Epikurean Epic

By turns whimsical, thrilling, hilarious and touching, Karen Dudley's ingeniously original Food for the Gods (2012) and its sequel, Kraken Bake (2014), reinvent a classical hero, while bringing to life the crowded, throbbing streets of ancient Athens in a way that both honors the Greek myths and reinterprets them for a new generation of readers.

It's a great day for Greece when Perseus defeats the dreaded kraken. But victory begins to lose its lustre when the remains of the beast swamp the shores and fishing nets of the Aegean. Now after weeks of kraken cakes, kraken kabobs, kraken fritters, and kraken stew, everybody is getting decidedly sick of kraken-none more so than Chef Pelops. In response to the "kraken crisis," the city of Athens announces the inaugural Bronze Chef competition. Normally, Pelops would jump at the chance to prove himself the best celebrity chef in Greece. The trouble is, the competition's secret ingredient is sure to be kraken-and, having once offended Poseidon, Pelops can't cook kraken to save his life. To make matters worse, a loathsome rival has vowed to win the contest by fair means or foul. Now, Pelops must overcome the sea god's curse to show once and for all that he is the better chef-a task made all the more difficult by the insufferable antics of a most unexpected relative…