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Billie Breslin has travelled far from her California home to take a job at Delicious, the most iconic food magazine in New York and, thus, the world. When the publication is suddenly shut down, the colourful staff, who have become an extended family for Billie, must pick up their lives and move on. Not Billie, though. She 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 restaurateurs and artisanal purveyors. And 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 letters lead Billie to a deeper understanding of history (and the history of food), but most important, 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.
Includes a bonus PDF of Billie's Gingerbread Recipe
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Creators
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Publisher
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Awards
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Release date
May 6, 2014 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780385393478
- File size: 373767 KB
- Duration: 12:58:40
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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First surprise--it's a novel! Audiobook listeners enamored with former New York Times restaurant critic and food editor Ruth Reichl's nonfiction works are in for a treat. Her fiction debut features delectable descriptions of foods and spices, embedded in the story of Billie Breslin's discerning palate. Narrator Julia Whelan gamely matches Billie's culinary adventures with a hearty range of voices and a myriad of accents to match the diversity of New York City, where Billie lands a job with an iconic food magazine. Her culinary explorations delve into ethnic-ingredient sourcing, ancestral recipes, chef and restaurateur encounters, artisanal purveyors of amazing tastes, and a cache of old letters linked to a legendary chef. A.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine -
March 3, 2014
Former New York Times restaurant critic and Gourmet editor Reichl’s (Tender at the Bone) first foray into fiction is like an iced white cake. It follows a traditional recipe, it is really sweet, and it is dull. A young California woman named Billie Breslin (a barely disguised Reichl) lands a job at a food magazine called Delicious! in New York City just before it is shuttered by budget-minded bigwigs. As part of an interim position fielding calls and correspondence from subscribers, Billie stays on as the lone employee in the old mansion from which the magazine was published for years. A stock character named Sammy, the fey former travel editor for the mag, leads her to a beautiful library on an upstairs floor, where they uncover letters written to the famous James Beard from a girl named Lulu during the Second World War—letters that have been hidden in a secret chamber by a long-gone librarian named Bertie. Billie embarks upon a scavenger hunt for the remaining the letters, and, in the end, on a journey to find their aging author. In order to get in as much foodie language as possible, Reichl has Billie working at a deli in Little Italy on the weekends, where she meets Mr. Complainer, her love interest. Though Reichl is a marvelous food writer, the language used here is often cloying.
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