I haven't found a cookbook that I love yet, but allrecipes.com has a lot of good recipes. You can search by the course, special dietary needs, ingredients, etc. For the most part they are user-submitted recipes. They all have ratings based on other people who have made them and there's a comment section, both of which are both very helpful. 

I highly recommend Mark Bittman's "How to cook everything" huge, huge red cookbook.  I am a fairly experienced home cook, and I still grab this book whenever I'm trying something new.  Its simple but covers every variation of a recipe possible, so it's great for a beginner but will serve you for a long, long time. 

Joy of Cooking is another book my friends swear by... I don't own it, but have had recipes from it made for me and they've all been fantastic. 

There's a lot of recipes out there, try starting out with ones with less than a half hour of prep time and see how that goes.

Hungry Girl is amazing! She has all different kinds of things in her cookbooks & me, being only 19, can shop for the items at the store & cook them by myself lol. They're all healthy too. She has 2 different cookbooks & a website: www.hungrygirl.com