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Kitchen Confidential meets Sex and the City in this delicious, behind-the-scenes memoir from the first female captain at one of New York City's most prestigious restaurants

While Phoebe Damrosch was figuring out what to do with her life, she supported herself by working as a waiter. Before long she was a captain at the New York City four-star restaurant Per Se, the culinary creation of master chef Thomas Keller.

Service Included is the story of her experiences there: her obsession with food, her love affair with a sommelier, and her observations of the highly competitive and frenetic world of fine dining.

She also provides the following dining tips:

• Please do not ask your waiter what else he or she does.
• Please do not steal your waiter's pen.
• Please do not say you're allergic when you don't like something.
• Please do not send something back after eating most of it.
• Please do not make faces or gagging noises when hearing the specials—someone else at the table might like to order one of them.

After reading this book, diners will never sit down at a restaurant table the same way again.

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Price: $9.04 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Downsized from her boutique firm, Erin panics as she watches her career ambitions plunge into free fall. Why else would the savvy twenty-eight-year-old take a job as…a waitress? A favorable word from a family friend gets Erin in the door at Roulette, Madison Avenue’s newest exclusive haunt and home to a celebrity chef with a talent for cutting-edge cuisine and spotting the weakest link.

Life behind the apron is even worse than she imagined–from mangling orders to overimbibing at a wine seminar, Erin finds herself in hot water with the egomaniacal chef and the owner’s outrageous wife. And then there’s the dismissive, surly clientele, all but Daniel Fratelli, a flirtatious TV news producer. Is Daniel really as down-to-earth as he seems? Or will he eventually succumb to one of the many glamorous uptown girls in his own social circle?

Determined to prove that she won’t crack under pressure, Erin begins to master the art of waitressing–becoming part shrink, part slave, and part foie gras hustler. But her continuing series of disastrous missteps quickly sends her right back to the bottom of the food chain. Forced to prove her commitment by organizing the storage area and alphabetizing produce after hours, Erin wonders if she’ll ever make it back to the real world. But with a little help from her quirky best friend, she comes up with an idea that might take her life in a whole new direction–and that’s just the first course…..
Price: $8.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Sometimes an off-key phrase in a soulful song can wrench at the heart, nay, the soul and send one off into that same far-away place that a great book can take you to. Amanda Eyre Ward's second novel, How to Be Lost, provides for the reader with a finely-tuned ear, a nicely wrought, syncopated, octave-changing story. Featuring a hard-living, almost down-on-her-luck narrator, How to Be Lost isn't lost at all when it comes to telling a literary mystery wrapped in the arms of a strong woman's tale. Ward's story bounces between New Orleans and New York, taking her protagonist, Caroline, into steely encounters with her somewhat-estranged family, especially her older sister and mother, as they continue, many years after the fact, to deal with the wrenching effects of the unresolved disappearance of Ellie, the youngest of the Winters family. Readers may find uncanny similarities between the eerie tone and dark nature of Deborah Schupack's The Boy on the Bus but won't be disappointed at all with the story that unfolds and the clever, darkly humorous nature of Ward's pitch-perfect voice. --E. Brooke Gilbert.
Price: $2.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Everyone seems to be getting on with their livesexcept Maggie. At 27, shes still working at the local coffee house, while her friends are getting married, having babies, and building careers. Even Olivia, Maggies best friend from childhood, is getting married to her doctor boyfriend. Maggie, on the other hand, lives with her dog Solo, and has no romantic prospects, save for the torch she carries for Domenic, the busboy. Though Maggie and Olivia have been best friends since their fattie grade school years, Olivias since gone the gastric-bypass surgery route, in hopes of obtaining the elusive size two, the holy grail for fat girls everywhere. So now Olivias thin, blonde, and betrothed, and Maggies the fat bridesmaid. Aint life grand? In this inspiring debut novel, Maggie speaks to women everywhere who wish for just once that they could forget about their weight..
Price: $5.18 [Notify me when price goes down.]

I suddenly see where I'm standing, and that's at the edge of change - really, really big change.

Eighteen-year-old Indigo Skye feels like she has it all - a waitress job she loves, an adorable refrigerator-delivery-guy boyfriend, and a home life that's slightly crazed but rich in love. Until a mysterious man at the restaurant leaves her a 2.5 million-dollar tip, and her life as she knew it is transformed.

At first its amazing: a hot new car, enormous flat-screen TV, and presents for everyone she cares about. She laughs off the warnings that money changes people, that they come to rely on what they have instead of who they are. Because it won't happen...not to her. Or will it? What do you do when you can buy anything your heart desires -- but what your heart desires can't be bought?

This is the story of a girl who gets rich, gets lost, and ultimately finds her way back - if not to where she started, then to where she can start again..
Price: $9.03 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This training handbook was designed for use by all food service serving staff members The guide covers every aspect of restaurant customer service for the positions of host, waiter or waitress, head waiter, captain, and bus person. The detailed performance of each position is described for different types of establishments, and all types of service including French, American, English, Russian, Family-Style and Banquet. It provides step-by-step instructions on:

• hosting
• seating guests
• taking/filling orders
• loading/unloading trays
• table side service
• setting an elegant table
• folding napkins
• centerpieces
• promoting specials
• promoting side orders
• handling problems
• difficult customers
• managing tips and taxes
• getting customers to order quickly
• handling questions
• handling the check and money

Plus, learn advanced serving techniques such as flambé and carving meats, fish, and fruits. It also features a chapter devoted exclusively to food safety and sanitation. Whether it's your first day on the job or you are a twenty year veteran you are bound to learn alot. Food service managers will find this book to be an excellent foundation for your organizations training program..
Price: $16.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"A tiny fragment of life, simply told and yet touching in the extreme "-French Book News

Pierre, a lifelong Parisian waiter, watches people come and go, sizing them up with great accuracy and empathy. Pierre doesn't look outside too much; he prefers to let the world come to him. When the caf goes under, Pierre finds himself at a loss. As we follow his stream of thought over three days, Pierre's humanity and profound solitude are revealed.

Dominique Fabre is the author of six novels. He won the Marcel Pagnol Prize for Fantmes in 2001. The Waitress was New is his first book to appear in English.

Jordan Stump is a noted translator of modern French novelists, including Marie Redonnet and ric Chevillard.

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Price: $6.83 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In a truly just world, everyone would have to wait tables for at least six months, just to know what it's like. Failing that, we have writer-waiter Debra Ginsberg's tasty memoir to remind us about life on the other side of those swinging doors. Horror stories? After 20 years of serving other people's food, she's got 'em--and being handed a drunk's vomit-soaked napkins certainly fits the bill. But even though she expresses the usual frustrations with bad tippers and control freaks, in the long run Ginsberg is anything but bitter. In fact, she recently left her publishing job to return to waiting tables, hooked on the freedom, spare time, and ready cash the lifestyle provides. Of course, there are other perks too. Sex thrives in the close quarters and steamy atmosphere of a typical restaurant (not to mention with the high-drama personalities who work there). Fans of Kitchen Confidential will be relieved to know there's as much bad behavior among the floor staff as there is in the back of the house. As in that book, Ginsberg also relates some eyebrow-raising tales about what can happen before your food gets to your table. (The moral here: "It really does pay to be nice to your server.") But Waiting is far more than just a sexual soap opera or a cautionary guide for dining out; it's also the story of one woman's coming of age, most of which just happens to take place while she's wearing an apron. During her tenure as a waitress, Ginsberg thrives as a single mother and comes into her own as a writer--and waiting (as she suggestively calls it) helps her do both. Most of us (including waiters) think of the profession as a stopgap, not a career, but what happens on the way to somewhere else, Ginsberg writes, is every bit as important as the final destination: "Perhaps the most valuable lesson I'd learned was that the act of waiting itself is an active one. That period of time between the anticipation and the beginning of life's events is when everything really happens--the time when actual living occurs." --Mary Park.
Price: $3.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From Emma Bull's War for the Oaks to Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, from The X-Files to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, creators are mixing old European myths and legends with modern American pop culture. Incorporating influences ranging from blaxploitation movies and erotic novels to tabloid staples like UFOs and Elvis, authors and directors are creating a new mythology for the strip-mall, tract-house, cell-phone America of the new millennium.

One of the best-known and best writers of the new American mythology is Charlaine Harris. Dead to the World is the fourth novel in her Anthony Award-winning Southern Vampire series. It continues the story of psychic waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who has fallen out with her undead lover, Bill. Bill has no sooner departed for Peru, than Sookie finds the head vampire, Eric, running naked and terrified through the rural night. She helps Eric, and discovers his memory has been destroyed by a coven of unscrupulous, astonishingly powerful witches, newly arrived in her small Louisiana town, and offering a huge reward for Eric. Sookie tries to hide Eric, but her brother sees him--and immediately disappears. And Sookie finds herself caught in a war among witches, vampires, and werewolves. --Cynthia Ward.
Price: $2.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]