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Shenanigan Stew
Paperback
Publisher Price: $13.99
Publisher: Paul Loe
Published: Nov 25 2026
Pages: 238
Weight: 0.62
Height: 0.54 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
ONE FAKE JUDGE. ONE CHILI COOK-OFF. A WHOLE TOWN WITH SOMETHING TO HIDE.
Kettle Bend, Texas, fall 1984. The town has one cafe worth the name, one mechanic who hasn't been rushed since Eisenhower, and one chance at glory: Ambrose Pettibone, the most feared food critic in the state, is coming to judge the annual chili cook-off.
There's just one problem. The man everybody is feeding, flattering and handing the key to the city isn't Ambrose Pettibone.
He's Boyd Tolliver, a down-on-his-luck Whirl-a-Chop salesman with a broken-down car, eight dollars and seventy-five cents, and a repo man on his trail. Being famous beats being broke, so Boyd plays along.
Meanwhile, the real judge is stranded across town with a secret of his own. And every cook in Kettle Bend, from the mayor on down, is working an angle to win. There's a bet being booked under a cafe register, a photographer with a wide hat and a long memory, and enough lies to fill a stock pot.
The prize is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. In Kettle Bend, it's everything.
Shenanigan Stew is a warm, laugh-out-loud small-town farce in the spirit of the classic TV comedies, where pride is the secret ingredient and every schemer and liar ends up in the same pot.
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