The forces that lead a fictional suburban woman to run an escort service … the best way to make a vegan dessert taste good … what fairy tale life is like from the troll’s point of view – just some of the subjects covered in books to be featured, along with their authors, at this year’s Baltimore Book Festival.

The lighter side of literary Baltimore got top billing yesterday as Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced the festival line-up, touted the expansion of the event a block south to accommodate a new sponsor (Center Stage) and iced a few vegan cupcakes.

“When we do these big events and celebrations of art, it brings people in and gets them to fall in love with Baltimore,” Rawlings-Blake said, as she joined one of the festival’s featured authors, Doron Petersan, a winner of the Food Network show “Cupcake Wars.”

“The decoration of the cupcake is especially important since I use a vegan recipe, and some are hesitant,” Peterson explained, as the media snapped photos and attendees clapped.

Outside the room, there was less applause for the mayor’s remarks touting the Book Festival and other recent violence-free public events such as the “Sailabration” and Grand Prix as evidence that Baltimore-bashers are wrong.

Pointing out the 153 murders so far this year, including one a few blocks from Center Stage last month in Mid-Town, the Baltimore Sun asked community leaders and academics about the mayor’s remarks and recorded the ensuing outrage and eye-rolls. (A major Book Festival sponsor themselves, the Sun also ran a more positive story off the mayor’s morning news conference.)

Chick Lit, Radical Books, SciFi and More

Among the featured authors at the festival (Sept. 28-30 in Mt. Vernon Place) is former Sun reporter Laura Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan detective series set in Baltimore and standalone novels (like the latest “And When She Was Good”) that typically dominate the best-seller lists.

Another best-selling novelist at the Festival will be chick-lit author Emily Giffen (her latest is “Where We Belong”)  along with Teresa Giudice from The Real Housewives of New Jersey, author of “Fabulicious, Fast and Fit” an authentic Italian cookbook.

Also interesting in the line-up: Steven Galloway, author of “The Cellist of Sarajevo,” and Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, along with Denis Moynihan, to talk about their book “The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance and Hope.”

At the Radical Bookfair Pavilion,  a 7 p.m. Friday session features Kate Khatib, Mike McGuire, Lester Spence and others reflecting on the Occupy movement. On Saturday at noon, Shawn Francis Peters will discuss his book “The Catonsville Nine,” and on Sunday at 2 p.m. New School professor Richard Wolff will give a talk called “Democracy at Work: a Cure for Capitalism.”

Children’s book authors include Ellen Datlow, who gathered the stories for the anthology “Troll’s-Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales,” and Newbery Award winner Laura Amy Schlitz, of The Park School, Shannon Hale (“Princess Academy”) and Andrew Gidwitz (“A Tale Dark and Grimm.”)

Literary activities abound, including the City Paper Book Swap, staged readings “by” Edgar Allan Poe (these are always excellent!) and a Saturday noon workshop at Center Stage with playwrights including Neil LaBute and Christopher Durang.

New this year is the Center Stage participation (there’s a Saturday Open House), a Science Fiction and Fantasy Stage and an area where people can check out the technology at the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

And watch for festival posters by the Sun’s cartoonist, KAL (Kevin Kallaugher), which features The City that Reads under bombardment by – what else? – books.

– Laura Flynn also contributed to this story