Toby Andrews is a nice guy and a great cook. Unfortunately, when he arrives at Evan Blankenship's failing Le Potiron restaurant, he's out of options. A series of mishaps at his last job has pretty much ended his career as a chef in fine dining in New York. The darling of haute cuisine, Tad Christopher is out to make sure Toby "never works in this town again!"

Meanwhile, Evan's restaurant is failing and he knows it. He's sleeping in the basement because of the disaster created by his former business partner Dominic Giguere. When Toby offers Evan a way out of his current problems and a future for his restaurant, the heat in the kitchen goes up a notch.

Maxfield's Stirring Up Trouble is a fun read! The characters are engaging and the sexual tension between Evan and Toby is hot to say the least. As Toby comes up with one crazy idea after another to make Le Potiron a success, Evan does his best to stay out of the line of fire behind his kitchen wall. What's Evan going to do when the wall comes down? Watching these two work out their personal and professional relationships kept me reading late into the night. Stirring Up Trouble is worth 4 stars and I've already started reading the sequel, All Stirred Up! ( )

Short stories starring Kimo, billed as a mixture of erotica and mysteries.

The erotic stories are explicit but not particularly erotic. The mysteries are OK, but probably not very interesting for anyone who hadn't read any of the novels and got to know Kimo. One of them has an Indonesian diplomat as a character and is a great disappointment, revealing the author's ignorance about Indonesia and lack of research. ( )