11 best books of December, according to Amazon's editors

Looking for a holiday read for yourself or a gift for a voracious reader? These are the best new titles this month, hand-picked by Amazon's editors. Amazon’s editorial director of books and Kindle Sara Nelson tells us why they were chosen.

10. 'Eight Girls Taking Pictures: A Novel,' by Whitney Otto

From the author behind the bestselling novel “How to Make an American Quilt” comes this finely woven novel about the intersecting lives of eight women who would become eight of the most famous female photographers of the 20th century. Based on the lives of such visionaries as Amadora Allesbury, Clara Argento, and Lenny Van Pelt, “Eight Girls” spans different places and times to capture the unique narratives of these artists who sought meaning through their art. “It’s a very strong, very sophisticated women’s novel,” says Nelson.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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