There are plenty of food and cooking memoirs available, as well as novel-recipe book hybrids, like Nora Ephron’s Heartburn. But the following bodies of work by this group of authors ostensibly have nothing to do with food; they sneakily suck you in with their captivating plots while secretly pushing a foodie agenda. And it works.

One of Stewart O’Nan’s classic moves is writing long passages that show his characters performing quotidian tasks in excruciating detail, usually while in the midst of a tragic or upsetting event.

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