Hallie Uhrich knows good books.
The assistant library director at North Mankato Taylor Library, Uhrich’s favorite place to curl up with a new read is on her couch, with her dogs, preferably with a warm drink in hand.
“Winter often seems like it will never end, and many people get depressed during this time,” she said. “Reading can take your mind off of reality for a little while.”
What’s her favorite book of all time? It’s tough to choose, Uhrich said, but when pressed she pins it down as “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E. Schwab.
Other book recommendations for your winter enjoyment follow:
Title: “The Other Mothers”
Author: Katherine Faulkner
Genre: Psychological thriller
Recommended by: Uhrich
Description: Ex-journalist Tash has been searching for a story to launch her freelance career. But she has also been searching for something else: new friends to help her navigate motherhood. She sees them at her son’s new playgroup. The other mothers. The sleek, the sophisticated, the successful mothers … the women she wants to be.
And then one day they welcome her into their circle and Tash discovers the kind of life she has always dreamt of; their elegant London townhouses, brunches and spa dates, which are a far cry away from her cramped basement flat and endless bills.
These families seem to have everything. But they also have their secrets. And it’s soon clear that not everyone at the playgroup can be trusted.
Title: Iron Flame
Author: Rebecca Yarros
Genre: Adult fantasy
Recommended by: Grace Kranz, reference librarian at Blue Earth County Library
Description: This sequel to “Fourth Wing” is just as action-packed and will leave you on the edge of your seat!
Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College — Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.
Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. Check this title out if you’re a fan of Sarah J. Maas books.
Title: “The Little Liar”
Author: Mitch Albom
Genre: Historical fiction
Recommended by: Uhrich
Description: Eleven-year-old Nico Crispi never told a lie. When the Nazis invaded his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is convince his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading to “the east,” where they are promised jobs and safety.
Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy goes to the station platform every day and reassures the passengers that the journey is safe. But when the final train is at the station, Nico sees his family being loaded into a large boxcar crowded with other neighbors.
Only after it is too late does Nico discover that he helped send the people he loved, and all the others, to their doom at Auschwitz. Nico never tells the truth again.
Title: “The Snow Child”
Author: Eowyn Ivey
Genre: Adult fiction
Recommended by: Kranz
Description: Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart — he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair.
In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone — but they glimpse a young blond girl running through the trees.
Title: “Just Once”
Author: Karen Kingsbury
Genre: Historical romance, Christian fiction
Recommended by: Uhrich
Description: In 1941, beautiful Irvel Ellis is too focused on her secret to take much notice in the war raging overseas.
She’s dating Sam but in love with his brother, Han, and Irvel has no idea how to break the news when the unthinkable happens: Pearl Harbor is attacked.
With their lives turned upside down overnight, Same is drafted and Hank wants to enlist. But Sam insists Hank stay home, where he and Irvel take up the battle on the home front.
While Sam fights in Europe, an undeniable chemistry builds between Irvel and Hank but neither would dare cross that line. Then a telegram comes, and the news is devastating. Hank enlists the next day and has just two weeks until he ships out.
Will either brother make it home alive? Or will Irvel lose everything? And can love find a way, even from the ashes of the greatest heartbreak?
Title: “Beartown”
Author: Fredrik Backman
Genre: Sports fiction
Recommended by: Kranz
Description: A small town obsessed with the local junior hockey team is rocked by a shocking act of violence. As accusations and rumors fly, the town must grapple with its identity as never before.
Title: “Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger and Higher Education”
Author: Stephanie Land
Genre: Memoir
Recommended by: Uhrich
Description: Class paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition.
Who has the right to create art? Who has the right to go to college? And what kind of work is valued in our culture?
In clear, candid and moving prose, Class grapples with these questions, offering a searing indictment of America’s educational system and an inspiring testimony of a mother’s triumph against all odds.
Title: “Small Things Like These”
Author: Claire Keegan
Genre: Historical fiction
Recommended by: Kranz
Description: It is the tale, simply told, of one ordinary middle-aged man — Bill Furlong — who in December 1985 in a small Irish town slowly grasps the enormity of the local convent’s heartless treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies (one instance of what will soon be exposed as the scandal of the Magdalene Laundries).
Title: “A Winter in New York”
Author: Josie Silver
Recommended by: Uhrich
Description: When Iris decides to move to New York to restart her life, she realizes she underestimated the impact the Big Apple really is — all the nostalgic movies set in New York she’d watched didn’t quite do it justice.
But Bobby, Iris’ best friend, isn’t about to let her hide away. He drags her to Little Italy, where she encounters a shop that resembles one in an old photo of her mother’s.
Intrigued, she returns the next day and meets Gio, who tells her the shop is in danger of closing. Iris finds herself falling for Gio and his family, but secrets she’s keeping threaten to ruin the new life, and new love, she’s been building all winter long.
Title: “Blizzard”
Author: John Rocco
Genre: Children’s picture book
Recommended by: Kranz
Description: “Blizzard” is based on John Rocco’s childhood experience during the now infamous blizzard of 1978, which brought 53 inches of snow to his town in Rhode Island.
During the blizzard, the boy in the story transforms into a hero by putting the needs of others first.