Great Reads: Steal a few moments to read this season

A good book is a wonderful way to escape the madness of the season. If you can find a moment or two, here are some reading suggestions.

Author Emma Donoghue’s new book Astray, takes readers through the last four centuries with an extraordinary cast of characters in a variety of short stories.

The complexities of life, the one great love that got away, the chance encounter, the road not taken are at the heart of Alice Munro’s Dear Life: Stories.

Sylvia Day continues the story of Eva and Gideon in Reflected in You, the bestselling sequel to Bared to You.

Set in Turkey circa 1980, Orhan Pamuk’s Silent House tells the story of a Turkish family who gathers at their grandmother’s house as the country is on the brink of a military coup.

If you believe in miracles, then The Bridge: A Novel by Barbara Kingsbury is a book you’ll want to read. It’s the story of a young woman, the man who never stopped loving her and the owners of a bookstore who provided them with a place to fall in love.

Rounding out the new fiction reads is Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth. Set in England in 1972, Serena Frome is an agent for the country’s MI5 spy network who sets out to investigate a young writer Tom Haley and finds herself falling in love with him.

If you are a fan of facts, history, Hollywood, the human condition or health, any one of the following new nonfiction titles may be of interest to you.

Bestselling author Bill Bryson takes readers on an unusual tour of his home and provides a history of the artifacts we possess in our own homes in At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

Herbie J. Pilato reveals the real Elizabeth Montgomery in Twitch Upon a Star: The Bewitched Life and Career of Elizabeth Montgomery. Her loves, her demons and even her politics are explored in this new biography of one of television’s favorite stars.

Evan Thomas, looks at the White House years of our 34th President Ike Eisenhower in Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World. Thomas shares with readers how Eisenhower dealt with the Soviet Union, China and the top military generals of his time.