Novels About Bakers & Bakeries

Book Summary

Jenny has spent a lifetime putting everyone’s needs above her own. Now, at the age of 77, and after 59 years of marriage, Jenny decides she wants a little something for herself. Without telling anyone she knows, she applies to be a contestant on Britain Bakes, a Great British Bake Off-style TV show.

The world of TV cameras, timed baking challenges, and judging quips is all new to Jenny, and she’s sweetly embarrassed at her own stardom.

As she bakes, recipes unlock decades-old buried memories. Chocolate teacakes remind her of an errand involving a wedding ring, while sugar donuts make her recall a stranger’s kindness. But there’s more than flour in her heart. Jenny’s carrying a long-buried secret that could crumble her quiet, predictable world. Can she handle a pinch of fame without her carefully kept past toppling everything?

Book Summary

Hope once dreamed of becoming a lawyer, but at 36, her life doesn’t look at all the way she imagined. Her mother died of cancer, her husband left, her bank account is almost empty, her family bakery on Cape Cod is failing, and she’s raising a troubled preteen on her own.

Now, she’s losing her beloved French-born grandmother, Mamie, to Alzheimer’s. But in a moment of clarity, Mamie is eager to share the secrets of her past before they are gone forever. She reveals mysterious bits and pieces of her tragic history in WWII Paris. With little more than a list of names, Hope sets out for France in hopes of piecing together a seventy-year-old mystery.

Book Summary

Amelia, aka Rae Rose, is a pop star feeling totally burnt out by years of maintaining her image for all of her adoring fans. She’s in desperate need of a break and would love to escape to Rome, as Audrey Hepburn does in her favorite film. But since she can’t discreetly get to Rome, Italy, she hops in the car and heads to Rome, Kentucky.

Noah runs his grandmother’s pie shop in Rome, and isn’t impressed when Amelia appears on his front lawn in her broken-down car. He’s the town grump, doesn’t have Wifi or a cell phone, and prioritizes privacy. But when the local B&B turns Amelia away because they don’t have any vacancies, he reluctantly agrees to let Amelia stay in his guest room.

Book Summary

Amateur sleuth Hannah Swensen owns The Cookie Jar bakery in Lake Eden, Minnesota. In between baking, she spends her time dodging her mom’s attempts to find her a husband. 

In the first book, her milk delivery man, Ron, is found behind her bakery, with her chocolate chip cookies scattered around his body. Terrified that the situation will give her shop a bad reputation, she sets out to find the killer. 

Fans of this long-running series should also check out the companion cookbook – Joanne Fluke’s Lake Eden Cookbook: Hannah Swensen’s Recipes from the Cookie Jar.

Book Summary

Pumpkin spice babka? Sign us up! In Kissing Kosher, Avital manages her family’s kosher bakery, Best Babka in Brooklyn. She was a photographer but had to give it up due to chronic pelvic pain. She’s barely surviving running the bakery, and needs to hire help.

Handsome Ethan walks through the door and seems like the perfect option to take over some of her duties. However, she doesn’t know that he isn’t an average baker looking for a job. He’s been sent by his grandfather, who makes mass-produced kosher baked goods, to steal Avital’s grandfather’s world-famous pumpkin spice babka recipe.

However, Ethan is soon more interested in Avital than in stealing secrets. But how can they build a relationship when he has deceived her from the moment they met?

Book Summary

This novel opens in present-day California shortly after Eleanor’s death. She has left behind a voice recording for her two adult children – Byron and Benny. She’s also left them a traditional Caribbean black cake that she tells them to share “when the time is right.”

Her children, it turns out, only know a small part of their mom’s life story. Posthumously, Eleanor is finally ready to share her truth so that Byron and Benny can truly know and understand their family history.

As the story unfolds, everything that her children thought they knew about their lineage and themselves will be rocked to the core, and by the time they finally share the black cake, another person will be joining them at the table.

Book Summary

Marie has a pleasant life with a husband, three children, and a career as a dentist. However, she’s a horrible baker and everyone knows it. Terrible cupcakes, runny meringues, and hard biscuits rule her kitchen. She’s tired of being shamed by her neighborhood nemesis, Lucy, who creates perfect confections for every school fundraiser.

Marie turns her trust to the incredible British baker, Mary Berry. She will follow Mary’s recipes to the letter and always ask herself, “What would Mary Berry do?”. It turns out, this question helps not only in the kitchen, but in the rest of her life.

Between her husband’s shaky job and her teen acting more distant than usual, can Marie’s new approach to life save the day?

Book Summary

Emma is a 22-year-old baker in a small town on the Normandy coast of France. After her Jewish mentor is removed from his shop, she has to take over the bakery.

Throughout the years of war, and under the watchful eyes of the enemy, Emma builds up a clandestine network of barter and trade, risking her life to make sure as many villagers as possible have bread and other food. In addition to helping the villagers meet their physical needs, she also helps restore their hope.

Book Summary

Set in the picturesque hamlet of Ashland, Oregon, home to the famed Oregon Shakespeare Festival, this cozy mystery series follows Juliet “Jules” Montague Capshaw, a talented pastry chef who returns to run her family’s artisan bakeshop, Torte.

Between crafting signature pastries and serving locals and tourists alike, Jules frequently becomes an impromptu detective when death strikes close to home.

Book Summary

Rosaline Palmer knows that the key to successful baking is always to follow the recipe… but in her personal life, she hasn’t always done the same. She dropped out of college to raise her daughter, Amelie, her house is falling apart, and she’s barely making ends meet financially. 

When she lands a spot on everyone’s favorite British baking reality show, she can envision all the ways that the prize money could turn her life around. 

The best thing she could do is to focus on her baking, and only her baking… but she soon finds herself torn between potential love interests. While there is romance in this story, the heart of this contemporary book is about the baking, not bisexual Rosaline’s potential suitors.

Book Summary

Reba is a writer in El Paso working on a feel-good Christmas piece, despite feeling perpetually on the run from memories of a turbulent childhood. She’s engaged to a Border Patrol agent, Riki, who finds comfort in strict rules and regulations.

Her assignment takes her to Elsie’s German Bakery to interview the elderly baker. While this process should have been one visit, she finds herself returning again and again, trying to get to the heart of Elsie’s story. But for Elsie, Reba’s questions are a reminder of the dark days of World War 2. As Elsie, Reba, and Riki’s lives intertwine, they’re forced first to confront the truths of the past in order to forgive.

Book Summary

Software Engineer Lois works for a robotics company with big ambitions in San Francisco. She spends long days coding until she collapses at night, and has little contact with other humans other than the two brothers running the hole-in-the-wall restaurant that she orders dinner from nightly.

When the brothers have visa issues, the restaurant is closed, but they leave Lois in charge of something very special – their sourdough starter. She must keep it alive. They tell her to feed it daily, play music for it, and learn to bake with it.

While Lois isn’t a baker, she’s intrigued by the colony of microorganisms left in her care. Soon, she’s not only baking bread for herself, but supplying it to her office cafeteria. When the office chef encourages her to sell her bread at the farmer’s market, she encounters a close-knit community that isn’t interested in new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?

Book Summary

Jada hoped her dreams would come true when she was cast on a reality dating show. After making it to the end but turning down the marriage proposal, viewers turn on her, and life becomes more of a nightmare. She decides to lay low for a while, taking a job at a San Diego bakery.

Sugar Blitz has an unlikely owner – uptight pro football player Donovan. The bakery is struggling but attracts attention when a reporter believes Jada and Donovan are a couple. While they don’t like each other, they agree that pretending to be a power couple could be just the thing they both need.

Book Summary

Sage works the night shift at a bakery, preparing bread and pastries for the next day. As she bakes, she seeks to escape the reality of her mother’s death and the loneliness she feels. By day, she attends a grief support group where she meets an elderly man named Josef. He begins stopping by the bakery, and the two form an unlikely friendship.

Sage never expects the long-buried secret that Josef confesses to her one day. He’s never told anyone else in town, and if Sage agrees to the favor he asks, she’ll face not only moral repercussions but potentially also legal ones. All of the new revelations from her close friend cause her to question her own assumptions and expectations. And where is the line between punishment and justice, or forgiveness and mercy?

Book Summary

Sophie comes to New York as a food editor for a top magazine, but she’s also trying to recover from a painful breakup. Thankfully, two things are starting to distract her from that pain. She now lives above a delightful bakery in Brooklyn, which is owned by her charming new friend Bella. 

Bella’s cousin, Todd, is distraction #2. He’s a columnist and shares her love of both food and writing. No matter how much they have in common, neither Todd nor Sophie is ready for a relationship. But as their friendship grows, they may not be able to ignore the fireworks. 

Book Summary

Livvy is a talented pastry chef at an exclusive Boston dinner club. Unfortunately, her career goes up in flames when she manages to flambé not just a desert, but the entire building. Needing to get out of town, she heads north to Vermont and the comfort of her best friend. She doesn’t intend to stay long, but that all changes when she’s offered a job at the Sugar Maple Inn. The owner of the Sugar Maple hopes that Livvy can help her reclaim the inn’s blue ribbon status in the apple pie contest at the county fair.

Livvy and her dog, Salty, move into a sugarhouse on the inn’s property. She loves creating mouthwatering desserts for the residents of Guthrie, and she soon finds herself immersed in small-town life. She hits it off with Martin McCraken, a Guthrie native who has recently returned home to care for his father.

Soon, there’s another new arrival in town that makes Livvy question if she really belongs in Guthrie after all.

Book Summary

In 1870, the Prussians were blocking the gates to Paris, trying to starve the city into submission. Lisette was waiting out the war in her parents’ grand home, right in the heart of the city. But when she meets revolutionary National Guardsman Theodore Fournier, she is inspired to give up her luxurious life and fight for the people. To help feed an impoverished neighborhood, she opens a bakery.

In 1946, nineteen-year-old Michelle is still reeling from her father’s death and her mother’s disappearance during the war. In their absence, she has to take responsibility for her two younger siblings, despite feeling totally unprepared to be in charge. A well-meaning neighbor enrolls Michelle in a prestigious baking academy, hoping to help secure her future. But it’s a classmate at the academy, Luarent, who helps her begin the journey of healing.

Book Summary

Within the walls of the old Victorian home Ramona inherited from her grandmother in Colorado Springs, she has built a bakery business that has sustained her and her family through many ups and downs. But now, things are beginning to crumble around her, and she is one water-heater disaster away from losing the house and everything she’s built within its walls.

She was just 15 when she had her daughter, Sophia. Now, Sophia is married with a teenage stepdaughter of her own. When Sophia’s husband is wounded in Afghanistan, Sophia flies overseas to be by his side, leaving rebellious 13-year-old Katie in Ramona’s care.

Ramona feels out of practice in the parenting department, so she instead relies on her baking skills to bond with the troubled girl. Slowly, Katie begins to feel at home with Ramona.

When a man from her past returns, offering Ramona a second chance at love, she’ll need to add a few key ingredients if she wants to bake her own perfect life.

Book Summary

Anna Kate’s grandmother owned the Blackbird Cafe in the small town of Wicklow, Alabama. When Granny passes away, Anna Kate returns to Wicklow to settle her estate. She intended it to be a very quick trip, but for some reason, she finds herself drawn to the quirky town that her mother ran away from many years ago. She wants to get to know the people of Wicklow, including her father’s side of the family, and she wants to learn more about the mysterious blackbird pie everybody is talking about.

As she discovers the truth about her past, Anna Kate will need to decide if this lone blackbird can finally take her broken wings and fly.

Book Summary

If you love a good beach read, you’ll love this story of three strangers who co-leased a space right on the California coast. Part bookstore, part bakery, and part gift shop, the Boardwalk Bookshop is a dream come true for Bree, Mikki, and Ashley. 

While the business and the new friendships are going well, personal lives behind the scenes are a mess. But together, the women challenge each other to be their best in this summer novel full of friendship and love.

Book Summary

Wynter is 31 when her husband leaves her for another woman. Desperate for a fresh start, she moves to Seattle and spends aimless hours enjoying coffee and freshly-made bread. The cafes of Seattle remind her of the time she apprenticed at a French boulangerie and considered leaving college to become a baker.

When she’s offered a position at a bake shop, she quickly remembers why she fell in love with bread-making the first time. The kneading of dough creates healing, and may be just what she needed to renew her soul.

Book Summary

After Polly’s last relationship fell apart, she escaped to a small seaside town in Cornwall, England. She moves into a small flat above an abandoned shop and fills her days baking bread. As it turns from hobby to passion, she pours her emotions into kneading and pounding the dough, and each loaf is more delicious than the last. Soon, Polly is working her magic with nuts and seeds, olives and chorizo, and the local honey, courtesy of a handsome local beekeeper.

Not only do the locals discover Polly’s delicious bread… thanks to the recipes in the back, you can, too.

Book Summary

Do you dream of seeing the Venetian canals, the Amalfi Coast, or wandering through gorgeous Tuscan villages? This novel will transport you to all three dramatically different scenic Italian locations in vivid detail.

Two hundred years ago, Filomena Fontana cursed her sister. Ever since then, every 2nd born sister in the Fontana family has been unable to find love.

Some of the women believe in the curse, and others are skeptical, but when elderly Aunt Poppy invites two of the young second-born sisters to return to Italy with her, promising to have a plan to break the curse, they can’t pass up the chance. The trio of women travels throughout Italy, learning about their family history and uncovering secrets.