Discounted for December 2025: Captivating Literary Books You Don’t Want to Miss!

Ella has taken to the flame, enthralled by its spark and its ability to turn all it touches to ash. Trapped in a middle-of-nowhere Indiana town, she longs for more, yet is tormented by her own demons and those of her family.

In Steinke’s debut novel, “terse prose is interspersed with haunting passages describing Ella's love affair with fire,” offering a vivid “interesting examination of the psyche of a pyromaniac” (Library Journal). 

First published in 1970, this bestseller documents the Sandoval family's journey as they flee the chaos of the Mexican-American civil rights movement and begin a new life in the United States.

From “a writer of power and honesty,” this “melting-pot novel in the tradition of Upton Sinclair, [is] touched with authentic color and understandable bitterness” (Los Angeles Times; New York Times Book Review). 

After fleeing prostitution, Toni Rodden is ready to begin life anew, out from under the control of men. And when she meets Fannie Caldwell and her two siblings on the wagon train, it seems she has found just that. 

But when Fannie decides to marry wagon master Blake Tanner, Toni comes to terms with how lonely she is. Will she be able to give love a chance and trust Sam Two-Feathers, the half-Indian wagon scout and acting preacher on the train?

Twenty-six-year-old Frannie Hunter has moved back home to a host of family problems—including her sister’s eating disorder, her mother’s affair, her father’s obsession with Food Network, and her grandfather’s need to plan a wedding to a fiancé she doesn’t have.

Follow along as Frannie, “the most fully realized character to come along in years,” navigates “[an] unusually honest, painfully funny novel about a tight-knit family’s struggle” (Paper; Publishers Weekly). 

“Intertwin[ing] love, violence, history, adventure and social commentary,” this Civil War-era novel, offers “an invigorating, heartbreaking tale of immigrant experience” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Following three Irish immigrant women, Paradise Alley navigates the most destructive Draft Riots in history, and there is nothing they wouldn’t do to protect the men and family they love. 

“Part love story, part thriller,” the year is 1527, and the famed artist Hans Holbein has fled the Protestant Reformation for England, under the patronage of Sir Thomas More. Over the next six years, he paints two portraits of the More family, only for the latter to reveal something mysterious on closer examination.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman is “an engrossing, quietly impassioned historical that blends some big ideas into the love story and ends with a touching burst of emotional insight” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Someone has managed to break into Fort Knox and steal the world's last remaining Double Eagles—the 20-dollar gold coin that was to be destroyed by President Roosevelt. And one has popped up in France, in the autopsy of a murdered priest…

To revive her career, FBI agent Jennifer Browne must find the stolen artifacts, and all signs point towards Tom Kirk, a well-known international art thief. Kirk, to prove his innocence, decides to team up with Browne for a hunt that will take them around the globe. 

When Abigail Taylor and Dara MacLeod meet at university, it seems that they were always destined to be friends. Years later, the pair are still joined at the hip: Abigail working as an actress with no interest in love, and Dara as a therapist, who has no problem falling for the next person who walks through the door.

But when Dara moves into Abigail’s downstairs apartment, their friendship is put to the ultimate test, in a novel described by the Washington Post as “unit[ing] so seamlessly with its intentions that one wants to admire it from every angle.”