Come Out of the Kitchen!

A sparkling romantic comedy about a man who rents a house for the summer season only to find his household thrown into chaos by a particularly intractable problem: the cook. She's beautiful, she's impossible, and she's absolutely determined to make his life miserable, or perhaps that's just how the battle of wills begins. Alice Duer Miller delivers exactly what her title promises: a witty, waspish dance between master and servant that slides gracefully from comedy of manners into something warmer. The seasonal rental, the parade of inadequate staff, the one person who might actually run the household properly but refuses to act like it, these are the ingredients of a perfect early-century domestic farce. But Miller has sharper teeth than simple comedy: underneath the servant troubles and social snafus lies a sharp examination of class, independence, and the game of pretending you don't want what you very much do want. The chemistry crackles on the page. For readers who prefer their romance with wit, their comedies with a backbone, and their historical fiction with the sparkle of a world where a woman could run a kitchen like a kingdom and still be underestimated.