Winter is a great time to hunker down at home and read, read, read. It’s the holiday season, too, which means it’s also a great time to give books as gifts.

More:Bohjalian's 'The Flight Attendant' highlights new books by Vermont authors

You could fill dozens of Christmas stockings with books about Vermont or written by Vermont authors. Here’s a list of some of those books that have come out in the past few months. Read this first, then read some of these books later…

Fiction

Eric Rickstad, “What Remains of Her” – The bestselling author who grew up in Shelburne and lives in southern Vermont has set his latest thriller in his home state. “What Remains of Her” follows a professor of poetry at a rural Vermont college whose wife and daughter vanish.

Meg Little Reilly, “Everything That Follows” – The University of Vermont graduate has a varied resume that includes working at the White House. Recently relocated to Hinesburg, Reilly has written her second novel, which focuses on friends dealing with the aftermath of a fatal boating accident.

Archer Mayor, “Bury the Lead” – The prolific writer from southern Vermont has police detective Joe Gunther in the midst of another mystery, this one involving a dead body found at a Vermont ski mountain.

Matthys Levy, “Building Eden” – The author lives in Burlington but worked as a structural engineer for several buildings in New York City and worldwide. Levy’s novel puts that knowledge to use in a story about intrigue in the world of architecture.

Roz Nay, “Our Little Secret” – Nay lives in British Columbia but worked for a time as a snowboard videographer at Killington. “Our Little Secret” is a thriller/love story set in the fictional town of Cove, Vermont.

Joseph Olshan, “Black Diamond Fall” – This mystery by Olshan, who spends most of the year in Vermont, has Vermont written all over it, from a case involving the disappearance of a hockey-playing Middlebury College student to the vandalism of Robert Frost’s home.

Stephen Russell Payne, “Life on a Cliff” – The Northeast Kingdom native and University of Vermont clinical assistant professor of surgery writes about a family finding its way through violence, addiction and self-destructive behavior.

Bernie Lambek, “Uncivil Liberties” – The Montpelier lawyer who works with a number of school districts has written a novel about the death of a high-school student outside the state capital and issues of free speech surrounding the case.

Maureen Johnson, “Truly Devious” – Though she lives in New York, Johnson has set her murder mystery at the fictional Ellingham Academy, a renowned private school in Vermont.

Rebecca Makkai, “The Great Believers” – This work of fiction by a part-time resident of Vermont tells a story of how the AIDS epidemic affected her hometown of Chicago.

Fantasy

Laurie Forest, “The Iron Flower” – “The Black Witch Chronicles” continue with this novel by the author whose biography says she “lives deep in the backwoods of Vermont where she sits in front of a wood stove drinking strong tea and dreaming up tales full of dryads, dragons and wands.”

Lori MacLaughlin, “The Road Once Taken” – This book by a Vermont author is populated by sorcerers, swordsmen, castles, forests and a magical key.

Katherine Arden, “The Winter of the Witch” – If you want to give this Vermont author’s book as a holiday gift, it’ll have to be a better-late-than-never present: The finale to Arden’s Russian-fairytale-inspired “Winternight” trilogy goes on sale Jan. 8.

Children/young adults

John and Jennifer Churchman, “Alpaca Lunch” – The Essex couple scored a big hit with its New York Times bestseller “The SheepOver,” and continues along that farm-animal road with this photo-driven tale of a hungry young alpaca.

John Steven Gurney, “The Bossy Pirate” – You might think all pirates are bossy, but the boy at the center of this Brattleboro author/illustrator’s book is just a kid who lets a little power go to his head when playing with friends.

RRR Carter, “The Flying Pirate Circus” – Another piratical book is penned by the Vermont musician known as Rockin’ Ron the Friendly Pirate and includes work by illustrator Nat Reed of Jeffersonville and designer Carrie Cook of Hyde Park.

Graphic novels/illustration

Ed Koren, “Into the Wild” – The Brookfield resident’s loose, approachable drawings for “The New Yorker” are instantly recognizable and have attracted fans such as Ben Cohen, the Vermont-based ice-cream magnate who pens the intro for this collection.

Jason Lutes, “Berlin” – The Vermont resident and instructor at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction has created an epic graphic novel that takes a detailed look at the fall of Germany’s Weimar Republic.

Jeremy Holt, “After Houdini” – True to its title, this graphic novel by the Vermont author relays a story about the famed magician’s son, a fellow escape artist who tries to rescue his father from a kidnaping.

Travel/outdoors

Leath Tonino, “The Animal One Thousand Miles Long” – The native of the Champlain Valley bicycles, hikes, hitchhikes and canoes through his home state – hence the subtitle, “Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures.”

Lonely Planet, “Wine Trails: United States and Canada” – The omnipresent travel-guide publisher includes a section in this coffee-table book on Vermont, where “the farm-to-table food revolution stirred” and “the same mouthwatering integrity is being applied to the art of the grape.”

Peter Shea, “The New Atlas of Vermont Trout Ponds” – There’s no bait-and-switch in the title of this book, which provides details on more than 100 fishing spots in the state.

Judy Chaves, “Secrets of Mount Philo” – The subtitle of this book is “A Guide to the History of Vermont’s First State Park,” and reveals nuggets of that history from its use by indigenous people to its 20th-century popularity.

Jen Rose Smith, “New England” – This Moon guidebook is about a six-state region but compiled by a Vermont-based writer. Burlingtonians will enjoy seeing the travel-guide take on everything from Waterfront Park (“the view is dramatic”) to the Penny Cluse Café (“food is as whimsical as the hosts”).

Jan and Christy Butler, “Erratic Wandering: An Explorer’s Hiking Guide to Astonishing Boulders of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont” – This book doesn’t cover Phish or Grace Potter but devotes time to finding Vermont’s longest-standing rock stars.

Jerry Roberts and Tom Walsh, “The Connecticut River from the Air” – This photo-rich coffee-table book provides what the subtitle calls “An Intimate Perspective of New England’s Historic Waterway” that creates the border between Vermont and New Hampshire.

Food

Gesine Bullock-Prado, “Fantastical Cakes: Incredible Creations for the Baker in Anyone” – The Connecticut River valley resident and star of the Food Network show “Baked in Vermont” covers everything from maple sticky bun cake to a honey-pear lavender cremeux.

Andrea Chesman, “The Fat Kitchen” – Fat is where it’s at in this book by the Ripton food writer that’s mouth-wateringly subtitled “How to Render, Cure & Cook with Lard, Tallow & Poultry Fat.”

Ray Repp and Richard Alther, “Table Tales: Do-Ahead Dinner Party Menus that Whet Appetites, Loosen Tongues and Make Memories” – The authors who split their time between California and Vermont provide recipes meant to make your next dinner party easy-peasy.

History

Thea Lewis, “Wicked Vermont” – The author is best known for her Queen City Ghostwalk through downtown Burlington, so it makes sense that she’d put together a book that offers to tell the history of “the darker side of the Green Mountain State.”

Christopher S. Wren, “Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom” – The visiting professor at Dartmouth College and former New York Times reporter writes about Vermont’s most-famous Revolutionary War figure, Ethan Allen, and his fighting men, the Green Mountain Boys.

Joseph A. Citro, “Cursed in New England: More Stories of Damned Yankees” – Much as Thea Lewis is known for her spooky strolls, this Burlington writer has a long-standing reputation for spinning some of the scariest stories from the history of Vermont and its neighboring states.

Yvonne Daley, “Going Up the Country” – This look back at the 1960s counterculture movement has arguably the most-compelling subtitle of any book on this list – “When the Hippies, Dreamers, Freaks, and Radicals Moved to Vermont.”

Stanley R. Sloan, “Transatlantic Traumas” – The visiting scholar in political science at Middlebury College analyzes recent history in this book exploring the Brexit vote in Great Britain, the election of Donald Trump and the rise of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

James J. Dunn, “Breach of Trust: The Ethics Scandal that Challenged the Integrity of the Vermont Judiciary” – The retired lawyer from Burlington examines a case that rocked the state’s legal world in the 1980s.

Rick Winston, “Red Scare in the Green Mountains” – The author, perhaps best known as the founder of the Savoy Theater in Montpelier, dives into what happened in Vermont during the anti-Communist fever of the 1950s.

David Vermette, “A Distinct Alien Race” – Though it’s generally about the history of French-Canadian immigration to the United States and more specifically New England, “A Distinct Alien Race” devotes some of its attention to the Franco-American populations of Burlington and Winooski.

Sports

Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson, “The Pats” – The two authors (Stout lives in Vermont) compiled a coffee-table book tracing the history of the New England Patriots. “The Pats” features essays about the Super Bowl champions by the likes of Leigh Montville and Lesley Visser.

Timothy B. Spears, “Spirals: A Family’s Education in Football” – A professor of American studies at Middlebury College, Spears draws parallels between football, higher education and family through the prism of Yale’s storied gridiron program.

Memoir

Paul Seward, “Patient Care: Death and Life in the Emergency Room” – The Middlebury resident and retired emergency-room doctor recalls remarkable cases and people encountered in his nearly half-century as a physician.

Sharry Traver Underwood, “No Daughter of Mine is Going to Be a Dancer!” – Traver, of South Burlington, wrote dance reviews for the Burlington Free Press and penned this book to tell her tale of a dancer’s life in the 1940s.

Howard Gershater, “Forever Sunshine” – A University of Vermont graduate and former Burlington resident, Gershater writes about his family’s struggle to cope with the sudden death of his son, David, in a car crash at age 16.

Ari Schneider, “Where the Wind Heals” – Schneider is a Rutland author who says his new book is “about a road trip to the North Coast of Alaska, and how the wilderness pushed and pulled at my emotions and friendships along the way.”

Tuvia Feldman, “Fly With A Murder of Crows” – The author spends his time between Vermont and Mexico and explores both of those locales, as well as the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in a memoir tracing Feldman’s exposure to the dangers of the drug trade.

Self-help

Larry Sudbay, “The Best is Yet to Be” – Illustrated by Steven Kellogg, “The Best Is Yet to Be” is authored by the co-founder of the South Burlington tech company SymQuest. Sudbay offers, according to the subtitle, “A Collection of Inspirational Stories, Illustrations, and Quotations.”

Kris Mailepors, “The Easy to Follow Leader” – Mailepors, of Burlington, taps into Eastern teaching for his tips on how to create the best possible workplace culture.

Anne Vlahos, “To Die For: The Gifts of Being Present Through Loss and Grief” – The Waitsfield writer says her book, “although about death, is really about hope. It’s about being open to allowing gifts to come into your life during some of the most challenging times.”

Corrina Thurston, “How to Build Your Art Business” and “How to Communicate Effectively for Artists & Creatives” – The Vermont artist and author wrote both of these titles as e-books, but they are now available in paperback form.

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck.