This time of year brings both the official start of winter as well as New Year's Eve and Day. Why not celebrate both events with some books from this list? Some take place around the turn of the year, while others take place in winter--or in places where it always feels like winter. With selections ranging from satire to fantasy to romance to mystery to memoir to pandemic-ravaged dystopia (for anyone who hasn't had enough of that in real life), these books span a variety of genres and cultures, including authors from Japan, Togo, Canada, the US, and Great Britain. Click on the title to view and request them in our online catalog, or look for the links to borrow them digitally. Don't forget to log all of your upcoming reading time as part of Andover's Winter Reading Challenge, which runs from January 1-February 28.
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White teeth : a novel
by Zadie Smith Beginning on New Year's Day, 1975, in London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families--the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire--as they make their way in modern England. This title is also available as an e-book and e-audiobook in Overdrive/Libby. |
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This time next year
by Sophie Cousens Born in the shadow of a boy who was born moments earlier and heralded as London’s first baby born in 1990, Minnie encounters her more fortunate rival on various disastrous birthdays before making unexpected discoveries when they both turn 30. This title is also available as an e-book and e-audiobook from Overdrive/Libby. |
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Moon of the crusted snow : a novel
by Waubgeshig Rice When a small Ojibwa community in the far north loses power at the beginning of the winter, residents do not realize it is because society in the south is failing, and when people arrive from the south, harsh conditions take their toll. This title is also available as an e-book and e-audiobook in Hoopla. |
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A catered New Year's Eve
by Isis Crawford Sisters Bernie and Libby Simmons are reunited with Ada, a distant relative. On New Year's Eve, Ada will gather a group of guests and read from a diary she's found in her mother's attic that she thinks will expose the culprit to a long-ago mystery. The Simmons sisters provide refreshments for the bash, but as midnight approaches, a guest drops dead. In the tumult, the diary disappears. When Ada is arrested for murder, she'll have to hope that Bernie and Libby can provide a resolution before the clock runs out. This title is also available as an e-book and e-audiobook in Hoopla. |
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Written in the stars : a novel
by Alexandria Bellefleur A lighthearted romance inspired by Pride and Prejudice depicts the experiences of a free-spirited social media astrologer who agrees to a fake relationship with a no-nonsense actuary to appease their respective families--but only until New Year's Eve. This title is also available as an e-book in Overdrive/Libby. |
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An African in Greenland
by Tété-Michel Kpomassie Tété-Michel Kpomassie was a teenager in Togo when he discovered a book about Greenland—and knew that he must go there. Working his way north over nearly a decade, Kpomassie finally arrived in the country of his dreams. This brilliantly observed and superbly entertaining record of his adventures among the Inuit is a testament both to the wonderful strangeness of the human species and to the surprising sympathies that bind us all. |
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Rules of civility
by Amor Towles A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a Greenwich Village jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1937 catapults witty Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multi-millionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow. This title is also available as an e-book and as an e-audiobook in Overdrive/Libby. |
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Pym : a novel
by Mat Johnson A comic journey into the ultimate land of whiteness, Antarctica, by an unlikely band of African American adventurers, led by Jaynes, who is obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe's only novel. When Jaynes discovers a crude slave narrative that seems to confirm the reality of Poe's fiction, he resolves to seek out Tsalal, imagining it to be a key to his personal salvation. But what he finds instead is very different... This title is also available as an e-book from Overdrive/Libby and as an e-audiobook from Hoopla. |
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A long way down
by Nick Hornby Meeting on New Year's Eve on the roof of Topper's House, a London destination infamous as a last stop for suicidal people, a television talk-show host, a musician, a teenage girl, and a mother share the stories about their circumstances and decisions. This title is also available as an e-book in Overdrive/Libby. |
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The right to be cold : one woman's fight to protect the Arctic and save the planet from climate change
by Sheila Watt-Cloutier The Right to Be Cold is Watt-Cloutier's memoir of growing up in the Arctic reaches of Quebec. Raised by a single mother and grandmother in the small community of Kuujjuaq, Quebec, Watt-Cloutier describes life in the traditional ice-based hunting culture of an Inuit community and reveals how Indigenous life, human rights, and the threat of climate change are inextricably linked. |
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New Year's Eve Murder : A Lucy Stone Mystery
by Leslie Meier Winning mother/daughter makeovers in Manhattan from Jolie magazine, Lucy Stone and her daughter Elizabeth, immersed in the glamour of haute couture, witness a murder that casts a negative light on several high-style fashionistas and places Elizabeth's life in danger. This title is also available as an e-audiobook in Hoopla and as an e-book from Overdrive/Libby, courtesy of MA library network CLAMS. (Log in as a Merrimack Valley Patron and use your Andover card to borrow.) |
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Winterlust : Finding Beauty in the Fiercest Season
by Bernd Brunner In Winterlust, a farmer painstakingly photographs five thousand snowflakes, each one dramatically different from the next. Indigenous peoples thrive on frozen terrain, where famous explorers perish. Icicles reach deep underwater, then explode. Rooms warmed by crackling fires fill with scents of cinnamon, cloves, and pine. Skis carve into powdery slopes, and iceboats traverse glacial lakes. This lovingly illustrated meditation on winter entwines the spectacular with the everyday, expertly capturing the essence of a beloved yet dangerous season, which is all the more precious in an era of climate change. This title is also available as an e-book in Hoopla. |
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The children of men
by P. D. James Beginning with a diary entry on January 1, 2021, this novel is set in a world ravaged by a pandemic that left all men infertile. The youngest person alive--25 years old--has just been killed in a brawl, and things are looking bleak for the world. But then the narrator is approached by a woman leading a band of revolutionaries who may have the answers to the world's problems. This title is also available as an e-book and e-audiobook in Overdrive/Libby. |
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Memoirs of a polar bear
by Yoko Tawada In a unique novel, three generations of talented writers and circus performers who happen to be polar bears, both stars of the ring and of the literary world, share their stories, at turns happy and sad, as they each enjoy both celebrity and the intimacy of being alone to write. This title is also available as an e-audiobook in Hoopla. |
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The New Year's quilt : an Elm Creek quilts novel
by Jennifer Chiaverini A seasonally-themed Elm's Creek Quilts tale finds master quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson tackling a new quilt for her reluctant daughter-in-law that depicts holiday memories of Elm Creek Manor. This title is also available as an e-audiobook in Hoopla. |