With winter now upon us it’s time to rug up and start spending a bit more time indoors within the beautiful homes you have created or will be moving into soon. Personally, my favourite winter activities include board games, curling up with a great book on cold and rainy days and cooking up hearty winter dishes for the whole family.

Please see below a small selection of books the AVJennings team have enjoyed recently. We hope you enjoy them too!

1. The Arc by Tory Henwood Hoen

Thirty-five-year-old branding wiz Ursula Bryne is in the grip of a third-life crisis, ambivalent about her job and unable to sustain a lasting relationship with anybody other than her cat. That is, until she is tapped to visit the lab of The Arc, a mysterious place that promises lasting love to those lucky enough to spend a week at its unnervingly glossy lab. Ursula is paired with Rafael, an improbably modest and handsome Yale grad blessed with a sense of humour and killer dance moves.

2. Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

This novel is a vivacious account of Olga Acevedo’s life as a premier party planner to Manhattan’s elite—a demanding job that opens with the ordering of luxurious embroidered linen napkins for an exorbitantly priced wedding, some which Olga will pocket to impress her own family.

3. Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho

A collection of linked stories about the lives and loves of two friends spanning decades evokes a distinctive multi-ethnic Asian American experience coming of age in Los Angeles in the late 20th century: R&B mixtapes, Cool Water cologne and red faces drunk on soju.

4. Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

A debut novel, Black Cake tells the backstory of an African-American family of Caribbean origin, and two siblings who are reunited after eight years of estrangement at their mother's funeral where they discover their unusual inheritance. The plot is driven by an omniscient narrator, dialogue and flashbacks.

Happy reading!