What about Delia? She's a bit on the 'safe' side and you'll probably need to up the quantities of salt, pepper, garlic and chili (except in the pudding department), but she very reliable as far as methods are concerned.
I bought my mother-out-law a copy of one of her books from amazon.com (as opposed to amazon.co.uk) and all the measurements had been converted into cups/US. You could buy from there if you would prefer that to using metric.
One of my absolute favourite food writers is Nigel Slater. All of his books make me want to run into the kitchen and start cooking. His book Appetite is brilliant, because most of the recipes don't really have measurements at all (which is the way I cook, except when baking). He writes beautifully and always simplifies, rather than complicates. The photographs are mouthwatering too, and I don't tend to like cookery books with photographs.
I hope this helps.
