The idea of wintering is simple and incredibly appealing: wintering means we give ourselves the space to rest and recover alongside Mother Nature. Here’s a list of books that will help you do just that.
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Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by: Katherine May
Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered. A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat.
Beartown by: Fredrik Backman
Hockey. Marriage. Motherhood. Fatherhood. Loss. Assault. Violence. Sexuality. Belonging. Assumptions. I’ve never read a book that fit quite so many powerful themes into a single book. Until Beartown. This book was incredibly powerful and provocative, weaving multiple stories into a single, unified novel that had me turning the pages as fast as I could. Each of the characters is on a complex journey that readers truly feel and experience as the pages turn. I couldn’t get enough and am heading immediately for the second book.
One Day in December by: Josie Silver
Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn’t exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there’s a moment of pure magic… and then her bus drives away.
What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness.
The Great Alone by: Kristin Hannah
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah is utterly unforgettable, a book that has made an indelible impression on my reading heart. I knew I’d love it from the rave reviews and because of how much I enjoyed the Firefly Lane series, but I didn’t know just how much I’d become intertwined with the characters, with the story and the lessons they offered. While the story is focused on Leni and her upbringing, Hannah so beautifully gives us a glimpse into the harsh realities of the natural world, the aftereffects of war and the complex tangle of abusive relationships. Left to find herself in a world not of her choosing, Leni ultimately understands the complicated dance between childhood, adulthood, love, loss and motherhood and chooses a different life for herself, one that ultimately sets her free in the end.
Winter Garden by: Kristin Hannah
Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1 Still Life by: Louise Penny
The discovery of a dead body in the woods on Thanksgiving Weekend brings Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his colleagues from the Surete du Quebec to a small village in the Eastern Townships. Gamache cannot understand why anyone would want to deliberately kill well-loved artist Jane Neal, especially any of the residents of Three Pines – a place so free from crime it doesn’t even have its own police force.
But Gamache knows that evil is lurking somewhere behind the white picket fences and that, if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will start to give up its dark secrets…
Five Tuesdays in Winter by: Lily King
Told in the intimate voices of unique and endearing characters of all ages, these tales explore desire and heartache, loss and discovery, moments of jolting violence and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs. A bookseller’s unspoken love for his employee rises to the surface, a neglected teenage boy finds much-needed nurturing from an unlikely pair of college students hired to housesit, a girl’s loss of innocence at the hands of her employer’s son becomes a catalyst for strength and confidence, and a proud nonagenarian rages helplessly in his granddaughter’s hospital room. Romantic, hopeful, brutally raw, and unsparingly honest, some even slipping into the surreal, these stories are, above all, about King’s enduring subject of love.
Rock Paper Scissors by: Alice Feeney
Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.
Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts – paper, cotton, pottery, tin – and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.
Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.
A Wish for Winter by Viola Shipman
This book touched my heart. Set in Michigan around the holidays, readers meet Susan, her grandparents and her eclectic set of friends who have supported her through tough times. Christmas is in her lineage and Susan has some pretty far-fetched expectations to meet her one-and-only dressed in a Santa suit. And she does. But things go wrong before they can seal the deal. What happens next is a hilarious effort to find Susan’s, aka Single Kringle, Santa Clause to meet her destiny. The story is light, yet deep, and the book is funny, yet inspirational and touching. It will awaken your love of books, of bookstores, of family and of the magic of the holiday season. I do believe I have another favorite author.
The Winter People by: Jennifer McMahon
West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter. Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that has weighty consequences when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished. In her search for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea’s diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother’s bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked into the historical mystery, she discovers that she’s not the only person looking for someone that they’ve lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.
