Summary: Recipe for a Perfect Wife is a dual-narrative novel by Karma Brown that follows two women, Alice Hale in the present day and Nellie Murdoch in the 1950s. While moving into a new house, Alice finds an old cookbook belonging to Nellie, the previous owner. Alice becomes absorbed in cooking her way through the book, but soon discovers that while the recipes are harmless, Nellie's life contained dark secrets and her marriage was far from perfect. As Alice grapples with her own failing marriage, she finds parallels between her life and Nellie's, leading her to uncover the sinister side of Nellie's story and hatch some secrets of her own.