It’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

We’re now talking about the books we want to read this Winter (Dec 2024-Feb 2025). I’ll share my list in a bit, but let’s first take a look at my list for the fall:

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie (Read)
2. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie (Not Read)
3. The Mystery of Three Quarters, by Sophie Hannah (Read)
4. Haven’t They Grown, by Sophie Hannah (Not Read)
5. Beatrice and Virgil, by Yann Martel (Reading)
6. The Testaments, by Margareth Atwood (Read)
7. The Heart Goes Last, by Margareth Atwood (Not Read)
8. Man Tiger, by Eka Kurniawan (Not Read)
9. The Girl in the Photograph, by Lygia Fagundes Telles (Reading)
10. The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng (Not Read)

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So now that we know how to set our expectations, let’s go to the list for the Winter:

1. Dominicana, by Angie Cruz

In 2025 I will host a Read More Latin American Authors challenge, so this list is packed with titles from that part of the world. Angie Cruz was on the list that one of my favourite book tubers shared regarding his own Reading the World Challenge, but I ended up liking the premise of Dominicana more. This book talks about a 15-year-old Dominican girl who marries a guy twice her age to move to America. There, she has to reinvent herself.

Country: Dominican Republic

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2. Where There Was Fire, by John Manuel Arias

This was also on Jack Edwards’ list and all he had to say were the words “Historical Fiction”. This book is set in Costa Rica in the 60s. A lethal fire erupts at the American Fruit Company’s most lucrative banana plantation and is set to destroy the evidence of a massive cover-up. The story revolves around that and the Valverde family. I was always interested in the big banana international conglomerates in Central America, as it was a theme for several Latin American Classics, such as The Open Veins of Latin America and 100 Years of Solitude.

Country: Costa Rica

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3. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, by Cherie Jones

This book suggestion has the same origin as the previous two, but I confess I’m not that excited about it. In this book, the main character lives on Baxter Beach in Barbados, with her husband, a petty criminal. When burglary in a mansion goes wrong, they have to deal with the terrible consequences that unfold. I really like the title of the book, but I’m not a fan of stories with loose moral characters. Nevertheless, is one of the few titles in my list that is available on Libby, so I might give it a try.

Country: Barbados

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4. Galatea, by Madeline Miller

This is a short story by the author of Circe and The Song of Achilles, two Greek Mythology retellings that I loved. This is the story of a skilled marble sculptor who sees his masterpiece come to life after a goddess blesses him. Galatea is now his wife, but life with her might be very different from what he expected.

Country: United States

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5. Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende

This is the first book of a trilogy that ends with House of the Spirits, one of the most famous Magical Realism classics. In this first book, the story is set in the 1840s. We follow the story of Eliza Sommers, an orphan who is raised by a Victorian spinster in Valparaíso, Chile. She falls in love with a man and decides to follow him as he tries his luck in the Gold Rush in the hills of California.

Country: Chile

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6. Portrait in Sepia, by Isabel Allende

This is the second book of the trilogy, and my goal is to read all three in order. I already read Portrait in Sepia, in Spanish, a decade ago. I’m curious to see how I’ll perceive this second read. We’re now in the late 1800s, in Chile. Our main character, Aurora del Valle, is raised by her grandmother. She has no recollection of what happened in the first five years of her life and decides to investigate the past. This is set against the backdrop of the Chilean Civil War.

Country: Chile

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7. The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende

If you like Latin American literature, you might have heard of this book. This classic was even turned into a movie. This was actually written before the other two books, as it was Allende’s debut novel. We’re now in the 20th century, and the patriarch Esteban Trueba leads his family with an iron hand. His wife Clara is a delicate woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. The story follows this family, the next generation and will make your heart do somersaults for some of the characters.

Country: Chile

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8. The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood

I didn’t forget my promise to also read more Canadian literature, so here’s some Margaret Atwood. This book centers around Zenia, an unscrupulous woman who leaves a destructive trail where she passes. So much so that after her funeral, her former girlfriends still get together from time to time to bad-mouth her. But is Zenia really dead?

Country: Canada

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9. Daughters of the Deer, by Danielle Daniel

Another Historical Fiction that captured my attention recently. The story starts in the 1650s, in Canada, when a gifted healer of the Deer Clan sees herself forced to marry a French soldier. Her daughter Jeanne grows between two worlds, and when she develops romantic feelings for a girl, she finds herself in an impossible situation. While her two-spirited nature would be accepted by her mother’s family, things are far from simple on her father’s side.

Country: Canada

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10. A Dictator Calls, by Ismail Kadare

Ismail Kadare, a writer from Albania, has been on my list for a while. First I intended to read Broken April, having watched the movie adaptation made by a Brazilian director. But I can’t find the book anywhere. When I heard about the launch of A Dictator Calls, I had to put it on my list. This is the story of a phone call allegedly made in 1934 by Joseph Stalin to the Russian writer Boris Pasternak (author of Doctor Zhivago), asking his opinion about the arrest of the poet Osip Mandelstam.

Country: Albania

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What about you? What’s in your list?

Check more book memes:
– 6 Degrees of Separation – From Ireland to Canada
– How My Reading Habits Have Changed Over Time – with charts (TTT)
– Books from September (Stacking the Shelves)