There’s something about the way the Winter chill inspires one to curl up with a book by the fireplace; even if it means we just have to imagine one. I associate December with magic, mystery and merriment – each of which somehow mix and mingle to create the perfect story to tell, or read, on a cold winter’s night.
Here are all the books I’m reading this month that have me wishing away my realities, with every degree that the temperature drops and every page that turns.
1. La Belle Sauvage: The Book Of Dust – Philip Pullman
Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead and his dæmon, Asta, live with his parents at the Trout Inn near Oxford. Across the River Thames (which Malcolm navigates often using his beloved canoe, a boat by the name of La Belle Sauvage) is the Godstow Priory where the nuns live. Malcolm learns they have a guest with them, a baby by the name of Lyra Belacqua…
Price: ₹ 450. Buy it here.
2. The Golden House – Salman Rushdie
Rushdie is back again this year with a gem of a book in The Golden House. The story of the powerful Golden family is told from the point of view of their Manhattanite neighbour and confidant, René, an aspiring filmmaker who finds in the Goldens the perfect subject. René chronicles the undoing of the house of Golden: the high life of money, of art and fashion, a sibling quarrel, an unexpected metamorphosis, the arrival of a beautiful woman, betrayal and murder, and far away, in their abandoned homeland, some decent intelligence work.
Price: ₹ 365. Buy it here.
3. The Hating Game – Sally Thorne
Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman hate each other. Not dislike. Not begrudgingly tolerate. Hate. And they have no problem displaying their feelings through a series of ritualistic passive aggressive maneuvers as they sit across from each other, executive assistants to co-CEOs of a publishing company. Lucy can’t understand Joshua’s joyless, uptight, meticulous approach to his job. Joshua is clearly baffled by Lucy’s overly bright clothes, quirkiness, and Pollyanna attitude.
Price: ₹ 319. Buy it here.
4. This Is How It Ends – Eva Dolan
Ella Riordan is a community activist who became famous when she was beaten by police during a social protest. Now Ella is a squatter in a building where the owners are evicting tenants so they can convert it into luxury condos, and she’s determined to stay and defend the few holdout tenants, despite death threats. One night after a rooftop party with her fellow holdouts, Ella finds a horrible scene awaiting her in her apartment.
Price: ₹ 399. Buy it here.
5. The Book Hunters of Katpadi – Pradeep Sebastian
This one’s for every bibliophile out here! Neelambari Adigal and her young associate, Kayal, together run Biblio, a one-of-a-kind store of rare books in Chennai, specializing in modern Indian first editions. The lives of these passionate book women revolve around curious browsers, eccentric book collectors, private-press printers and the occasional thrill of unexpected discoveries of the antiquarian kind.
Price: ₹ 379. Buy it here.
6. Genuine Fraud – E. Lockhart
Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat. Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete. An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two. A bad romance, or maybe three. Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains. A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her. A girl who refuses to be the person she once was.
Price: ₹ 320. Buy it here.
7. The Arrangement – Sonya Lalli
Raina, twenty-nine, is still unmarried much to the dismay of her family who think that by now she should have been hitched in a dream Indian wedding. The pressure to settle down reaches new heights when her grandmother, Nani, decides to play matchmaker in order to find her the perfect man.
Price: ₹ 259. Buy it here.
8. The Shadow Of The Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love.
Price: ₹ 374. Buy it here.
9. Glass Houses – Louise Penny
When a mysterious figure appears on the village green on a cold November day in Three Pines, Armand Gamache, now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec, knows something is seriously wrong. Yet he does nothing. Legally, what can he do? Only watch and wait. And hope his mounting fears are not realized.
Price: ₹ 517. Buy it here.
10. The Rooster Bar – John Grisham
John Grisham’s newest legal thriller takes you inside a law firm that’s on shaky ground. Mark, Todd, and Zola came to law school to change the world, to make it a better place. But now, as third-year students, these close friends realize they have been duped. They all borrowed heavily to attend a third-tier, for-profit law school so mediocre that its graduates rarely pass the bar exam, let alone get good jobs. And when they learn that their school is one of a chain owned by a shady New York hedge-fund operator who also happens to own a bank specializing in student loans, the three know they have been caught up in The Great Law School Scam. But maybe there’s a way out?
Price: ₹ 206. Buy it here.
