Tis’ The Season: The Best Books You Received As Gifts

Already beloved by millions of readers, this novel follows a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as they both try to survive the devastation of World War II. The breakout hit of 2014, this beautiful novel was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. If you haven’t read it yet, this one should be at the top of your spring reading list.

Set during the pioneer days of the late 1800s and early 1900s, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books chronicle her life growing up on the western frontier. LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE is actually the third of eight novels fictionalizing Wilder’s childhood growing up in a pioneer family, and it features the first house the family builds after leaving Wisconsin looking for bigger and better opportunities.

An enduring classic and exemplary fable of courage, friendship, temptation, and power, the Lord of the Rings trilogy begins with THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, where an ordinary hobbit, Frodo Baggins, is tasked with destroying a powerful ring before the Dark Lord Sauron possesses it to rule over all of Middle Earth. To complete this task, Frodo and the Fellowship set out for a long, perilous journey to the mountains in Mordor.

Newly repackaged and ready for a new generation, NACY DREW FILES VOL I contains three classic mysteries. In SECRETS CAN KILL, Nancy goes undercover to investigate the elusive thief stalking the nighttime halls of Bedford High. In DEADLY INTENT, Nancy is ready to rock out at a concert in New York City—but the band’s lead guitarist vanishes minutes before they’re set to go onstage. And in MURDER ON ICE, Nancy and Ned head to a ski resort to rekindle their romance. But instead of love, they find deadly peril.

The wonderful story of the March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—and their wonderful Marmee, and the joys and mishaps they face as young women and as a family. Based on Louisa May Alcott’s childhood, this lively portrait of nineteenth-century family life possesses a lasting vitality that has endeared it to generations of readers. Check out the Greta Gerwig directed adaptation starring Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, and Timothée Chalamet, in theaters this Christmas.

A trusted kitchen companion from generation to generation, JOY OF COOKING endures as the go-to cooking book for novices and experts (even after 90 years). In the 2019 edition, readers will find 600 new recipes, updates to thousands of the original recipes, and tried and true favorites.

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside Munich who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing after she encounters something she can’t resist—books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

A lyrical and transcendent novel about the power of love, THE FORTY RULES OF LOVE offers a spiritual reading experience. A reader for a literary agent, Ellen, changes her life after she reads a novel, written by Aziz Zahara, in which Rumi encounters the spiritual mentor who shaped him into a poet, mystic, and advocate for love: Shams of Tabriz. As Ellen reads she finds that she and Rumi have a lot in common, and in this revelation finds solace and liberation in Shams’s words and teachings.

From Oscar-winning actress and fellow booklover Reese Witherspoon, WHISKEY IN A TEACUP has pages upon pages steeped in southern charm. Her guide to southern living and entertaining includes recipes, decor tips, and more, from her grandmother Dorothea who always said that “a combination of beauty and strength . . . made southern women ‘whiskey in a teacup.’”

Combining big-picture World War II history with a little-known event in America’s past, THE TRAIN TO CRYSTAL CITY reveals the never-before-told story of a secret internment camp in Texas where thousands of families—many US citizens—were incarcerated and exchanged for high-profile POWs in Germany and Japan.