How to Eat a Cupcake excerpt and book tour

Novelist Meg Donohue is about to set out on her book tour for How to Eat a Cupcake. We will have a contest soon to win a copy but for now here's an excerpt from the novel and her tour dates.



Official book description:

Funny, free-spirited Annie Quintana and sophisticated, ambitious Julia St. Clair come from two different worlds. Yet, as the daughter of the St. Clair’s housekeeper, Annie grew up in Julia’s San Francisco mansion and they forged a bond that only two little girls who know nothing of class differences and scholarships could—until a life-altering betrayal destroyed their friendship.

A decade later, Annie is now a talented, if underpaid, pastry chef who bakes to fill the void left in her heart by her mother’s death. Julia, a successful businesswoman, is tormented by a painful secret that could jeopardize her engagement to the man she loves. When a chance reunion prompts the unlikely duo to open a cupcakery, they must overcome past hurts and a mysterious saboteur or risk losing their fledgling business and any chance of healing their fractured friendship.

Book tour dates:

SAN FRANCISCO
March 13, 2012 at 7 PM
Books Inc. in Laurel Village (3515 California Street)

DOYLESTOWN, PA
March 18, 2012 at 2 PM
Doylestown Firehouse (68 Shewell Avenue)

NEW YORK CITY
March 20, 2012 at 7 PM
Posman Books in Chelsea Market (75 9th Avenue)

PHILADELPHIA
March 21, 2012 at 7 PM
Head House Books (619 South 2nd Street)

Excerpt from How to Eat a Cupcake:

I handed her one of the red velvet cupcakes that I’d made in the old-fashioned style, using beets instead of food coloring. I’d had to scrub my fingers raw for twenty minutes to get the crimson beet stain off them, but the result was worth it: a rich chocolate cake cut with a lighter, nearly unidentifiable, earthy sweetness, and topped with cream cheese icing and a feathery cap of coconut shavings. For Ogden, I selected a Moroccan vanilla bean and pumpkin spice cupcake that I’d been developing with Halloween in mind. It was not for the faint of heart, and I saw the exact moment in Ogden’s eyes that the dash of heat—courtesy of a healthy pinch of cayenne—hit his tongue, and the moment a split-second later that the sugary vanilla swept away the heat, like salve on a wound.