This is an unofficial plug.

This is a very good book for coaxing unadventurous cooks to try new and tasty things. We've enjoyed about a dozen recipes from this book and been vastly inspired by it as well.  If you don't cook much, it's comforting to see pictures of someone doing it right.  Each recipe has at least one "finished" picture, in all its garnished and nicely presented glory.  The finished picture is helpful to envision how the final product will taste.  Each recipe also has an average of 3 how-to pictures.  It's not really a picture of every step but again, it's really useful to have visual clues of what to expect.

The dessert section is really really fun to look at.  The appetizers are also fun to browse.

The recipes tend toward the slightly esoteric for us.  That's partly because they seem to use a lot of European ingredients, eg creme fraiche.  We don't even know how to pronounce that.  Or gooseberries.  Or fennel bulbs.  It's also kind of strange for us because they keep calling for fresh veggies and meat as opposed to the pasta and spaghetti sauce like we normally stock...  :-)  Take heart though, it has some simple recipes like Chile Beef with Nachos too.