"A bold, intoxicating, page-turner... a thrilling, audacious story about women daring to take control."--Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and the Six

When Alice Hale reluctantly leaves a promising career in New York, following her husband to the suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. However, she is determined to become a writer--and to work hard to build the kind of life her husband dreams of.

At first, the old house seems to resent Alice as much as she resents it, but when she finds an old cookbook tucked away in the basement, she becomes captivated by its previous owner: 1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch.

As Alice cooks her way through the past, she begins to settle into her new surroundings, even as her friends and family grow concerned that she has embraced them too fully and drifted away from her usual self.

Alice justifies the changes as research for her novel...but when she discovers clues to Nellie's life within the cookbook's pages--and in a series of mysterious unsent letters penned to her mother--she quickly realizes that the housewife's secrets may have been anything but harmless.

As she uncovers a more sinister side to Nellie's marriage and with pressure mounting in her own relationship, Alice realizes that to protect herself she must harbour a few secrets of her own...