Welcome aboard EMZ.
Personally love cookbooks and like Toots own a bunch.
And if I had to recommend just one it would the Joy of Cooking, as some have said.
But the web is a great place to find recipes. You can, and all of us here do, search for a recipe, and we often find more than we wanted.
Not to discourage you, I certainly don't want to do that.
But all recipes you read in books, or on the web, or find in the newspaper or magazines, or are recommended by, oh, Auntdot or some other nefarious person, may not work as they are touted to.
There are a variety of reasons, and many times it is that the recipe does not explain caarefully enough the steps involved in making the dish. The author just assumes you understand how to treat or use an ingredient.
(Used to be a chemist and am very sensitive to that, we had to carefully specify each step in a chemical 'recipe').
Have seen recipes where the main ingredient was just left out of the 'instruction' part of the recipe.
As you cook more, and it is so much fun, you will get to be more critical of the recipes you read before you cook them.
What I do is imagine myself making the recipe and see if I can find a snag. When do I add the rice? Is it pre-cooked rice or not? Do I peel the tomatoes or not? Are they seeded?
If you have a question in the mental run through, make sure you have worked it out before you are mired in a bunch of pots are not sure where to go next.
Even though, we all get burned.
That being said, just read the recipe, see if it makes sense to you, and have fun.
Most recipes are just fine, but that is just my approach to them, no matter where they appear.
And never, ever, at your stage make an untried recipe for company.
Would probably recommend you make very liberal use of the web. There are many great recipes there. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by them all.
But it is a great resource, and it is free.
You don't have to spend a great amount on books.
Welcome to the DC club. You will do just fine if you relax and enjoy the experience.