Delicious!

Ruth Reichl's bestselling fiction debut about sisters, family ties, gourmet food, and a young woman who must finally let go of guilt and grief to embrace her own true gifts is a dazzling addition to Reichl's beloved memoirs that have long illuminated the theme of how food defines us. Billie Breslin has travelled far from her California home to take a job at Delicious!, the most iconic food magazine in New York. When the publication is summarily shut down, Billie is offered a new job: staying behind in the magazine's deserted downtown mansion offices to uphold the "Delicious Guarantee"--a public relations hotline for complaints and recipe inquiries--until further notice. What she doesn't know is that this boring, lonely job will be the portal to a life-changing discovery. Delicious! carries the reader to the colourful world of downtown New York, from the lively food shop in Little Italy where Billie works on weekends to a hidden room in the magazine's library where she discovers the letters of Lulu Swan, a plucky twelve-year-old, who wrote to the legendary chef James Beard during World War II. Lulu's courage in the face of loss inspires Billie to come to terms with her own issues--the panic attacks that occur every time she even thinks about cooking, the truth about the big sister she adored, and her ability to open her heart to love.