Books and tea just seem to go together, and there are novels that will whet your appetite for your favorite beverage. So, curl up with a hot cup of tea and one of these books, and enjoy.
Laura Childs’ heroine, Theodosia Browning, is the owner of Charleston’s Indigo Tea Shop. Each book in the Tea Shop Mystery series is named for a type of tea and is rich in detail about tea lore, tea history, and tea recipes. An extra bonus is the incredible detail about the city of Charleston that will make you wish you lived there. Except for the dead bodies, of course...
The Tea Rose, by Jennifer Donnelly, begins in 1880’s London. Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, dreams of owning her own shop. But Fiona's life is shattered when she is forced to flee to New York in fear of her life. Her spirit and determination take her from a modest West Side shop to the top of New York's tea trade.
Regency romance fans will love All the Tea in China, by Jane Ocutt. Rather than follow the destiny everyone believes is proper—to make a good marriage—Isabella Goodrich decides to become a missionary in the Far East. She sneaks aboard China-bound ship and, while on the long voyage, falls in love with a man who has an unusual mission of his own: to find the best tea in China. This adventurous and romantic story brings Chinese customs and the tea trade vividly to life.
In Peg Kingman’s Not Yet Drowned, Catherine MacDonald is astonished when she receives a package from her twin brother—who had supposedly died a year earlier in 1821—a Kashmiri shawl, a caddy of unusual tea, and a sheaf of traditional bagpipe music in his handwriting. She travels to India to try to solve the mystery, following a trail of tea, opium, and bagpipes.
Amy Ephron’s novel A Cup of Tea is based on a Katherine Mansfield short story set in 1917 New York. In a chance encounter, Rosemary Fell, a woman born to a life of wealth and privilege, impulsively invites a penniless woman home for a cup of tea. And that one decision alters three lives in ways they cannot imagine.
These are a few titles to start with, but you can find others at local bookstores or your public library.
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