-up femme fatale and really let her fly.' New York Times

Reviews

'A macabre banquet of a suspense novel serving up carnal and gustatory surprises . . . Dorothy speaks like Humbert Humbert and behaves like Hannibal Lecter.' Washington Post

'Riotously funny and deliriously unhinged, Chelsea G. Summers's A Certain Hunger is the perfect send-up of foodie culture, media, and serial killers-as-sex objects. Patrick Bateman and Hannibal Lecter have nothing on Dorothy Daniels, a 51-year-old food critic, who has an appetite for food and life, sure, but also for killing men. an altogether delicious, deranged read.' Refinery29

'In this satire of a particular brand of foodieism, a chic food critic with a (quite literal) voracious appetite for her lovers puts the same care and attention into murder as she does her writing and personal presentation. Not for the faint of heart, it's a novel that might initially get your mouth watering for a fine steak-but perhaps put you off meat for good.' Vanity Fair

'Shares with Nabokov's Humbert Humbert a gallows humour and a deliciously synaesthetic, detailed attention to language.' i paper

'It's American Psycho as rewritten by Angela Carter. Irresistible.' - Megan Abbott

Author Bio

Chelsea G. Summers is a freelance writer whose work focuses on sex, politics, tech, fashion and culture. She is a former academic and professor with Ph.D. training in eighteenth-century British literature, a discipline that has proven to be shockingly useful when writing about contemporary culture. She was a columnist for the now defunct ADULT magazine, has a piece upcoming in Roxane Gay's Medium series, and her work has appeared in VICE, Fusion, Hazlitt, The New Republic, Racked, and The Guardian. She splits her time between New York and Stockholm, Sweden, and can be found on twitter @chelseagsummers. This is her first novel.