Heidi's Top Ten

HEIDI’S holiday TOP 10

heidi pedersonby

Happy Holiday’s fellow readers! This Holiday season I am doing something a bit different. I have rounded up the top 10 books that appear across numerous “Top 10” lists and have made it into my own list. All of these books have come across my lap at some point or another and all are amazing reads. I should also note that none of these are in particular order. It is hard to rate any book as a favorite, it is almost like choosing your favorite child at times. With out further ado, Heidi’s Top 10 Holiday Books.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus -- Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

But science and life are both unpredictable. That is why a few short years later Elizabeth finds herself a reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six and a single mother. Her approach to cooking is proving revolutionary (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”). As Elizabeth’s following grows, not everyone is happy. She isn’t just teaching women how to cook, but daring them to change the status quo.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry --- Nora Stephens’ life is books. But she wouldn’t say she is a heroine of any kind. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, who she is a ruthless literary agent for and her beloved little sister Libby, which is why when Libby begs her sister to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for a month away in August as a sisters’ trip she agrees. But instead of the typical picnics in the meadows, or run-ins with the handsome bar-keep, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor she already knows from back in the city.

If Nora knows she’s not a heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again, the soon come to realize that what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.

Verity by Collen Hoover -- Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she lands the job of a lifetime from Jeremy Crawford. Jeremy is the husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, who is too injured to finish the remaining books in her successful series. Lowen’s job is to finish them for her. Lowen arrives, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines in her chaotic office, hoping to find enough material to get started. Lowen soon comes to uncover an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. One with bone-chilling admissions, including Verity’s own recollection of what really happened the day her daughter died.

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Appointments Available Lowen decides to not tell Jeremy the contents of the manuscript or show him, as she knows it would devastate the already grieving father. As time goes on Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify and she wonders if she could benefit from showing Jeremy the manuscript after all. Especially if the horrifying truth would make it impossible for Jeremy to love his injured wife.

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan

-- Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy hometown in New Hampshire, with her son Asher, living in her childhood home, taking over her father’s beekeeping business.

Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start. For a while Olivia & Lily are getting what they need. New Beginnings. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school and Lily can’t help by fall for him too. Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.

Full of suspense, love and a moving and powerful exploration of secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves. This story is told only the way Jodi Picoult with the assistance of Jennifer Finney Boylan can tell it.

Blake Cake by Charmaine Walker -- We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny. A black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history and a voice recording. In her recording, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The tale that unfolds, the secrets Eleanor holds and the mystery of a longlost child challenge everything Byron and Benny thought they knew about their lineage and themselves. Can they reclaim their once-close relationship? Piece together their mother’s true history, and fulfill her final request? Will their mother’s revelations bring them closer or leave them feeling more lost?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and-

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle

Zevin -- On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles -- In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham – Chloe Davis was twelve when six teenage girls went missing from her small Louisiana town. By the end of summer her dad has been arrested and promptly put in prison for being a serial killer. Chloe and the rest of her family were left to pick up the pieces, grapple with the trust and try to move on. Twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist in a private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. When a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another,Extremely suspenseful from the start, this book is unforgettable and spellbinding.

The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah

Pekkanen – Avery Chambers is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, she isn’t stopped from her unorthodox methods of counseling those in a crisis, as long as they adhere to her methods.

Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all, until Marissa is unfaithful. Their perfect relationship is driven by work and a lack of intimacy. Marissa wants to repair things for their eight-year-old son and because she really does love her husband. Marissa hired Avery Chambers.

When this perfect couple enters Avery’s room all three are set on a collision course. Sometimes the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden and it’s no longer simply a marriage that is in danger.

The Maid by Nita Prose – Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her Gran used to interpret the world for her, however since her Gran died a few months ago, Molly has been navigating life’s complexities all by herself.

Molly throws herself into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette make her an ideal fit for the job. Until one morning when Molly’s orderly life is upended.

Moly enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find his room in disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Because of Molly’s unusual demeanor the police target her as their main suspect. Molly finds herself in a web of deception and has no idea how to untangle it. Fortunately, friends she never knew she had, unite with her to search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black. But will they be able to find the real killer before it’s too late?

The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different at the same time.

These are just some of my favorite books this year. Hope you find one on the list you may enjoy or want to gift. You can never go wrong with gifting a book. When out shopping this holiday season be sure to support your local stores and shop local. From my family to yours I wish you all a Happy Holiday season and a safe New Year. Until next time fellow readers. Happy Reading!