3 Books for Wintry Weekends (Plus, a Few Other Favorites)

Chicago fiftysomething Lydia is preparing to give her annual Bleak Midwinter Bash, a dinner party for six female pals that has livened up their Januaries for the past 19 years. While getting ready, she deplores how her style options have changed over the years, from "carefree, seductive, demure, bookish, sporty, sexily sporty, sexily bookish, sexily oblivious to how sexy she really looked, recently brokenhearted and sexier than ever" to simply "damage control." Worse still, she's still torn up about her failure to make it as an artist. As the narrative shifts to Lydia's guests, there is much to enjoy in Hawkins's incisive observations of what it's like to be middle-aged, middle-class and, for the most part, well, pretty middling. The saving grace? You'll like these women—even the calculating Norris, who, unlike Lydia, hasn't let a little thing like friendship stop her from becoming a successful painter. An upsetting revelation awaits; in the interim, the story keeps you reading as it examines the gap between how we think we build our destinies (alone, alone, alone) and how we actually build them: With wine, chicken stew and people who will stay long after the party to help pick up the pieces and vacuum under the couch.