With Hamnet arriving in cinemas this month, it feels like a fitting moment to revisit the novel. Intimate and quietly devastating, it centres on grief, marriage, and the inner life of a family living alongside loss. Lyrical but grounded, it lingers on the domestic and the emotional. A book that stays with you long after you have finished it.

When I first read this, it felt like a revelation. Wintering gives language to the quieter seasons of life, times of retreat, rest, and repair that are so often resisted. Katherine May writes with clarity and warmth about learning to stop pushing through, and instead allowing space for withdrawal and recovery.

The latest instalment in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, newly released and returning to the familiar world of four unlikely detectives. Comforting, clever, and lightly escapist, it has just enough puzzle to keep you engaged without demanding too much. Just the warmth, humour, and good company we need on long winter evenings.

This is a little book to live alongside, guiding you gently month by month through the year, noticing small seasonal shifts, natural markers, and quiet rituals. It asks very little of the reader. There is no push for productivity or improvement. Just attention. It is accompanied by a gorgeous podcast ‘As the season turns’ in collaboration with Ffern, the organic perfume maker.

Part of the Seasonal Quartet series by the Notswolds-based celebrated printmaker and illustrator, this book brings together a collection of winter images depicting nature and wildlife in the colder months. The season unfolds through woodlands, fields, rivers, and skies, alongside personal observations and stories.

Set during the Big Freeze of 1962–63, this is a quiet, inward novel shaped by stillness and cold. It moves slowly and attentively, using landscape and weather to mirror inner lives and emotional distance. Thoughtful, restrained, and absorbing, it is a book for deep winter reading when you want something calm and unhurried.

Anne Tyler’s writing is quiet and observant, shaped by everyday life. This meandering family story moves through shifting perspectives, from a difficult mother to her children, tracing sibling rivalry, disappointment, loyalty, and longing. A slow heartache, unfolding through meals left unfinished and the things left unsaid.

A beautifully illustrated collection of heart-warming winter folk tales for the whole family. It brings together well known classics like The Nutcracker alongside much older stories drawn from traditions across the world. These are tales shaped by long nights and cold weather, passed down and retold over generations.

We have been cooking from Alison Roman for years and her latest offering is her most ‘January’ book yet. Built around recipes you can make from the cupboard, the fridge door, or the back of the pantry. Simple combinations, no fuss, and genuinely good food. The kind of effortless but delicious cooking we’re looking for at this time of year.