Lucy has learned that her parents are hoping to sell the restaurant because it is getting difficult to handle. Heather then shows up at the Kebab Kitchen after lunch and finds ridiculous and expensive things she expects the restaurant to fix within five days or be shut down. Heather throws insults at Lucy, creating a scene between the two women that comes back to cause trouble for Lucy and her family when Lucy discovers that Heather is the new health inspector who uses her position to settle vendettas and possibly get bribes. At the bar, they encounter a former high school bully, Heather Banks, there with her boyfriend, the best selling thriller novelist Paul Evans. On her first day home, Lucy goes to a bar with her longtime best friend, Katie Watson, with whom she is staying while in town. Immediately, Lucy gets dragged into waitressing for the Kebab Kitchen, her parents' Mediterranean restaurant.

In Hummus and Homicide by Tina Kashian, Lucy Berberian has just returned to her hometown of Ocean Crest on the Jersey Shore after quitting her job as a patent lawyer in Philadelphia.

Word on the grapevine is it's homicide, and Lucy's the number one suspect. Just minutes after eating at the Kebab Kitchen - where she's tallied up a whole list of bogus violations - she falls down dead in the street. The Gucci-toting ex-cheerleader is still as nasty as she was back in high school.and unfortunately, she's just taken over as the local health inspector. She could do without Heather Banks, though. It's fun to see their calico cat again, and to catch up with her old BFF, who's married to a cop now. Her parents have put in a new hummus bar, with every flavor from lemon to roasted red pepper. She doesn't even mind waitressing at the Kebab Kitchen. Things are slow in the off-season in this Jersey Shore town, but Lucy doesn't mind. When Lucy Berberian quits her Philadelphia law firm and heads home to Ocean Crest, she knows what she's getting - the scent of funnel cake, the sight of the wooden roller coaster, and the tastes of her family's Mediterranean restaurant.