It seemed that Gretchen Rubin said everything there was to say about happiness in her 2010 blockbuster, The Happiness Project, in which she spent a year creating and testing theories of happiness. But it turns out there was one facet of happiness left for Rubin to plumb: that within your own four walls.

The wonderfully thought-provoking Happier at Home isn’t about making your home prettier or less cluttered—although Rubin does devote some time to ridding her home of “things that didn’t matter, to make more room for the things that did.” Rather, she spends nine months focusing on what she considers the aspects of home that impact happiness: possessions, marriage, parenthood, interior design (meaning self-renovation, not Home Beautiful), time, body, family, neighborhood and now.

Rubin’s forays into happiness are so riveting because she masterfully blends the science of happiness with her own personal experience and offers tools to embark on your own project. She makes you want to jump into your own happiness project before you even finish the book.

Rubin does sometimes veer into a sort of eccentricity that some readers may find hard to relate to. In her chapter on body, she builds what she dubs a Shrine to Scent: a silver tray bearing a collection of unusual perfumes and air fresheners. Her bigger point is that Proustian memories evoked by the senses can bring happiness. But to me, a Shrine to Scent seems a little silly, just one more thing in my house I’d have to dust.

In the end, the purpose of Happier at Home is exactly that: finding what makes you happier in your home, your neighborhood and your marriage, even if it’s not what would make anyone else happy. And if you’re happier, chances are those around you will be, too.

Happy New Year! Time to shake off that hangover and hit the treadmill for an hour a day! Woo-hoo!

OK, maybe not. How about: Instead of the annual festival of overdoing your resolutions, then stopping cold and backsliding, why not make a series of small tweaks here and there? Author Brett Blumenthal has 52 Small Changes all picked out with your future health and happiness in mind. From easy health fixes (up your water intake, become more label-savvy, start stretching) to attitude adjustments (build your optimism, find time for yourself), this book has got you covered.

There’s a lot to like about 52 Small Changes. Each week’s project is broken down into easy steps, and the reasons why it’s a worthy undertaking are spelled out in detail. Rather than a simple “Eat more vegetables,” you get a chart breaking down the specific health benefits of several veggies along with ideas to help you incorporate more of them into your daily diet. If you’re already a master at that week’s change, there are “extra credit” ways to go beyond, such as logging your exercise regimen if you already keep a food journal. Of course, you can also take a bye week and concentrate on what you’ve learned so far.

The book has great templates to help you start a food journal, make a budget or track medical appointments; there are also websites listed throughout where you can do the same. Fifty-two small changes may seem like a lot, but taken one week at a time, there’s nothing here you can’t tackle . . . and the potential results are limitless.

Regina Brett, author of the New York Times bestseller God Never Blinks, now has a wonderful new collection of short essays, Be the Miracle. There’s a wealth of inspirational stories here with titles like “Dream Big,” “What You Think About You Dream About,” “Believe in Abundance” and “Carry as You Climb.” There’s a sprinkling of the spiritual, a bit of Dale Carnegie and some very practical advice on how to function more compassionately and be a bit of a miracle yourself.

The real charm of the stories in these pages is that they are alive with regular people who just happen to be amazing. They could be our parents, our neighbors or our co-workers. They include Terrence, the student who wouldn’t give up on his dream of being a neurosurgeon, even though he couldn’t attend high school; Edvarda, who fought insurmountable odds and dire poverty to send her children to college; and 17-year-old Chance Riley, who gave every penny of the prize money he got for his Grand Champion Pig to the victims of a steam engine accident because “it was the obvious thing to do. We’re all family.”

“Everyone is either your student or your teacher. Most people are both,” Brett concludes. Be the Miracle is a book that will give you a boost, teach you how to breathe and open your mind to the miracles happening all around you.

Ever wondered why you just can’t seem to make yourself get to the gym? What is the science behind your inability to pass by a plate of cookies or finally clean out your closet? The Willpower Instinct will help you figure out the answers to these questions of will.

Using both science and real-life stories, Kelly McGonigal tells us exactly what willpower is and how we can use it more effectively. Based on her popular psychology course at Stanford University, this book uncovers some common misconceptions about willpower that plague most people. For instance, did you know that too much self-control can sabotage your goals? That willpower is more like a muscle than a virtue that some are born with? McGonigal explains the science behind these facts with easy-to-understand language and examples.

This is not a book to rush through in a weekend. McGonigal asks readers to treat the book as an experiment. There are assignments in every chapter aimed at identifying how readers currently operate, and new strategies will help them practice better willpower. These assignments are accessible and easily adapted for whatever habits a reader would like to break or cultivate.

Refreshingly easy to read and peppered with stories of people who have successfully used its methods, The Willpower Instinct is a new kind of self-help book. Using science to help explain the “why” and strategies for the “how,” McGonigal has created a book that will appeal to those who want to lose a few pounds as well as those who are eager to understand why they just cannot seem to get through their to-do list. A must-read for anyone who wants to change how they live in both small and big ways.

You can be forgiven for being distracted these days. It is a sign of the times, according to the authors of Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life, a how-to book that manages to be both entertaining and rooted in current brain science. They write, “There was a time when you weren’t always so reachable . . . when you weren’t always being bombarded by so much stimuli, whether in the form of e-mails or texts, Twitter posts or whatever new technology may emerge . . . well, any minute now.”

Paul Hammerness, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, and Margaret Moore, a wellness coach and cofounder of the Harvard Institute of Coaching, call this “the distraction epidemic”—and it’s more than just occasionally misplacing your keys. Disorganization and distraction can snowball into information overload, poor work habits, clutter and strained relationships. But Hammerness and Moore offer simple ways to harness organizational abilities that already exist in our brains.

I suspect that anyone who is in dire enough straits to need an organizational book may just skip to the appendix, where the authors lay out the six “brain skills” one needs to master in order to organize their mind—but don’t do it. Hammerness and Moore make neuroscience fun (really) and use case studies from their own work to illustrate their points. In the chapter on “applying the brakes,” for example, we meet Deborah, a soccer mom in her mid-30s who, despite all her energy and good intentions, can’t quite seem to finish what she starts. She heads out to the garage for a quick tidying up, and four hours later is still knee-deep in old sports equipment. She just can’t apply the brakes. In brain-science talk, this is called “exercising inhibitory control.” The authors offer easy, common-sense ways to build this skill—for example, applying the STOP tool (step back, think, organize your thoughts, proceed).

This is a must-read if you could use less stress and more order in your life. Log off Twitter, put down your cell phone and pick up this book.