America’s favorite storyteller, Pat Conroy, is back with a unique cookbook that only he could conceive. Delighting us with tales of his passion for cooking and good food and the people, places, and great meals he has experienced, Conroy mixes them together with mouthwatering recipes from the Deep South and the world beyond.

It all started thirty years ago with a chance purchase of The Escoffier Cookbook, an unlikely and daunting introduction for the beginner. But Conroy was more than up to the task. He set out with unwavering determination to learn the basics of French cooking—stocks and dough—and moved swiftly on to veal demi-glace and pâte brisée. With the help of his culinary accomplice, Suzanne Williamson Pollak, Conroy mastered the dishes of his beloved South as well as the cuisine he has savored in places as far away from home as Paris, Rome, and San Francisco.

Each chapter opens with a story told with the inimitable brio of the author. We see Conroy in New Orleans celebrating his triumphant novel The Prince of Tides at a new restaurant where there is a contretemps with its hardworking young owner/chef—years later he discovered the earnest young chef was none other than Emeril Lagasse; we accompany Pat and his wife on their honeymoon in Italy and wander with him, wonderstruck, through the markets of Umbria and Rome; we learn how a dinner with his fighter-pilot father was preceded by the Great Santini himself acting out a perilous night flight that would become the last chapters of one of his son’s most beloved novels. These tales and more are followed by corresponding recipes—from Breakfast Shrimp and Grits and Sweet Potato Rolls to Pappardelle with Prosciutto and Chestnuts and Beefsteak Florentine to Peppered Peaches and Creme Brulee. A master storyteller and passionate cook, Conroy believes that “A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal.”

On February 2, 2002, Stephen King, Pat Conroy, John Grisham and Peter Straub gathered at New York's Town Hall for a very special evening. These four bestselling authors stepped up to the microphone to raise money for one of the most recognizable voices in audiobooks, Frank Muller, an actor who sustained terrible injuries from a motorcycle accident. Muller, who has recorded hundreds of novels, including many by these authors, may never work again.

This once-in-a-lifetime event is captured here, and 100% of all profits will be donated to The Wavedancer Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports Frank Muller and other artists who fall prey to illness or injury and can no longer perform.

Grisham kicks off the evening with a heartfelt reading of an excerpt from his blockbuster bestseller The Summons. He's followed by Straub who captivates the audience with a hair-raising episode from Black House, the latest thriller he co-authored with Stephen King. King changes pace with a joyful reading of his classic short story The Revenge of Lardass Hogan. Finally, Conroy engages the audience in a hilarious chat on the art of writing.

A unique program that pays tribute to a true master craftsman, this audiobook is an unforgettable listening experience.

Wolfe began his collegiate career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1916, when he was fifteen, with a freshman year marked by obscurity and loneliness. By his junior year he had emerged as a recognized and popular figure in campus life, a participant in organizations, clubs, and fraternities as well as the editor of several student publications. He began in these apprenticeship years his ascendancy to iconic literary status.

Included in The Magical Campus is Wolfe's first published work, the poem "A Field in Flanders" from the November 1917 issue of the Magazine. Here too is the poem "The Challenge," Wolfe's first piece to be reprinted off campus, in his hometown newspaper and elsewhere across the Southeast. "A Cullenden of Virginia" represents his inaugural foray into published fiction; and his folk plays, such as The Return of Buck Gavin and Deferred Payment, mark the start of his unrealized ambitions to be a playwright.

Though they lack the sophistication and scale of the grand fictions that now define Wolfe's place in literature, these and others of his student publications testify to the potential he had tapped into through instruction and encouragement at Chapel Hill.