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Also by Allegra Goodman:

This Is Not About Us, February 2026
Hardcover / e-Book
Sam, January 2023
Hardcover / e-Book
The Cookbook Collector, July 2010
Hardcover
Intuition, March 2006
Hardcover

THE COOKBOOK COLLECTOR
By: Allegra Goodman

The Dial Press
July 2010
On Sale: July 6, 2010
416 pages
ISBN: 0385340850
EAN: 9780385340854
Hardcover
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Fiction

Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment.

Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much—as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.

Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: 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 stays.

Media Buzz

Morning Edition - December 10, 2010
All Things Considered - August 19, 2010
Morning Edition - August 16, 2010
Fresh Air - NPR - July 22, 2010
Fresh Air - NPR - July 21, 2010