Books with Buzz: 9 Hot New Reads

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When the weather outside is frightful, a good book is even more delightful! Here, nine must-reads this winter.

 

SWIMMING LESSONS (Anansi) by Claire Fuller

Following the success of her debut Our Endless Numbered Days, Claire Fuller’s new book depicts a marriage drowning in secrets and cruel betrayals. In this literary mystery, Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their life together, and then hides them within the thousands of books her husband has collected. After writing the last one, Ingrid vanishes without a trace, leaving everyone to wonder if she’s dead or alive. Twelve years later her now-grown daughter, Flora, attempts to solve the mystery of her disappearance.

THE LONELY HEARTS HOTEL (Harper Collins) by Heather O’Neill

Slated as an Indie Next pick of independent book sellers, The Lonely Hearts Hotel from Canadian writer Heather O’Neill takes place in her native Montreal between the two world wars. The story follows two gifted orphans as they fall in love and seek their fortune in the chaotic and ever-colourful musical and circus stages of the early 20th century.

A BOOK OF AMERICAN MARTYRS: A NOVEL (Deckle Edge) by Joyce Carol Oates

A small Ohio town, divided by its stance on women’s reproductive rights, erupts into violence when an abortion provider is murdered, leaving behind two very different but interconnected families, both embittered by grief. It’s a timely story about the deepening rift in American society as well as an issue that continues to be hotly debated on the national stage.

 

GARDEN OF LAMENTATIONS (Harper Collins) by Deborah Crombie

The murder of a beautiful young woman in a private Notting Hill garden and a dangerous traitor in the Scotland Yard force occupy husband and wife Scotland Yard detectives in the latest installment of the bestselling series.

THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 (Simon & Schuster Canada) by Ruth Ware

Agatha Christie meets Gone Girl in this dark and twisty tale set at sea. The small, luxury cruise in the North Sea is a plum assignment for travel journalist Lo Blacklock. But story deadlines and networking opportunities are all but forgotten when she witnesses a woman thrown overboard — only to be told later that all passengers are accounted for. As the ship sails on as if nothing happened, she attempts to solve the mystery, putting her own life at risk.

NORSE MYTHOLOGY (WW Norton) by Neil Gaiman

Long inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical settings of his fiction, British author Neil Gaimon turns his attention back to the source with his book of the great Norse myths and their passionate, fiercely competitive gods. (Fans may want to take note: Gaimon’s fantasy American Gods in is production as a series for Starz, starring Ian McShane.)

THE EVENINGS (Pushkin Press) by Gerard Reve

The first English translation of this postwar Dutch masterpiece tells the tale of twenty-three-year-old Frits, bored office worker and daydreamer, as he tries to fill the drab evenings in ten grey days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Compared with On the Road and Catcher in the Rye, The Evenings has been voted one of the greatest novels of all time by Dutch readers.

STOLEN BEAUTY (Atria Books) by Laurie Lico Albanes

This historical read is about painter Gustav Klimt, his muse Adele Bloch-Bauer – famously known as the “Woman in Gold” – and Adele’s niece Maria Altmann who tries to protect the Kllimt’s remarkable paintings during The Second World War. If the story sounds familiar, Helen Mirren played Altmann as an older woman in the 2015 film Woman in Gold, when she takes on the Austrian government to recover artwork she believes rightly belongs to her family.

THE ORPHAN’S TALE (MIRA) by Pam Jenoff

Think The Nightingale meets Water for Elephants. Holland during the Nazi occupation may seem an unlikely setting for a travelling circus, but it becomes home for seventeen-year-old Noa, who after giving up her own baby for adoption, rescues a Jewish infant from a bus headed to a concentration camp.