SAGA | EPICUREAN VENTURES:
High Gastronomy

An 7-book interconnected saga set in the Azura Island narrative universe.

Genre: Contemporary romance with corporate thriller elements, focused on emotional drama and personal growth.

Core Premise: Professional, independent, and ambitious women working within the Epicurean Ventures gastronomic holding company. They face ongoing sabotage that disrupts their daily professional lives. Each book follows one woman and her romance, as her career and the tensions of corporate sabotage drive her personal evolution.

Key Themes:

Female Empowerment & Professional Life: Women who own their apartments, manage their careers, and make their own choices.
Past Traumas: Grounded, relatable obstacles like painful past relationships, controlling families, or frustrated expectations—not extreme tragedies.
Realistic Emotional Growth: Protagonists learn to live with their traumas, overcoming them enough to move forward, make healthy decisions, and maintain sound relationships.
Conscious Romance: Relationships built on communication, clear boundaries, and emotional responsibility. No "magical happy endings"—just meaningful, realistic, and positive closures.
Corporate Thriller: Sabotage, leaks, and fraud that impact their work life, creating tension and serving as a catalyst for making tough calls and facing internal conflicts.

Structure: Seven books, each centered on a different woman and her partner. Each story is a standalone but connected by the same universe and the overarching thread of internal sabotage.

Current Status: Volume 1 is available for full reading.

EPICUREAN VENTURES SAGA STORIES

Contemporary Romance 01:

The Algorithm Next Door

My Neighbor's Algorithm" is the introductory novel and cornerstone of the Epicurean Ventures saga, a transmedia narrative universe composed of 7 interconnected works. This book serves as the gateway to the company's corporate ecosystem, presenting its dynamics, its culture of gastronomic innovation, and the key characters that will orbit in subsequent installments.

The plot follows Lia Bailleres, a trend analyst at Epicurean Ventures, who, after a youth marked by paternal abandonment, lives sheltered in the security of algorithms and platonic loves. Her reality is challenged when she discovers that her neighbor, Pat Rive —an influential nutrition expert and single father— is the personification of the ideal she has tried to avoid to protect her heart.

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02. A Romance with My Crush

Vera Ellison has one non-negotiable goal: becoming the Customer Experience Manager at TAME, the most exclusive restaurant in Azuria Bay. The problem is her boss, Ian Thatcher—a tyrannical star chef who happens to be her former high school quarterback and her ultimate unrequited crush. To him, Vera is invisible. To her, he’s the man who broke her heart without ever even knowing her name.

Everything changes when the holding company’s majority partner, Dax Riu, offers Vera her dream job. The catch? She has to act as a "shadow," monitoring every move the volatile chef makes. Caught in a web of shifting loyalties, Vera must manage a corporate sabotage crisis and a series of mass food poisonings that threaten to shut the restaurant down for good.

Tropes: Enemies-to-Lovers, Workplace Romance, High School Crush.

03. Songs for Your Playlist

Ciara Wetherby is a logistics expert running a high-traffic dark kitchen hub. After being ghosted eight years ago by her first love, she channeled her heartbreak into a side hustle as a playlist influencer, successfully monetizing her emotions through musical curation.

The friction spikes when Vance Haverford returns. Now a renowned sound designer, Vance uses strategic complaints on his food orders to force a face-to-face confrontation with Ciara. What she doesn’t know is that Vance has also infiltrated her digital life as MidnightSplice, acting as both her rival and her anonymous collaborator on Spotify.

Tropes: Second Chance Romance, Neighbors-to-Lovers, Digital Secret Identity.

04. One Dance, One Secret

Galia Montgomery, the brilliant CFO of Epicurean Ventures, lives a life of mathematical precision built on balance sheets and audits. After deciding that men her own age are a "minefield," she allows herself a single night of chaos with Hugo Bramwell—a charismatic dancer eight years her junior who vanishes after a volcanic encounter.

Fate intervenes through a corporate wellness initiative, where Galia discovers her "ghost dancer" is now her personal trainer. As she fights her prejudices regarding the age gap, she uncovers Hugo’s double life: he is the owner of AUREXIA, a health empire, and a secret billionaire grappling with a personal tragedy.

Tropes: Age Gap (Reverse), Secret Billionaire, One Night Stand to Lovers.

05. Messages in the Coffee

Chloe Harrington is the relentless Head of HR at Epicurean Ventures. In the world of high-end gastronomy, she’s the ultimate fixer, but now she’s facing a fire she can’t categorize: a massive sabotage campaign is siphoning off her staff, and the year's most critical event depends on a "Suicide Squad" of replacements that looks more like a circus.

However, Chloe’s real chaos is internal. After being betrayed by Diego—the man who used their intimacy as the blueprint for a software program—Chloe armored her heart. Her only refuge is the anonymity of TikTok, where she runs a secret Home Organizing account, finding peace by arranging jars in ASMR clips. As her real life unravels, Chloe tries to convince herself that if she can organize a pantry to perfection, she can stop Diego—now back to "save" the company—from cluttering her soul again.

Tropes: Slow Burn, Second Chance Romance, Workplace Romance, Digital Secret Identity.

06. Oops... My Rival Is My Neighbor

Tara Vercetti is the CTO of Epicurean Ventures and the mastermind behind their security systems; through sheer, fierce persistence, she landed her dream job at nineteen. She’s blunt, hyperactive, and has zero tolerance for mediocrity. Her only sanctuary is the virtual world where, under the alias CodeQueen25, she reigns as the deadliest player on the server.

Her life collides with Zyan, the new neighbor in apartment 410—a video game designer with a heavy emotional past and a confidence that borders on arrogance. Zyan has built Azura Island, a hyper-realistic metaverse inspired by his late mother’s memory. While in reality he’s the "Adonis" who gets under her skin, in the game he is ShadowBite: the only rival capable of challenging her throne.

When the sabotage against Tara’s company crosses into the physical world, the game becomes real. Both are forced to realize the enemy is much closer than they ever imagined.

Tropes: Enemies-to-Lovers, Secret Identity, and Forced Proximity.

07. Hacking the Chef

Blue Bjornsson is a product designer, video game tester, and padel coach at Azuria Bay’s most exclusive club—all just to make ends meet. Accustomed to navigating the whims of the elite, Blue doesn’t expect her next student to be Mosi Delacroix, the charismatic star chef and co-founder of the Epicurean Ventures holding company, a man who appears to have everything under absolute control.

However, behind Mosi’s facade of success lies severe anxiety and a desperate need for sensory disconnection, which he only finds through practices of extreme submission.

The peace Mosi builds with Blue—a sanctuary of surfing, gaming, and beach walks—is shattered when she anonymously receives videos of his private sessions, plunging them both into an abyss of shame and distrust. As the sabotage against the company turns violent, Blue and Mosi must decide if their connection can survive the harsh light of reality.

Tropes: Age Gap , BDSM, Found Family.

SAGA | EPICUREAN VENTURES: High Gastronomy