Mailbox Monday - May 11th

This is my first time in participating in Mailbox Monday. This is a weekly event hosted by Marcia over at The Printed Page.

This week I recevied from Simon and Schuster, In The Kitchen by Monica Ali. This book will be available June 2009 from Scribner. This book appealed to me due to many of my loves, such as my love of cooking, British Authors, Hell's Kitchen and all things Gordon Ramsey! I am looking forward to digging into this one ASAP!

Synopsis of In The Kitchen By Monica Ali from Barnes and Noble. Com

Gabriel L ightfoot is an enterprising man from a northern E ngland mill town, making good in London. As executive chef at the once-splendid Imperial H otel, he is trying to run a tight kitchen. But his integrity, to say nothing of his sanity, is under constant challenge from the competing demands of an exuberant multinational staff, a gimlet-eyed hotel management, and business partners with whom he is secretly planning a move to a restaurant of his own. D espite the pressures, all his hard work looks set to pay off.

Until a worker is found dead in the kitchen's basement. It is a small death, a lonely death — but it is enough to disturb the tenuous balance of Gabe's life.

Elsewhere, Gabriel faces other complications. His father is dying of cancer, his girlfriend wants more from their relationship, and the restaurant manager appears to be running an illegal business under Gabe's nose.

Enter L ena, an eerily attractive young woman with mysterious ties to the dead man. Under her spell, Gabe makes a decision, the consequences of which strip him naked and change the course of the life he knows — and the future he thought he wanted.

Readers and reviewers have been stunned by the breadth of humanity in Monica Ali's fiction. She is compared to Dickens and called one of three British novelists who are "the voice of a generation" by Time magazine. In the Kitchenis utterly contemporary yet has all the drama and heartbreak of a great nineteenth-century novel. Ali is sheer pleasure to read, a truly magnificent writer.

As always, if you want to see what others found in their mailboxes this past week, check out Marcia's blog at The Printed Page.

Happy Reading!!