August is National Coffee Month! But do we really need a special month to celebrate one of the most popular beverages in the world?
Coffee is grown commercially on four continents and consumed enthusiastically on all seven. Millions rely on the aromatic bean for their daily caffeine jolt, and millions more depend on it for their livelihoods.. Coffee lovers attest that nothing compares to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee in the morning. For many, a cup of joe is the ultimate get-up-and-go beverage.
Here are some nonfiction reads on this much loved beverage, followed by fiction featuring coffeeshops, baristas, coffee planters or the coffee industry.
NonFiction
The Art & Craft of Coffee Cocktails: Over 80 Recipes For Mixing Coffee And Liquor by Jason Clark
World-class mixologist Clark will inspire, excite and educate you by taking you behind the bar for a masterclass in creating coffee-based cocktails. Learn how to perfect simple classics such as Espresso Martini and Irish coffee or try your hand at technical modern marvels Golden Velvet and Death By Caffeine.
Coffee A Global History by Jonathan Morris
Morris explains both how the world acquired a taste for this humble bean, and why the beverage tastes so differently throughout the world. He identifies the regions and ways in which coffee has been grown, who worked the farms and who owned them, and how the beans were processed, traded, and transported. Morris also explores the businesses behind coffee—the brokers, roasters, and machine manufacturers—and dissects the geopolitics linking producers to consumers.
Coffee: From Bean to Barista by Robert Thurston
This engaging guide traces the history, cultivation, and culture of coffee, as well as the major factors influencing the industry today. Thurston considers cultivation and its challenges, especially climate change; new research on hybridization; the history of coffee and cultural change surrounding it around the world; devices, new and old, for making coffee drinks; the issue of organic versus conventional agriculture; and the health benefits of the brew.
The Coffee Book by Anette Moldvaer
Discover the origins of coffee and its production before exploring over 40 country profiles, showcasing the incredible variety of beans grown around the world. Master different roasting, grinding, tamping and brewing techniques, plus the equipment needed. Experiment with some 70 recipes, ranging from café culture classics, such as the Americano, to more adventurous flavor combinations like the Almond Fig Latte or the Hazelnut Frappé, as well as non-dairy milk alternatives,
The Coffee Lover’s Diet : Change Your Coffee, Change Your Life by Robert Burns Arnot
Arnot explains how coffee became a staple of the human diet, and reveals why having a cup is the best thing you can do each day. He also teaches you how to find the best beans from around the world and how to create the best brew and food pairings.
Coffeeland : One Man’s Dark Empire And The Making Of Our Favorite Drug by Augustine Sedgewick
The epic story of the rise of coffee in the Americas, and how it connected and divided the modern world. This history of how coffee came to be produced by the world’s poorest people and consumed by its richest opens up a unique perspective on how the modern globalized world works, ultimately provoking a reconsideration of what it means to be connected to far-away people and places through the familiar things that make up our everyday lives.
The Complete Book Of Coffee: The Definitive Guide To Coffee, From Simple Bean To Irresistible Beverage by Mary Banks
The definitive illustrated guide to coffee: its history, where it is grown, the beans, the types of roast and grind, and how to brew and drink it. Features a comprehensive survey of the coffee-producing countries around the world, and the quality and characteristics of different kinds of bean. Over 70 recipes demonstrate the wonderful versatility of coffee in the kitchen, with delicious soufflés and meringues, puddings, fruit and frozen desserts, and enticing cakes, pastries, breads and biscuits.
From The Ground Up : A Journey To Reimagine The Promise Of America by Howard Schultz
From the longtime CEO and chairman of Starbucks, a bold, dramatic work about the new responsibilities that leaders, businesses, and citizens share in American society today—as viewed through the intimate lens of one man’s life and work.
The Marley Coffee Cookbook : One Love, Many Coffees, And 100 Recipes by Rohan Marley
Most people know of coffee only as a beverage or as flavoring for ice cream, but in red-eye gravy, it’s always been a part of America’s culinary tradition. Like chocolate, with which it shares a similar flavor profile, coffee perfumes many savory dishes. Rohan Marley, son of reggae superstar Bob Marley, has raised coffee in his native Jamaica, and he markets coffee also from other worldwide sustainable sources, such as Ethiopia. With chef Maxcel Hardy’s skill, Marley makes coffee a component in all manner of foods. He enhances traditional jerk seasoning with coffee, and he uses coffee in stews of chicken and lamb. Even salad dressing gets a jolt of java. Coffee aficionados will find a lot here to broaden their culinary imaginations.
The Monk Of Mokha by Dave Eggers
Eggers portrays Yemeni American Mokhtar Alkhanshali, who, after an unruly childhood in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, a transformative stay in Yemen with his grandfather, and success as a car salesman, finally finds his calling, which proves to be quixotic and dangerous: he commits himself to restoring Yemen’s long-forgotten standing as the world’s first and best coffee producer. Eggers crisply recounts coffee’s delectably roguish history, into which Mokhtar’s Sisyphean struggles fit perfectly.
The New Rules of Coffee A Modern Guide for Everyone by Jordan Michelman & Zachary Carlsen
An illustrated guide to the essential rules for enjoying coffee both at home and in cafes, including tips on storing and serving coffee, coffee growing, roasting and brewing, plus facts, lore, and popular culture from around the globe.
Where The Wild Coffee Grows : The Untold Story Of Coffee From The Cloud Forests Of Ethiopia To Your Cup by Jeff Koehler
Koehler, author of the IACP-winning Darjeeling, explores the history, development, and spread of coffee throughout the globe in this well-researched book. From the remotest parts of the world to large cities, coffee is truly a global product, and the trade is a nexus for colonialism, religion, culture, economics, and agriculture. While focused on the beverage’s past, this book argues that Ethiopia may also be the future of coffee, as its trees are the hardiest at battling rust and other diseases along with being the most trait-diverse, which is increasingly important as climate change is affecting various growing regions.
The World Atlas Of Coffee : From Beans To Brewing–Coffees Explored, Explained And Enjoyed by James Hoffmann
One of the world’s favorite beverages is dissected in this encyclopedia that introduces the coffee plant and its harvesting, processing, and trade and discusses the buying and preparation of the drink before embarking on a world coffee tour.
Fiction
Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series Series, Book 1 by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.
Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most importantly, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.
The Coffee Trader by David Liss
Set in Amsterdam in the mid-1600s, where Jews could escape persecution and practice their religion freely, the dubious hero is Miguel Lienzo, a former secret Jew who has fled his native Portugal for this city of freedom. Once a successful commodities broker, Miguel is down on his luck until he tastes a strange foreign beverage called coffee and decides that the lowly bean is the key to regaining his fortunes. Miguel’s convoluted and illegal plan for importing coffee leads to entanglements with enemies old and new and to a relationship with his brother’s wife, an independent woman trapped in a restrictive culture.
Crema : A Haunted Romance In Three Chapters by Johnnie Christmas (graphic novel)
Esme, a barista, feels invisible, like a ghost… also, when Esme drinks too much coffee she actually sees ghosts. Yara, the elegant heir to a coffee plantation, is always seen, but only has eyes for Esme. Their world is turned upside down when the strange ghost of an old-world nobleman begs Esme to take his letter from New York City to a haunted coffee farm in Brazil, to reunite him with his lost love of a century ago.
Death by Coffee: A Bookstore Cafe Mystery by Alex Erickson
When Krissy Hancock and her best friend Vicki decide to open a bookstore café in their new town of Pine Hills, Ohio, they decide to call it Death by Coffee, after Krissy’s father’s most famous mystery novel. Little do they know how well the name fits.
On their very first day of business, Brendon Lawyer huffily takes his coffee…to the grave. It seems he had a severe allergy to peanuts—but how could there have been nuts in his coffee? And who stole his emergency allergy medication?
Death Of A Bean Counter by Sandra Balzo
Maggy Thorsen’s head is spinning thanks to partner Sarah Kingston’s latest idea — selling luxe espresso machines in their Wisconsin coffeehouse, Uncommon Grounds. But Maggy soon faces a far bigger problem when her fiance, sheriff Jake Pavlik, makes an official call on the coffee house’s star barista, Amy Caprese. Amy’s wealthy new beau, investment adviser Kip Fargo, has been shot dead in his bed — and Amy is the last known person to see him alive. Kip had just proposed to Amy, but she turned him down, triggering a terrible argument and making Amy the prime suspect.
Double Shot Death by Emmeline Duncan
At Campathon, an annual eco-friendly festival held on a farm outside of Portland … Sage has scored a coveted place for her Ground Rules coffee cart thanks to her new-ish boyfriend, Bax, who’s friendly with Maya, one of the musicians performing … When Sage stumbles upon a dead body in the nearby woods–his hand still clutching one of her coffee mugs–it’s clear that someone’s grudge boiled over into murder.
Espresso Shot by Cleo Coyle (Coffeehouse Mysteries series)
New York City coffeehouse manager Clare Cosi’s ex-husband and business partner is marrying the editor of a scandal magazine. But someone has decided to kill the obnoxious Breanne Summour before the wedding. Having been hired to create a gourmet coffee and dessert bar for the nuptials at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Clare is dragged into protecting the bridezilla. Coyle’s “Coffeehouse” books are superb examples of the cozy genre because of their intelligent cast of characters, their subtle wit, and their knowledge of the coffee industry used to add depth and flavor to the stories. Recipes and coffee-making tips are nice pluses.
Also Holiday Grind by Cleo Coyle
Grounds For Murder : A Coffee Lover’s Mystery by Tara Lush
When her best but most difficult employee switches sides days before a state barista championship, coffee-shop owner Lana Lewis investigates jilted lovers, a shrimp-boat captain, and a mafia-connected surfer to prove her innocence of a rival’s murder.
The Taste Of Sugar : A Novel by Marisel Vera
Up in the mountainous coffee region of Utuado, Vicente Vega and Valentina Sanchez labor to keep their small farm from the creditors. When the Spanish-American War and the great San Ciriaco Hurricane of 1899 bring devastating upheaval, the young couple is lured, along with thousands of other puertorriquenos, to the sugar plantations of Hawaii-another US territory-where they are confronted by the hollowness of America’s promises of prosperity.
-Archana, Adult Services & Acquisitions Librarian