Hey, it's Empire's book of the day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. All right, I will not name names,

but sometimes super famous people do book projects, say a kid's book or a cookbook, and you can tell.

You can tell when it's sincere, when it comes from somewhere, and you can also tell when it's a phoned-in vanity project. Today's book is a novel

about the latter. In Adam Roberts's food person, our main character has to ghost write a cookbook

for a big-time celebrity who doesn't like food. But as Roberts tells NPR Scott Simon, he wanted

to push past this cliche of a celeb as vapid, empty shell,

and find something worth connecting with in all his characters.

That's ahead.

Isabella Pasternak loses her job at an online food magazine when she mucks up a chocolate souffle on Instagram live.

On the rebound, she's offered the opportunity to write,

that is, to ghost write, a cookbook for Molly Babcock,

an actor with a reputation for bad behavior and a career in need of a reboot.

But does Molly have any recipes for food or for life? Food Person is the debut

novel from Adam Roberts, a food writer himself who joins us from our studios in New York. Thanks so

much for being with us. Thanks for having me, Scott. This is really cool. It's cool for us. At first

glance, this doesn't seem like such a promising partnership, does it?

No.

Molly is a celebrity who does not like food, and Isabella is as passionate about food as anyone is passionate about anything.

Her whole life is food, you know, and it's somewhat autobiographical because even right now, as I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch.

So some people are just built that way where food is their priority.

And Isabella, she just loves cooking and she loves collecting cookbooks.

And cookbooks are her passion, which is sort of what sets up the conflict with Molly,

...