Snuggle Up With These 22 Books Perfect For Fireside Reading

Throughout his rough childhood in the suburbs of Chicago, Jason Diamond found comfort in the iconic films of John Hughes. After moving to New York to become a writer, he decided to write a biography of the filmmaker he'd been obsessed with his entire life. Searching For John Hughes is a memoir about growing up, figuring out how to survive, and of course, '80s movies.

Bad Boy is the story of vlog star Renard Grant, who is filming his transition from female to male. Fans love him for his honesty, but off camera, he is part of a vigilante group called Black Iris, which aims to rid the world of trolls. Bad Boy is a romantic thriller featuring underrepresented characters in a deeply honest story. What's more, this book was written as the author was taking testosterone and transitioning himself.

From Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay comes Difficult Women, a collection of short stories featuring many different women living many different lives. The stories featured in this collection are what you'd expect from reading Gay's wonderful opinion pieces in The New York Times: smart, thoughtful, and heartbreakingly real. They stay with you long after finishing.

Jialing is just 7 years old but already knows that as a Eurasian child — both Chinese and European — she is hated by both groups and does not fit in. It's 1907 when she is abandoned by her mother and must learn to survive on her own, guided by the Fox spirit, which she and her mother respected and prayed to. Dragon Springs Road is a beautiful coming-of-age novel filled with magical realism.

When Kate Priddy agrees to an apartment swap with her distant cousin Corbin Dell, she is ready for a fresh start from a traumatic past. But when she arrives at Corbin's elegant Beacon Hill apartment building, she discovers that his neighbor has been murdered, and she is drawn into the investigation. Was it her cousin? Or another neighbor? Her Every Fear is a Hitchcockian thriller from the author of The Kind Worth Killing.

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Julia and Evan are young and in love. They graduate Yale and move to New York City where Evan gets a job at a hedge fund and Julia works at a nonprofit. But then, life interferes. The Futures takes place on the cusp of the 2008 market crash, and so perfectly encapsulates that time of life when everything was just beginning, when you had no idea who you were or where you were going.

Ella Hawthorne flees her old life and moves into a small Greenwich Village apartment, where her handsome neighbor warns her to stay out of the basement at night. Ella soon discovers that her new building used to house a speakeasy where flapper Geneva "Gin" Kelly was a regular. As she learns more about her building's secret history, we're transported to the 1920s, where we learn about Gin's love triangle and Roaring Twenties lifestyle. Will Ella learn to live in The Wicked City, too?

Three families, all best friends, all living in row houses next door to each other. But when one family outgrows their home, the other two don't want them to move away. The solution? Create a Pretty Little World by tearing down the walls between their houses and live in one big house, all together. They've got the space they need, but is this the lifestyle they want?

One day, Rosie and Penn's fifth son puts on a dress and then refuses to take it off. This Is How It Always Is is a bold, honest, heartbreaking story about the choices parents make, and how life goes on, but not always according to plan. This must-read novel is a fictionalization of the story Frankel told in her smart, thoughtful Modern Love column and is the perfect pick for book clubs.

Four best friends from high school gather at a weekend away. They play a fun drinking game, where each one writes an anonymous letter, spilling secrets and revealing hidden truths. But then The Fifth Letter is found in the embers of the fireplace. Who wrote it? And what were they trying to hide?

Isabelle Poole has just graduated high school, pregnant and alone. Enter The Infinite Family Project, an experiment where 10 children are raised collectively, without knowing who their actual parents are. Everything seems promising at first, but how long can this utopia last? In the followup to the acclaimed The Family Fang, Perfect Little World is a novel about the meaning of family.

When stay-at-home wife and mother Maddy commits suicide, it leaves her husband and daughter reeling, trying to piece together what could have gone wrong. Told in alternating viewpoints of Maddy's husband, daughter, and even Maddy herself from beyond the grave, I Liked My Life is a heartbreaking and ultimately heartwarming read about life, death, and family.

In The Odds of You and Me, Bernadette "Bird" Sincavage has just 13 days left on her probation. After that, she can create the life she's dreamed of for her and her 4-year-old son. But when Bird sees James Rittenhouse, a man who once helped her when she needed it, living in an abandoned church, she faces an impossible choice. Does she help him, like he once helped her, or look away, wait out her probation and start a new life?

The incomparable Joyce Carol Oates delivers the must read of the Winter. With A Book of American Martyrs, she brings us the story of two diametrically opposed families and how their lives become tied together after one fateful act. When Luther Dunphy assassinates Augustus Voorhees, an idealistic doctor who performs abortions in their small Ohio town, he has no idea that this action will cause their families to become inexorably linked. A powerful and timely story for the times we are living in.

In Always, Kailey Crane has a great life: a handsome fiancé and a great job that she loves. One night, she sees a homeless man on the sidewalk, and when she looks in his eyes, she instantly recognizes him: he is the love of her life, the one who got away, Cade McAllister.

Twenty-six-year-old Katie Brenner longs to reinvent herself and live the way she sees others living on Instagram. She moves to London, rebrands herself as "Cat," and gets a cute flat (a tiny flat with two roommates). When her dreams collapse, she moves back to her family farm where she learns that a "perfect life" isn't really what she thought it was. My (Not So) Perfect Life is pure escapist fun from the author of the beloved Shopaholic series.

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A new Elinor Lipman novel is always a cause for celebration. And her newest will not disappoint: the story of 32-year-old Faith Frankel, who returns to her suburban hometown, where she takes a job as a professional thank you note writer for her alma mater and buys a charming bungalow home. Little does she know, the house might contain some secrets. On Turpentine Lane is another pitch-perfect, delightful romantic comedy from the beloved author of The Inn at Lake Devine.

When teenage runaway Noa, with baby in tow, finds refuge in a German traveling circus at the height of World War Two, she is trained by Astrid, the lead arialist. But Astrid resents Noa's presence, and fears that Noa's presence will put her, and the entire circus, at risk. Because Astrid has a secret, and so does the circus. The Orphan's Tale is a compelling and beautifully told story about the power of female friendship, with all its complications.

When Ava Antipova is summoned back to her family's vineyard after the suicide of her twin sister Zelda, she is unsurprised when she gets a message from Zelda from beyond the grave. After all, her sister loved games and deception, but as Ava begins her twin's scavenger hunt, she's left to wonder: is Zelda really still alive? Dead Letters is a smart and twisty thriller that will keep you guessing right up to the ending. An un-put-downable debut.

Did you ever look at the classic painting Christina's World and wonder what inspired it? So did Christina Baker Kline, and the result is A Piece of the World, an imagining of the life of Christina Olson, subject of Andrew Wyath's famous work.

When 16-year-old Pia meets Ben, she hides her secret: that eating has always been difficult for her. But she's not just a picky eater, she is afflicted with the eating disorder ARFID, Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, something with which the author has dealt with personally. Told in second person, Sad Perfect is a young adult novel that's not just for teens.

When Leeba Groski gets the chance to work at Chicago blues record label Chess Records, she jumps at the chance. It's the dawn of a new era in music, and Leeba is happy to have a life outside of her Orthodox Jewish family. But when she meets a black blues guitarist, her family shuns her just as she discovers her own talent as a songwriter. Windy City Blues shines a light on a pivotal moment in US history and deals with themes that are just as timely now as they were then.