The Lil' Gourmet Cookbook focuses on food that is good for you. The best kind of food and exercise create a harmonious lifestyle. It's not about a lot of running and kicking but about being sensible and consistent. There are foods we must forget about in order to have a healthier lifestyle. They fall into many categories, but basically, they are foods that may taste good but will inevitably make you unhealthy. Let's eat right. Let's be right.

Monday evening comn' down-the dreariest day of the week anywhere, but especially in the ghettos (yea, y'all, they still there) where people have taken their hangovers and other symptoms of a fast weekend to their individual plantations around town (if they're lucky enough to have one) return to their shacks for four/five more days of clock punching and locksteppin' before the Eagle flies. Then was then and now is now. What's the difference?

Portrait of Simone is the poignant story of a young soldier stationed in the Deep South, in the recent past, and his romance with a woman nearly twice his age. Simone is mysterious, alluring, charming, complex. The author brings us the story of true love, love that grows deeper with the passage of time, and pays tribute to the woman known as Simone.

Odie Hawkins utilizes the same thrust, power, and creativity that made Ghetto Sketches his first bestseller. He has moved the focus from Chicago to Los Angeles; and once again, he has populated his stories with unforgettable characters-the telephone freak, the tenants of Mrs. Solomon's apartment building, and a few surrealistic types. The Secret Music we all hear is echoed within these stories . . .

Midnight offers us a sensitive view inside the soul of a young African American gangster who is influenced by an older man, a convict, to look into his African side. "You may not be what they've told you that you are, over here. When you check out where we came from."

An enchanting intro to a collection of unforgettable characters. Bobo, Burks, Leo (sometimes, when into imaginative self-hatred, alias Tony De Medrow), Billy Woods, Herb Cross, Bruce, Mooney, Johnny Fox, Bernard Kelly, and a few others who lived in the same neighborhood and hung out on the same corners. Some of the less informed thought we were a "gang" because we spent a lot of time together, but that was the result of them being unable to penetrate the esoteric haze surrounding our relationships. There were times, to be honest, when we didn't know what was happening either.

Henrik Malan was the South African secret agent who devised the plan to have the Black American ghettos destroy themselves by supplying them with a cheap but highly addictive drug known on the streets as "Ghetto Blaster."

Chester L. Simmons, nicknamed "The Great Lawd Buddha" by his hip constituents because of his almond shaped eyes and his generous tummy, is one of those delightfully free spirits that life gives the world now and then. With his storytelling he sometimes fuses reality and creativity into a seamless possibility; or seamless possibilities. He has been known to bend the truth, if the truth was not creating the right kind of life-vibe for him.

Let Chester take you on a journey through Spain in his search to find himself-and write about it. He hooks up with "El Encanto," a star-crossed matador. Then back to the States, where he meets and marries the love of his life. A honeymoon in West Africa leaves them yearning for a place they've never known, but feel is their home . . .

In the post-Watts Rebellion 1970s, Chester L. Simmons takes up the study of martial arts-Hapkido and Tae Kwon Do. Author Odie Hawkins, using his special blend of wry humor, incisiveness, and sensitivity, takes alter ego Simmons through that experience, as well as a series of misadventures writing movie and television scripts for Hollyweird studios.