Add Cyanide to Taste: A collection of dark tales with culinary twists

by Karmen Spiljak

Overview

Winner of the 2022 IndieReader Discovery Award for short stories

A sinister cook, a cursed cake, and a casual dinner between neighbours that goes murderously wrong.

This collection of culinary mysteries ascends the jagged culinary heights you've hungered to explore but could never find on a map: a family business that depends on a cursed recipe, a remote mountain village with a taste for revenge, a particularly peckish ghost. As the characters swoon over every unforgettable mouthful and sometimes bite off more than they can chew, you'll find yourself asking: what would I be willing to pay for the meal of a lifetime?

Fourteen short stories and thirteen recipes will chill, thrill and entertain. The suspenseful stories range from thrillers and mysteries to ghost stories and are a great gift for all crime fiction lovers.

If feasting on culinary noir leaves you hungry, extend your pleasure by preparing the dishes featured in the stories. Most recipes are vegetarian. All recipes are cyanide-free.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9786500263886
Publisher:	Karmen Spiljak
Publication date:	09/30/2021
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Karmen Špiljak is an awarded Slovenian-Belgian writer with a taste for dark and twisty tales.Her short fiction has been awarded and anthologised. Her as yet unpublished thriller was shortlisted and received an honourable mention on 'The Black Spring Crime Fiction Prize 2020'. She writes across different genres, from suspense to horror and science fiction.She currently lives in Brazil with her husband and two cats.

Table of Contents

Foreword

SHORT STORIES

The Assistant

Sweet like Butter

Three Roses

Dark Velvet

A Damned Fine Cook

Dash Friend

Gardener's Sense

Moments

My Friend Betty

The Recipe

Pass the Ketchup

Let it Rot

The Collectors

Be My Guest

THE RECIPES

Janice's Pumpkin Gnocchi

Bert Oxley's Roast Chicken

Hot Chocolate

Blueberry Schnapps

Sarah's Posh Cheese Sandwich

Fiona's Chocolate Miso Cookies

Apricot Pie

Courgette Strudel

Oven-Baked Pancakes

The Collectors' Soup

Stuffed Peppers Eddie's Incidental Salad

The Forbidden Pasta

Acknowledgements

Before you leave

Book Club Questions

About the Author

More by the Author

Editorial Reviews

01/24/2022

The 14 well-crafted culinary noir stories in Spiljak’s debut collection efficiently establish character and mood. While many are traditional narratives, the star of this feast is “The Collectors,” which recounts its ominous plot through a series of email exchanges. The opening banter between two friends turns darker with the reveal that a member of their academic team researching Neolithic mass graves has gone missing in the same Austrian location that a journalist disappeared from years earlier, both possibly as the result of food tampering by one or more persons seeking to preserve some deadly secrets. Another high point is “Dark Velvet,” which follows its effective opening tease (“All families have their secrets; ours has a curse. We rarely bring it up but it continues to exist in the shadows”) with a twisted story involving a cake recipe rumored to require human blood as an ingredient. Crime fiction readers who are also foodies will appreciate the recipe section following the stories, prefaced with the tongue-in-cheek warning, “please don’t add cyanide to any of the dishes.” Fans of Rob Hart’s Take-Out and Other Tales of Culinary Crime will feel sated. (Self-published)

Publishers Weekly