Get ready for a long winter with exciting reads from George R.R. Martin, Michelle Obama, John Grisham, Veronica Roth, or Cormac McCarthy.
This winter is going to be full of books, hot tea, and candles. On October 18, 2022, alone, as many as five sure-fire ebook bestsellers were released.
Among them, you will find the newest novel by John Irving, the first one in seven years. The Last Chairlift is a ghost story, a love story, and a lifetime of sexual politics.
Paul Newman’s biography, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, is culled from thousands of pages of transcripts, based on conversations between Paul Newman and his closest friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern.
Lee Child and Andrew Child released the new Jack Reacher novel, No Plan B, just in time to meet the hype caused by the Amazon Prime Reacher TV series starring Alan Ritchson.
Veronica Roth returns with a new dystopian novel, following the poster girl of the oppressive regime. She is imprisoned by revolutionaries for ten years but can earn her freedom if she finds a missing girl who was stolen by the old regime.
Plus, there is a new memoir by Michelle Obama (The Light We Carry), an illustrated history of the Targaryen Dynasty (The Rise of the Dragon by George R.R. Martin), and, my favorite, The Philosophy of Modern Song – Bob Dylan’s poignant and profound essays that are ostensibly about music, but include meaningful reflections on the nature of the human condition.
As usual, the list includes a quick blurb, release date, category, publisher, number of pages, and links to leading ebook stores: Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Apple Books.
Which books are you going to read this winter or give as a gift to a book lover in your life?
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Best hot new ebook releases for winter 2022-23
The Boys from Biloxi
October 18
John Grisham
The #1 New York Times bestselling author returns to Mississippi with the riveting story of two sons of immigrant families who grow up as friends, but ultimately find themselves on opposite sides of the law.
Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends. As teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor. Hugh’s father became the “Boss” of Biloxi’s criminal underground. Keith went to law school and followed in his father’s footsteps. Hugh preferred the nightlife and worked in his father’s clubs.
The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.
Life itself hangs in the balance in The Boys from Biloxi, a sweeping saga that’s rich with history and with a large cast of unforgettable characters.
- Category: Legal Thrillers
- Publisher: Doubleday
- Print book length: 453 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
Poster Girl
October 18
Veronica Roth
#1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth tells the story of a woman’s desperate search for a missing girl after the collapse of the oppressive dystopian regime.
For decades, everyone in the Seattle-Portland megalopolis lived under it, as well as constant surveillance in the form of the Insight, an ocular implant that tracked every word and every action.
Then there was a revolution. The Delegation fell. Its most valuable members were locked in the Aperture, a prison on the outskirts of the city.
Sonya, former poster girl for the Delegation, has been imprisoned for ten years when an old enemy comes to her with a deal: find a missing girl who was stolen from her parents by the old regime, and earn her freedom.
- Category: Dystopian Fiction
- Publisher: William Morrow
- Print book length: 288 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man
October 18
Paul Newman
In 1986, Paul Newman and his closest friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern, began an extraordinary project. Stuart was to compile an oral history, to have Newman’s family and friends and those who worked closely with him, talk about the actor’s life. And then Newman would work with Stewart and give his side of the story.
The result is an extraordinary memoir, culled from thousands of pages of transcripts. The book is insightful, revealing, and surprising. Newman’s voice is powerful, sometimes funny, sometimes painful, always meeting that high standard of searing honesty.
The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man is the raw, candid, unvarnished memoir of an American icon. The greatest movie star of the past 75 years covers everything: his traumatic childhood, his career, his drinking, his thoughts on Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, his greatest roles, acting, and his intimate life with Joanne Woodward.
- Category: Biographies
- Publisher: Knopf
- Print book length: 320 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Last Chairlift
October 18
John Irving
John Irving, one of the world’s greatest novelists, returns with his first novel in seven years—a ghost story, a love story, and a lifetime of sexual politics.
In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor.
Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, Adam will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts; in The Last Chairlift, they aren’t the first or the last ghosts he sees.
- Category: Political Fiction
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- Print book length: 908 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962
October 18
Max Hastings
In The Abyss, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-twentieth century—the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war.
Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis – the US President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors.
Combining in-depth research with Hasting’s well-honed insights, The Abyss is a human history that unfolds on a wide, colorful canvas. As the action moves back and forth from Moscow to Washington, Hastings seeks to explain, as much as to describe, the attitudes and conduct of the Soviets, Cubans, and Americans, and to recreate the tension and heightened fears of countless innocent bystanders whose lives hung in the balance.
- Category: Warfare History
- Publisher: Harper
- Print book length: 576 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Passenger
October 25
Cormac McCarthy
The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road returns with the first of a two-volume masterpiece: The Passenger.
1980, Pass Christian, Mississippi: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how?
A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit – by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.
The Passenger is the story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, and longing for a death he cannot reconcile with God.
- Category: Psychological Literary Fiction
- Publisher: Knopf
- Print book length: 400 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Women of Rothschild: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Famous Dynasty
October 25
Natalie Livingstone
From the East End of London to the Eastern seaboard of the United States, from Bletchley Park to Buchenwald, and from the Vatican to Palestine, Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twenty-first.
As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they were outsiders. Excluded from the family bank, they forged their own distinct dynasty of daughters and nieces, mothers and aunts. They became influential hostesses and talented diplomats, choreographing electoral campaigns, advising prime ministers, advocating for social reform, and trading on the stock exchange.
Absorbing and compulsive, The Women of Rothschild gives voice to the complicated, privileged, and gifted women whose vision and tenacity shaped history.
- Category: Biographies
- Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
- Print book length: 707 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
No Plan B: A Jack Reacher Novel
October 25
Lee Child
After the success of an Amazon Prime Reacher TV series starring Alan Ritchson, many fans of Jack Reacher re-read earlier thrillers, but make sure to reach for the newest novel from Lee Child and Andrew Child: No Plan B.
In Gerrardsville, Colorado, a woman dies under the wheels of a moving bus. The death is ruled a suicide. But Jack Reacher saw what really happened: A man in a gray hoodie and jeans, moving stealthily, pushed the victim to her demise—before swiftly grabbing the dead woman’s purse and strolling away.
When another homicide is ruled an accident, Reacher knows this is no coincidence. With a killer on the loose, Reacher has no time to waste to track down those responsible.
According to Karin Slaughter, No Plan B is a perfectly plotted, fast-paced thriller, with bigger twists than ever before.
- Category: Thrillers
- Publisher: Delacorte Press
- Print book length: 361 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Rise of the Dragon: An Illustrated History of the Targaryen Dynasty
October 25
George R. R. Martin
This lavish visual history—featuring over 180 all-new illustrations—is a stunning introduction to House Targaryen, the iconic family at the heart of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon.
The Rise of the Dragon chronicles the creation and rise of Targaryen power in Westeros, covering the history first told in George R. R. Martin’s epic Fire & Blood, from Aegon Targaryen’s conquest of Westeros through to the infamous Dance of the Dragons – the bloody civil war that nearly undid Targaryen rule for good.
Packed with all-new artwork, the Targaryens – and their dragons – come vividly to life in this deluxe reference book. Perfect for fans steeped in the lore of Westeros, as well as those who first meet the Targaryens in the HBO series.
- Category: Fantasy
- Publisher: Ten Speed Press
- Print book length: 352 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Philosophy of Modern Song
November 1
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone.
He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal.
These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition.
- Category: Music Essays
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- Print book length: 352 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Stroke of Winter
November 1
Wendy Webb
In the tourist town of Wharton, on the coast of Lake Superior, Tess Bell is renovating her old family home into a bed-and-breakfast during the icy dead of winter.
As the house’s restoration commences, a shuttered art studio is revealed. Inside are paintings Tess’s late grandfather, beloved and celebrated artist Sebastian Bell, hid away for generations. But these appear to be the works of a twisted mind, almost unrecognizable as paintings she and others familiar with his art would expect.
The sinister canvases raise disturbing questions for Tess, sparking nightmares and igniting in her an obsession to unearth the truth around their origins.
Note: The ebook is available exclusively on Amazon.
- Category: Gothic Fiction
- Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
- Print book length: 300 pages
Love and War in the Jewish Quarter
November 8
Dora Levy Mossanen
A breathtaking journey across Iran where war and superstition, jealousy and betrayal, and passion and loyalty rage behind the impenetrable walls of mansions and the crumbling houses of the Jewish Quarter.
Against the tumultuous background of World War II, Dr. Yaran will find himself caught in the thrall of the anti-Semitic Governor General, the most powerful man in the country. Dr. Yaran falls in love with the Governor General’s defiant wife, Velvet, upending not only the life of the doctor’s beloved daughter, but the entire community.
In his quest to save everything and everyone he loves, Dr. Yaran will navigate the intersections of magic, science, lust, and treachery.
- Category: Historical Fiction
- Publisher: Post Hill Press
- Print book length: 295 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Fall of Númenor: And Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth
November 15
J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien famously described the Second Age of Middle-earth as a “dark age, and not very much of its history is (or need be) told.”
And for many years readers would need to be content with the tantalizing glimpses of it found within the pages of The Lord of the Rings and its appendices, including the forging of the Rings of Power, the building of the Barad-dûr and the rise of Sauron.
Now, adhering to the timeline of “The Tale of Years” in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, editor Brian Sibley has assembled into one comprehensive volume a new chronicle of the Second Age of Middle-earth, told substantially in the words of Tolkien from the various published texts, with new illustrations in watercolor and pencil by the doyen of Tolkien art, Alan Lee.
- Category: Fantasy
- Publisher: William Morrow
- Print book length: 320 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
November 15
Michelle Obama
In an inspiring follow-up to her critically acclaimed, #1 bestselling memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today’s highly uncertain world.
Michelle Obama offers readers a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress.
How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much?
The Light We Carry inspires readers to examine their own lives, identify their sources of gladness, and connect meaningfully in a turbulent world.
- Category: Biographies
- Publisher: Crown
- Print book length: 336 pages
⇢ Kindle ⇢ Apple ⇢ Nook ⇢ Kobo
Keep reading. Here are other popular lists on Ebook Friendly:
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