January 2026 Reading Challenge

"A gripping historical mystery based on the real-life diary entries of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.." -- Provided by publisher.

Follows the efforts of Chicky who, with the help of Rigger (a bad boy turned good who is handy around the place) and her niece Orla (a whiz at business), turns a coastal Ireland mansion into a holiday resort and receives an assortment of first guests who throughout the course of a week share laughter and the heartache of respective challenges. John, the American movie star thinks he has arrived incognito; Winnie and Lillian, forced into taking a holiday...

"Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdro of cruelty and strife is Zhivago's love for the tender and beautiful Lara: pursued, found, and lsot again, Lara is the very embodiment of...

Enduring literature illuminated by practical scholarship each enriched classic edition includes: A concise introduction that gives readers important background information. A chronology of the author's life and work. A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context. An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations. Detailed explanatory notes. Critical analysis, including contemporary...

"Newlyweds Tricia and Ethan are searching for the house of their dreams. They think they've found it when they visit the remote manor that once belonged to Dr. Adrienne Hale, a renowned psychiatrist who vanished without a trace years ago. But when a violent winter storm traps them at the estate, the house begins to lose its appeal. Stuck inside and growing restless, Tricia stumbles on a collection of audio transcripts from Dr. Hale's sessions with...

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award ▪ American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award
"Haunting....A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper."—Los Angeles Times
San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local...

December 1962: In a village deep in the English countryside, two neighboring couples begin the day. Local doctor Eric Parry commences his rounds in the village while his pregnant wife, Irene, wanders the rooms of their old house, mulling over the space that has grown between the two of them. On the farm nearby lives Irene's mirror image: witty but troubled Rita Simmons is also expecting. She spends her days trying on the idea of being a farmer's wife,...

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, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl,...

"The knights of the round table are alive in Vancouver, but when one winds up dead, it’s clear the familiar stories have taken a left turn. Hildie, a Valkyrie and the investigator assigned to the case, wants to find the killer—and maybe figure her life out while she’s at it. On her short list of suspects is Wayne, an autistic college student and the reincarnation of Sir Gawain, who these days is just trying to survive in a world that wasn’t...

"One morning in December, Kyungha receives a message from her friend Inseon saying she has been hospitalized in Seoul and asking that Kyungha join her urgently. The two women have last seen each other over a year before, on Jeju Island, where Inseon lives and where, two days before this reunion, she has injured herself chopping wood. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation, Inseon has had to leave behind her pet bird. Bedridden, she begs Kyungha to take...