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BOOKS FICTION AND NON-FICTION PUBLISHED BY JOHN DeMERS

DM Magazine

NEW WINE

Born into a Greek-American Houston restaurant dynasty, Steve Laros has it made. He has a glass-and-steel office as wine buyer for the company his father handed to his younger brother, a large house in an elegant neighborhood, a gorgeous younger wife and a smart stepdaughter. Yet when his father drops dead in retirement, laboring on a mysterious project on the family’s ancestral island of Delfinos, Steve races there to help his distraught mother settle the estate. Turns out, there’s a lot more in Steve’s life in need of settling.

NEW WINE

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MARFA SHADOWS

The crime novel that introduced the Chef Brett series based in and around the bohemian town of Marfa in Far West Texas. Brett grew up mostly without his father, who disappeared after his mother understandably divorced him. Still the chance to help an old flame leads him south of the border at the height of the drug wars – to meet someone he wasn’t the least bit prepared to meet.

MARFA SHADOWS

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MARFA ROCKS

At the students of beautiful college archaeology professor Hildegarde Dane head south in the summer to her dig in a remote section of northern Mexico. Going is easy; it’s coming back that seems to be the problem. Persuaded by his beloved high school football coach, a surrogate father, Chef Brett starts digging – figuratively and then literally. Dangers come to light with each stroke of his brush.

MARFA ROCKS

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MARFA BLUES

Like everybody else in Texas and beyond, Chef Brett considers craggy-faced, pony-tailed border blues legend T.J. “Rattlesnake” Ramirez a national treasure. The man’s brutal murder in the quirky town of Terlingua takes Brett and his “Tonto on steroids” Jud Garcia not only over some rough terrain but deep into the past, when the McCarthy witch hunt in Washington collided with the birth of rock and roll in Memphis.

MARFA BLUES

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TERLINGUA HEAT

Danny Morales is minding his own business with a vengeance, a former newspaper photographer working as a float-trip guide on the Rio Grande near Big Bend National Park. He pulls on oars every day, hoping to forget the murder in San Antonio that sent him fleeing under an assumed name. The past, however, can be restless, especially when it contains the Mafia corruption at the heart of modern San Antonio in 1968 and an assassination in Dallas in 1963.

TERLINGUA HEAT

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THE DELICIOUS MISCHIEF COOKBOOK

John DeMers hosted the Delicious Mischief food and wine show in five cities over 26 years, collecting some great stories and a ton of great recipes everywhere he went. In this cookbook, he shares both – including his significant encounters with Julia Child, Paul Prudhomme, Justin Wilson and others, especially the memory of dinner at Windows on the World at the bottom of Manhattan that came flooding back as he watched a TV screen in a Houston newsroom on September 11, 2001.

THE DELICIOUS MISCHIEF COOKBOOK

follow the smoke

FOLLOW THE SMOKE

Here’s the travel cookbook that kept John DeMers speaking to groups for years – about that time he drove 14,783 miles (all in Texas) to eat in 119 barbecue joints. “I put on 26 pounds,” he’d say, “so you wouldn’t have to.” Besides recipes, this is a book of grand stories, of families and generations united or divided by everything that comes out of the smoker.

FOLLOW THE SMOKE

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NEW ORLEANS BY THE BOWL

Like many traditional cuisines, New Orleans does some of its best work for bowls rather than plates, the result of braising, stewing and simmering that makes for layers of flavor. John DeMers stepped into the kitchen with chef Andrew Jaeger to produce this collection of gumbos, jambalayas, soups and stews. You might need some extra bowls.

NEW ORLEANS BY THE BOWL

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CARIBBEAN COOKING

The first of nine food and/or travel books John DeMers would write about one of his favorite regions on earth, this book dares to see the Caribbean as a single “nation” with many diverse regions. Increasingly, he argues, there is a “Caribbean culture,” driven home by the rhythms more of reggae than poor-but-happy calypso and floating in with the smoke from history’s first backyard grillers, the French-named boucaniers. We, of course, think of them as buccaneers.

CARIBBEAN COOKING

DM Magazine

AUTHENTIC RECIPES FROM JAMAICA

Over the course of several trips over several years, John DeMers got to know Jamaicans in the kitchen, natives as well as some European chefs who had married local women and settled in for life. He also got to the island in time to meet Jamaicans grandmothers, including the legendary Mrs. Mullins who worked as cook to leading man Errol Flynn – even though, as she put it, he lived mostly on gin and raw dolphin on the dock. This is how Jamaicans really cook, and there’s nary a pineapple in sight.

AUTHENTIC RECIPES FROM JAMAICA