December 2022
Greetings!

Here we meet again, in December, the holiday season already in full swing. The store is decked and bustling, and we’re looking forward to a busy month ahead. The nights are growing longer, the lights are beginning to glitter from neighbors’ yards, and I’ve already spotted a few trees strapped to the roofs of passing cars. If we’re fortunate enough, we have feasts and celebrations and gifts to anticipate.

What sustains you during this joyful, hectic, all-too-brief season? For me, besides gathering with the people I love, it’s always been cooking. The pleasure of a chicken roasting in the oven or a soup gently simmering on the stove is deep and healing. You might have a childhood memory of a special dish your family made during the holidays–sugar cookies cut out and decorated, a lasagna carefully layered and rich with cheese, or, if you’re Polish like me, pierogies filled and crimped at the edges with a fork.

Speaking of that last food, there’s a new cookbook by Zuza Zak I especially love, and it’s titled, unsurprisingly, Pierogi. It’s a gorgeous celebration of the perfect winter food, and a wonderful gift for pierogi lovers and strangers alike. Another cookbook that I’ve picked up is Savory Baking by Erin Jeanne McDowell, a great read for those of us who lack both a sweet tooth and the patience for fussy pastry recipes. If cooking often seems like a burden, take a look at Cook As You Are by Ruby Tandoh, who offers a different way of looking at food and the kitchen that restores their joy and accessibility. I made pillowy, flavorful gnocchi for the first time this year following an easy recipe in Simple Pasta by Odette Williams (author of the equally good Simple Cake). I also can’t wait to try making the dumplings in the beautifully written First Generation: Recipes from My Taiwanese-American Home by Frankie Gaw. I’ll end on the one cookbook I’ve returned to the most over the past year: Simply Julia by Julia Turshen, an absolute masterpiece of nourishing home-cooked fare that has delivered me countless satisfying meals.

Wherever you find sustenance this season, I wish you warmth, merriment, and full bellies. Happy Holidays!

Cathy Taylor, Northshire Bookseller
Holiday Hours!
Both Northshire Bookstore locations are open daily from 10 am - 7 pm with the following exceptions:

December 19th to 23rd: 10 am to 8 pm
Saturday, December 24: 10 am to 4 pm
Sunday, December 25th: Closed
Saturday, December 31st: 10 am to 4 pm

Select events from Northshire Bookstore. For a complete schedule, click here
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Featured Release

The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road returns with the second volume of The Passenger series: Stella Maris is an intimate portrait of grief and longing, as a young woman in a psychiatric facility seeks to understand her own existence.

1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag, admits herself to the hospital. A doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, Alicia has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby. Instead, she contemplates the nature of madness, the human insistence on one common experience of the world; she recalls a childhood where, by the age of seven, her own grandmother feared for her; she surveys the intersection of physics and philosophy; and she introduces her cohorts, her chimeras, the hallucinations that only she can see. All the while, she grieves for Bobby, not quite dead, not quite hers. Told entirely through the transcripts of Alicia’s psychiatric sessions, Stella Maris is a searching, rigorous, intellectually challenging coda to The Passenger, a philosophical inquiry that questions our notions of God, truth, and existence.

Pre-order Highlight

“Readers will be wowed." –Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. The Ivy League is going straight to hell in the sequel to the smash New York Times bestseller Ninth House from #1 bestselling author Leigh Bardugo.

"Bardugo’s imaginative reach is brilliant." –Stephen King

Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.

New Fiction on our Shelves
New Nonfiction on our Shelves
New Paperbacks on our Shelves
New Releases from our Children's Department
Order online at www.northshire.com


Manchester Center, VT
open to the public and for curbside delivery

4869 Main Street
Manchester Center, VT 05255


Saratoga Springs, NY
open to the public, for curbside pickup,
and for home delivery with 9 Miles East

424 Broadway
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Both stores are open daily from 10 am - 7 pm with the following exceptions:

December 19th to 23rd: 10 am to 8 pm
Saturday, December 24: 10 am to 4 pm
Sunday, December 25th: Closed
Saturday, December 31st: 10 am to 4 pm

Thank you for supporting Independent Bookselling!
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