Ten Books for Cozy Winter Reading.

By Karen and Erica

We’re heading into that delightful time of year when we can nestle under fluffy throws, drink hot chocolate, and read while gale force winds whistle around us.

Here are ten books you might enjoy. We did.

1. Empresses of Seventh Avenue, Nancy MacDonell. A most entertaining history, beginning with the original eighteenth century French designers and influencers, written with wry flair. French dominance in Western fashion ended when WWII destroyed the fashion scene in Paris, and New York took over. As we entered adulthood, many of us grew up with The American Look, a style for a new century and a changed world. This is the story of its birth, and the women—designers and fabricators and public relations experts—who took charge to make it happen.

2. The Instrumentalist, Harriet Constable. Anna Maria della Pietà was a child prodigy, a violinist growing up in a Venetian orphanage in the early eighteenth century. She lived for music, and by brains and ambition studied under Vivaldi to become the best. This novel brings to life a remarkable woman, and a remarkable group of young girls whose heretofore unknown contribution to music is celebrated.

3. The Wealth of Shadows, Graham Moore. Ending in Bretton Woods, this sensational novel tells the true story of an economic war fought by the Americans against the Nazis. Most of the players (including a daring tax lawyer, of all things, and his equally daring FBI secretary wife) are real historical figures, each with an outsize presence—Henry Morgenthau, John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, to name a few. (Keynes’ wife is especially and unexpectedly fun!) Their thinking, their interactions, their private lives are all here—perhaps embellished, but surely directionally right. A fascinating tale.

4. The Lion Women of Tehran, Marjan Kamali. Two girls growing up in 1950s Tehran, and their separate fights for freedom. Evocative and moving.

5. Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham. You know what happened, of course—Challenger blew up in full sight of millions of people. Everyone aboard died. But you don’t know the back story, which is absolutely riveting. The people, the engineering, the dangerous space ventures before Challenger’s fatal flight, the politics, the tragedy.

6. The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean, Susan Casey. Many of us are bewitched by space and its outer worlds. This engrossing book reminds us that the worlds beneath the oceans are just as beautiful and strange and, even though these worlds are part of our own, still largely unknown. Fascinating people, including the author, undertake incredible and dangerous trips to the depths of the deep, discovering the astonishing creatures inhabiting this startling realm. These stories will have you on the edge of your seat. And maybe looking to book a submarine.

7. If Jewels could Talk, Carol Woolton. The jewelry editor of British Vogue has written a light-hearted book about hoops, rings, beads, charms. brooches, cuffs and head ornaments. She offers vignettes about all kinds of beguiling items, like vinaigrette rings (when things got smelly you could release a cleansing odor); Cartier’s panther (Cartier felt that the panther conveyed the power of women, newly liberated after WWII); and Elsa Peretti’s diamonds by the yard (jewelry women could buy for themselves).

8. Queen Hereafter, Isabelle Schuler. Lady Macbeth, told from her perspective. She was one tough Lady, and passionate, and smart. A captivating, dramatic and sometimes violent tale.

9. The Island of Missing Trees: A Novel, Elis Shafak. Cyprus is a beautiful island in the middle of the Mediterranean with a wall, the Atilla Line, running through it to separate the Greek and Turkish sides. The history of its tragic division is the backdrop for this eloquent novel of love, and hate, and the human toll of inhumane politics. And as a bonus, read There Are Rivers In the Sky: A Novel, by the same author, apparently the most widely read woman author in Turkey. A beautifully written, captivating tale, crossing time and nations, about water and lapis lazuli and lamassu and the Yazidi people.

10. The Informationist, Taylor Stevens. A woman with a background and a passion, engaged in wildly dangerous pursuits in atmospheric places. Maybe not entirely realistic, but a fun and past-paced thriller.

What have you been reading?