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.

If any contemporary author deserves to wear the mantle of Jane Austen, it's [Allegra] Goodman, whose subtle, astute social comedies perfectly capture the quirks of human nature. This dazzling novel . . . is Goodman's most robust, fully realized and trenchantly meaningful work yet. - Publishers Weekly , Starred Review Fans of Goodman's lovely, nuanced novels have a treat in store with this tale of two sisters. - Entertainment Weekly Goodman is remarkably successful in creating rich, engaging characters and a complex story of love and identity. -Library Journal , starred review

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.