The Cookbook Collector

Two sisters, opposite in every way: twenty-eight-year-old Emily is a CFO of an internet start-up, twenty-three-year-old Jess is a graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily's boyfriend is fantastically successful. Jess's boyfriend is an environmental activist. But the dot-com bubble must burst, while Jess's work on a cache of rare cookbooks uncovers strange erotic drawings and marginalia that bring her closer to their mysterious collector... Rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel of substitutions: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that lasts.

Allegra Goodman is the author of six novels, including Kaaterskill Falls - a finalist for the US National Book Award. In the UK, her most recent novel Intuition was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and longlisted for the Orange Prize 2009. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.