. Originally self-published The Recipe Club received tremendous support from booksellers and fans, and has been featured in the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Everyday with Rachel Ray, People, and Real Simple.

. A celebration of strong friendship and food told through a collection of hand-written childhood letters, emails, third-person narration, photographs, drawings, and, dozens of recipes, developed by New York Times food columnist Melissa Clark.

. The book has already inspired "Recipe Club" groups in New York, San Francisco, Houston, Seattle, Denver, Boulder, and Chicago, in which women meet to share recipes and real-life stories, and renew friendships.

Lilly and Val are lifelong friends, united as much by their differences as by their similarities. Lilly, dramatic and seemingly confident, lives in the shadow of her beautiful, wayward mother and craves the attention of her distant, disapproving father. Val, shy, idealistic, and surprisingly ambitious, struggles with her desire to break free from her demanding housebound mother and a father whose life is defined by thwarted dreams.

In childhood, "LillyPad" and "ValPal" form an exclusive two-person club, exchanging intimate letters in which they share hopes, fears, deepest secrets, and recipes-from Lilly's "Lovelorn Lasagna" to Valerie's "Forgiveness Tapenade." Readers can cook along as they follow the Lilly and Val's journey through time facing the challenges of independence, the joys and heartbreaks of first love, and the emotional complexities of family, identity, mortality, and goals deferred.

The Recipe Club sustains Lilly and Val's bond throughout the decades, through divergent paths and misunderstandings that threaten to break them apart-until the fateful day when an act of kindness becomes an unforgivable betrayal.

Now, years later, while trying to rebuild the trust they've lost, Lilly and Val reunite, only to uncover a shocking secret that could destroy their friendship . . . or bring them ever closer.