Ember & Tide

At 74 degrees Celsius, chef Mara Calloway knows her consommé is three degrees short of perfection, and at Meridian, her family's coastal restaurant, three degrees is the difference between triumph and collapse. Mara has built her life on this kind of precision, on temperature, timing, and the discipline to never let a broth boil in her kitchen. But when a scathing review shakes Meridian's reputation and her brother Tomás arrives home with secrets of his own, the carefully measured world she has inherited begins to unravel. The only investor willing to underwrite Meridian's survival is Jonah Briggs, a charismatic restaurateur whose family empire has long cast a shadow over the Calloways' kitchen. Jonah carries old debts with Mara she has spent years refusing to forgive, and his brother Sam's easy charm only complicates the tension simmering behind the pass. Watching it all is Elise Duval, Meridian's observant new sous chef, whose quiet loyalty becomes the bridge between two families on the brink. As salt air drifts through the dining room and embers glow low in the hearth, Mara must choose between the legacy she inherited and the future she never planned to want. Saving Meridian may require surrendering control to the very people who could take everything from her, or finally letting someone else help carry the heat.