Booze Cakes: Confections Spiked with Spirits, Wine & Beer, by Krystina Castella & Terry Lee Stone

Booze Cakes: Confections Spiked with Spirits, Wine & Beer, by Krystina Castella & Terry Lee Stone, 144 pages

This is one of those cookbooks that have such good writing that you end up reading the whole thing.  Fun fact: Cocktails really only came to prominence during Prohibition- sweet mixers were required to choke down the rotgut that was typically available.  There are some really good-sounding recipes in here, and while they include alcohol, none of them sound overly alcoholic.  Recipes I am going to try as soon as I have butter include blue hawaiian cupcakes (imagine cupcake sized pineapple upside down cakes! egads!) and a rosemary limoncello cake when I need to impress someone.

Amy, My Daughter - Mitch Winehouse

Amy, My Daughter by Mitch Winehouse - 301 pages

  On July 23, 2011, Amy Winehouse's family, friends,and fans around the world mourned the tragedy that this remarkable, talented, and extraordinary generous woman was now gone. A legion of dedicated fans had lost their Amy. With this difficult news came an outpouring of love and grief from her fans, along with troubling questions about Amy's very public struggles with drugs and alcohol, as people tried to understand how such a soulful singer had been silenced so young.
  Now, in this intimate and tender account, her father and confidant, Mitch, offers an inside view of Amy's life as she lived it, putting to rest once and for all the controversies that have long surrounded her.