Bluff Country Co-op’s book club meets once a month.

Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton

“Blood, Bones and Butter” traces nearly all of Hamilton’s life and career, from an unmoored childhood through her triumph at Prune, which didn’t end the search for a sense of place and peace that is the overarching theme of this autobiography, as of so many others. It’s a story of hungers specific and vague, conquered and unappeasable, and what it lacks in urgency (and even, on occasion, forthrightness) it makes up for in the shimmer of Hamilton’s best writing.

Meets: Thursday, May 10th, 6:30pm, Ed’s No-Name Bar

Cost: $14.40 +tax if purchased from the Book Shelf (162 W 2nd Street, Winona)

Crescent: A Novel by Diana Abu-Jabar

Thirty-nine-year-old Sirine, never married, lives with a devoted Iraqi-immigrant uncle and an adoring dog named King Babar. She works as a chef in a Lebanese restaurant, her passions aroused only by the preparation of food—until an unbearably handsome Arabic literature professor starts dropping by for a little home cooking. Falling in love brings Sirene’s whole heart to a boil—stirring up memories of her parents and questions about her identity as an Arab American.

Meets: Thursday, June 7th, 6:30pm, Ed’s No-Name Bar

Cost: $12.55 +tax if purchased from the Book Shelf (162 W 2nd Street, Winona)

Spice: The History of Temptation by Jack Turner

Spice: The History of a Temptation is a history of the spice trade told not in the conventional narrative of politics and economics, nor of conquest and colonization, but through the intimate human impulses that inspired and drove it. Here is an exploration of the centuries-old desire for spice in food, in medicine, in magic, in religion, and in sex—and of the allure of forbidden fruit lingering in the scents of cinnamon, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, mace, and clove.

Meets: Thursday, July 5th, 6:30pm, Ed’s No-Name Bar

Cost: 15.30 +tax if purchased from the Book Shelf (162 W 2nd Street, Winona)

Pomegranate Soup: A Novel by Marsha Mehran

Beneath the holy mountain Croagh Patrick, in damp and lovely County Mayo, sits the small, sheltered village of Ballinacroagh. To the exotic Aminpour sisters, Ireland looks like a much-needed safe haven. It has been seven years since Marjan Aminpour fled Iran with her younger sisters, Bahar and Layla, and she hopes that in Ballinacroagh, a land of “crazed sheep and dizzying roads,” they might finally find a home. From the kitchen of an old pastry shop on Main Mall, the sisters set about creating a Persian oasis. Soon sensuous wafts of cardamom, cinnamon, and saffron float through the streetsan exotic aroma that announces the opening of the Babylon Cafe, and a shock to a town that generally subsists on boiled cabbage and Guinness served at the local tavern.

Meets: Thursday, August 9th, 6:30 pm, Ed’s No-Name Bar

Cost: 13.50 +tax if purchased from the Book Shelf (162 W 2nd Street, Winona)