It looks like Anthony Bourdain has been thinking, and writing, a lot while shooting "No Reservations" for the Travel Channel (which, btw, is the most awesome show on the planet). Daniel Halpern has just bought Anthony's Bourdain's next three books for Ecco from Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management.

The first book, Cooks, is a follow up to Kitchen Confidential, in which Bourdain explores how the industry he loves - and the people in it - have changed (if they've changed) since his years in the kitchen, and tracks the bizarre changes in his own life, along with more frank observations on dining, cuisine and the grim/glamorous business of cooking. "More about WHO is cooking in America than WHAT'S cooking," says Bourdain.

The second book entitled No New Messages, is, as Bourdain describes it, "a crime novel about a disgraced former 'It Boy' novelist and a disgraced chef (fresh off a public humiliation on a reality series), involved in a murder on the Caribbean island where both are laying low. The title refers to the unanswered e-mails the writer sends to an ex-lover in Asia; beautiful, heartfelt missives which, though descriptive, are at variance with a somewhat uglier reality. Dark, fairly scandalous with recognizable overtones, lots of sex and violence and a colorful cast of International Expat douche bags." Bourdain certainly has a way with words. I wonder how much of this is autobiographical?

The third book is Bourdain's account/memoir of moving his family to a small village in Vietnam to spend a year in total immersion there, taking time to get to know his neighbors and deeply exploring Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Think A Year in Provence meets The Quiet American meets The Mosquito Coast. But will there be explosions?

Halpern was able to score this goldmine of literary lasagna because he bought the paperback rights to Kitchen Confidential from Karen Rinaldi. "Tony and I have cut into a variety of questionable cuts of meat over the years," says Halbern, "and along the way managed to forge a terrific friendship."

I hope none of these three books involve the testicle eating that seems to be prevalent in almost every one of his episodes of "No Reservations."