The Best Winter Break Books, According To Readers And Staff From Powell's

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The transportive, immersive and broadening power of books can only be described as nothing short of magic. Among the pages of a freshly cracked  novel you can live experiences that are not your own, and with the right incendiary prose you can be moved to action. There’s a reason some books have been banned at certain Orwellian times in history.

Books can also be one of the best ways to unwind and visit another reality without any kind of repercussions, and there’s really no time to read like the winter holiday, when the indoors are just beckoning for you to stay inside, cozy up and get lost in a great story. 

For Madeline Shier, a staff member and book buyer for Powell’s , the world’s largest independent bookstore nestled in the heart of downtown Portland, Oregon, “A book is a lot of things in one. When you give someone a book, you’re giving them an activity for a rainy day or a long train ride, an escape pod out of their life and into someone else’s.”

If you’re on the lookout for your next “escape pod” or just want to relax during the coming post-holiday downtime, we gathered some literary winners into the list below. To help us with these picks, we turned to the book buying experts at Powell’s as well as fellow book lovers from the Canceled Plans Facebook page .

Happy winter reading.