It seems inevitable that many of us will be stuck inside during the Corona COVAD-19 outbreak. Whether you find that happening to your family – and you feel well enough to cook – take the opportunity to dive into a new cookbook. You can order groceries to be delivered. Heck, we’ll even ship a cookbook you’d like to order. If you’re local, mark your order COVAD-19, and we’ll toss the book onto our doorstep like a paperboy.

Whether you’re trying out a dietary shift to lose a few pounds, going vegan for “Veganuary,” experimenting with new tools and techniques, or simply trying to incorporate more real cooking into your life, there are, thankfully, plenty of fantastic new cookbooks out there to help you meet your goals and find inspiration. Read on for some of our picks for exciting recent cookbooks for the home chef, whether you’re new, experienced, or somewhere in between.

Vegetables Unleashed: A Cookbook
by José Andrés
Anthony Bourdain/Ecco, $39.99, 368 pages

Chef and humanitarian José Andrés is on a mission to get people to eat more vegetables, and to appreciate the many versatile ways they can be prepared and served. It’s a mission he’s been working towards for years, with his many restaurants and a non-profit that works to reduce hunger and poverty. Now, the next step for him is this new cookbook, which offers plenty of tips and tricks to help readers develop or fine-tune their love of the plant kingdom, not to mention a wealth of recipes. This cookbook is a game changer for any at-home chef who is looking to incorporate more plants into their rotation.

Knives and Needles: Tattoo Artists in the Kitchen
By Molly A. Kitamura
Schiffer, $29.99, 224 pages

For a different kind of inspiration, check out this book, which features a number of tattoo artists who also happen to be big on food and cooking. The pages contain both an eclectic array of recipes and beautiful color photography of the food–and of the body art. The recipes are mostly simple enough for anyone to prepare and cover a wide range of tastes and eating styles. And the photographs give readers a close-up view of all kinds of beautiful tattoos, large and small, all tastefully photographed. This is not a cookbook to pick up if you’re looking for a specific recipe, but it’s one that is sure to be enjoyed by both foodies and body art enthusiasts. 

Rustic French Cooking Made Easy: Authentic, Regional Flavors from Provence, Brittany, Alsace and Beyond
By Audrey Le Goff
Page Street Publishing, $25.00, 176 pages

Many people have the impression that French cuisine is fussy and complicated, and that certainly is true of some well-known dishes. But that is definitely not the case for all French food. Recipe developer, photographer, and blogger Audrey Le Goff was born and raised in France, and she’s worked hard to introduce countless readers to the delightful fare she grew up with; this cookbook is simply the logical next step for her. Le Goff explores the many regions of France and offers up delicious, relatively simple recipes that celebrate the flavors and culture of each area. 

Half Baked Harvest Super Simple: More Than 125 Recipes for Instant, Overnight, Meal-Prepped, and Easy Comfort Foods: A Cookbook
By Tieghan Gerard
Clarkson Potter, $29.99, 288 pages

If your New Year’s resolution is to find more balance in the foods you cook and eat, there’s no better place to look than Tieghan Gerard’s newest offering. This beautiful cookbook features a selection of delicious eats from her popular blog, Half Baked Harvest, all of which are intended to make preparing food quicker, easier, and more delicious than ever. To that end, Gerard focuses on dishes that can be prepped ahead of time, that come together overnight, or that use time-saving tools like the Instant Pot. Readers will find a truly balanced mix of recipes in these pages!

The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook
By Nisha Vora
Avery. $22.00, 320 pages

Whether you’re a new vegan, an experienced vegan, or not even a vegan at all, readers agree that blogger Nisha Vora’s beautiful new cookbook is worth adding to your collection. With plenty of recipes to choose from, Vora excels at making healthy, flavorful cooking as simple as can be. Those who have been using the Instant Pot, or a similar pressure cooker, already will delight in having some new meals to add to their repertoire, while newbies will appreciate the many tips and tricks Vora has to offer. This wonderful cookbook includes delicious recipes for all times of day, including dessert. 

The Farmhouse Culture Guide to Fermenting
By Kathryn Lukas & Shane Peterson
10 Speed Press, $35.00, 368 pages

In recent years, the art of fermenting foods has been getting its time in the spotlight, and with good reason. Fermented foods are packed with health benefits, and bright, bold flavors appeal to a wide range of taste buds. But many people don’t know where to start, and they may be wary of trusting blogs or older, dated-looking books on preservation. This beautiful, expansive book delves into every facet of fermenting, from history to safety and everywhere in between, and includes a wide variety of recipes to get readers started. You’ll be making pickles, kimchi, hot sauces, and even mead in no time!

South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations
By Sean Brock
Artisan, $40.00, 376 pages

There are certain foods and flavors that are strongly associated with the South, including grits, corn bread, fried green tomatoes, and okra. Readers who love southern food–or who simply want to learn how to cook it–will delight in this cookbook from chef Sean Brock, who breaks down these classics one at a time into their essentials so that they can be mixed and matched into a complete meal or simply enjoyed one at a time. Readers will also enjoy simply learning the important skills inherent in southern cooking, including how to care for cast iron and how to successfully fry foods. This cookbook covers it all!

Cedar and Salt: Vancouver Island Recipes from Forest, Farm, Field, and Sea
By DL Acken
Touchwood Editions, $35.00, 320 pages

Vancouver Island, off the western coast of Canada, is home to a unique food scene all its own, and the artisan goods, heritage grains, and wild foods prevalent in the local cuisine make this island home to a paradise of delicious foods. Readers both familiar and unfamiliar with the area will love this gorgeous cookbook that is packed full of one-of-a-kind recipes that utilize the foods this area is known for while still honoring the local culture and the producers who work to sustainably produce these ingredients. Beautiful photographs and sumptuous dishes are guaranteed to make food lovers hungry.

There’s just something about homemade baked goods isn’t there? The warm, buttery crusts right out of the oven. The delicious fruit fillings made with real sugar. From apple pie to freshly baked bread, these delightful cookbooks will bring you back to your childhood when you came home to Mom’s chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk.

The Great British Baking Show: The Big Book of Amazing Cakes
By The Baking Show Team
Clarkson Potter, $27.99, 288 pages

If you’ve ever watched The Great British Baking Show you will know just how extravagant and wonderful the confections the bakers make are. In this Big Book of Amazing Cakes, expect no differently as we fall down the rabbit hole and into a land of cakes that explode like pinatas or curtsy like princesses. This is the ultimate cake-baking bible that will show you how to make every cake imaginable. Fun and delicious rolled into one!

365: A Year of Everyday Cooking and Baking
By Meike Peters
Prestel, $40.00, 448 pages

With a down home feel, 365: A Year of Everyday Cooking and Baking is a wonderful collection of heartwarming recipes from weekend stews to cozy cakes. Author Meike Peters’ signature style of cooking rooted in German and Mediterranean flavors makes this cookbook special as she teaches the modern chef how to use seasonal produce and ingredients in her recipes. Easy to make recipes that will make your tastebuds sing.

Bread on the Table: Recipes for Making and Enjoying Europe’s Most Beloved Breads [A Baking Book]
By David Norman
Ten Speed Press, $35.00, 256 pages

Featuring recipes from author David Norman’s time spent exploring bread traditions in Europe and North America, this book explores a vast selection of recipes from French rye to the Italian ciabatta. The book also has recipes for dishes to accompany the breads which is wonderful since the baker can then prepare whole meals set around the delicious breads. Filled with detailed instructions and wonderful photographic images, this book is both pleasing to the eye and to the palate.

Gluten-Free Baking At Home: 102 Foolproof Recipes for Delicious Breads, Cakes, Cookies, and More
By Jeffrey Larsen
Ten Speed Press, $30.00, 288 pages

This cookbook proves that you don’t have to suffer on taste when it comes to converting to a gluten-free diet. Jeffrey Larsen’s Gluten-Free Baking At Home includes customized flour blends and inventive flavor combinations that make these recipes work. Over one hundred recipes for cookies, cakes, tarts, brioches, pies, and so on. The recipes are also designed to cut out other common allergens such as dairy, soy, nuts, and eggs. A step-by-step guide into the world of gluten-free baking.

The New Pie: Modern Techniques for the Classic American Dessert
By Chris Taylor
Clarkson Potter, $30.00, 272 pages

So beautiful you may have trouble cutting into the first slice of these immaculate creations. In The New Pie, Authors and Bakers Chris Taylor and Paul Arguin, winners of more than five hundred awards, combine modern techniques with classic techniques to reinvent the art of pie making. Wonderful mind blowing creations such as Blueberry-Maple Pie and striped chocolate Pie of the Tiger, dance along the pages of this artfully done pie cookbook.

Roundup by Holly Scudero

December is traditionally a time for looking back, hopefully with fondness, on what the previous year has brought. We think of what we’ve accomplished, the state of the world, the good and the bad, and analyze. And December is also a time for looking forward, with hope for a promising future. We think of what we’d like next year to bring, the dreams we’d like to see realized, the beautiful twists and turns life may take. A good book can help us with both of these goals, letting us both think on history and dream for the future. Read on for some of December’s best biographical offerings.

Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
By Julie Andrews
Hachette Books
$30.00, 352 pages, Hard

Beloved performer Julie Andrews has continued the story of her life in Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years. In it, Andrews discusses her life as an actress, going into detail about how she quickly became famous from some of her earliest and most enduring films and the challenges that brought to her life. Andrews also talks about motherhood, the end of her first marriage, adoption, and her love for Blake Edwards. Fans of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music will love getting this in-depth look at the wonderful Julie Andrews and her fascinating life.

Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life
By Ali Wong
Random House
$27.00, 240 pages, Hard

Comedian Ali Wong captured the national spotlight with her recent Netflix comedy special, and her momentum continues with Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life. Ostensibly a series of letters addressed to her own daughters, these pieces will resonate on some level with nearly anybody who picks up Wong’s book, as she talks very candidly on a wide variety of topics: parenting, marriage, her own ethnic background, and the pains of being a working mom. This hilarious and insightful collection is a must-read.

The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir
By Samantha Power
Dey Street Books
$29.99, 592 pages, Hard

Anyone who has followed politics over the past decade or so will likely recognize the name Samantha Power. While she may be most widely known for her work as US Ambassador to the United Nations, she has a long history of activism, and The Education of an Idealist takes readers along on the journey of her life. We hear about her childhood Dublin, her time spent in Bosnia, and her eventual rise to a position in the White House. It’s a fascinating story, and really brings home the idea that one person really can do a lot if they’ve got the drive to do it.

Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For
By Susan Rice
Simon & Schuster
$30.00, 544 pages, Hard

Scholar and diplomat Susan Rice is perhaps most closely associated with Benghazi in the minds of most Americans, but she has been a political force for the past three decades, and has been involved with a number of incredibly complex issues that the United States has had to deal with. In Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For, Rice gives readers fresh insight into these issues, telling her role in the political front line with vivid clarity. Readers will emerge from the pages with a fresh drive to keep American from falling victim to domestic partisan squabbles.

The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women
By Mo Moulton
Basic Books
$30.00, 384 pages, Hard

Novelist Dorothy L. Sayers is famous for her detective series starring Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, but this early-twentieth-century author made waves in British society long before that by daring to enroll at Oxford University. As one of the few women to have been admitted, Sayers naturally gravitated toward her fellow female classmates, and together they formed a club of sorts known as the Mutual Admiration Society. This book explores the lives of Sayers and her friends, and the many ways in which they fought to change women’s place in the modern world.

AOC: Fighter, Phenom, Changemaker
By Prachi Gupta
Workman Publishing Company
$14.95, 144 pages, Trade Paperback

Before her name was a nationally-recognized abbreviation, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a bartender, as the stories go. But what drove this fierce, outspoken women to run a wildly successful Congressional campaign powerful enough to defeat a ten-term incumbent and become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress? In this book, author Prachi Gupta explores AOC’s roots, from her childhood in Westchester County, New York, through her education at Boston University and onward.

Sontag: Her Life and Work
By Benjamin Moser
Ecco
$39.99, 832 pages, Hard

In twentieth century America, Susan Sontag was a force to be reckoned with. From her first major essay in 1964 until shortly before her death in 2004, Sontag wrote and wrote and wrote about a wide variety of topics, primarily in the form of essays and novels. Sontag especially focused on controversial topics like war, popular culture, human rights, illness, and sexuality, and she also wrote extensively about photography. Sontag: Her Life and Work offers readers the most in-depth vision of Sontag ever published, examining her body of work in detail while also providing context about Sontag’s life via interviews and photographs.

If cold, gloomy winter weather has you down, the time is right to pick up a great book on an interesting, influential woman. These selections offer great opportunity to learn about people from our past and present, and to be inspired for the future. Have you read any of these biographies? Let us know what you think in the comments below!