The books I’ll be giving this year…

Everybody knows that the best present you can give someone is a book. It shows that person how well you know them. It shows them that you’ve really thought about them, that you wanted to give them something they could cherish.

Oh, and it shows that you’re a magpie for a good looking jacket!

Here’s some of the books our authors will be giving their (lucky) friends this year…

Louise O’Neill, author of Asking For It and Only Ever Yours

• The Power by Naomi Alderman
• Trainwreck by Sady Doyle
• In The Dark, In the Woods by Eliza Wass.
• Salt by Nayyirah Waheed

And I’ll be telling everyone to buy Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi in January!

Tracy Rees, author of Florence Grace and Amy Snow 

Oh what a glorious prospect! Christmas… books… the perfect combo. So this year I’m giving anyone and everyone books by the wonderful Lucinda Riley. This was the year that I discovered her Seven Sisters series and like everyone else I know, I’m captivated. Whilst waiting (impatiently) for the fourth in the series to be released next year I’m working my way through her backlist – and her books make perfect gifts – fat, compelling and brilliant stories.

I’m also giving Snowdrift and Other Stories by Georgette Heyer. It’s a newly assembled collection of her short stories in a gorgeously packaged Christmassy-looking hardback with an elegant white cover. She’s the master of the plumy language, the rakish roguery, that I love so much, and so it makes an ideal gift for those of my friends who love regency fiction.

And last but not least, Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney, published by my own lovely Quercus. A long-awaited publication and beautifully packaged of course. It’ll wrap up beautifully with plenty of ribbons and will be perfect for curling up with a mulled wine. I mean for whoever I give it to of course. Not me. I’m not stealing it. I’m not…

Louise Lee, author of A Girl Called Love 

Vargic’s Miscellany of Curious Maps: The Atlas of Everything You Never Knew You Needed to Know (Martin Vargic).

I LOVE maps and this wonderfully strange coffee table book is full of them. Gorgeous and bizarre infographic ones, its data ranging from sport to sexual partners to tractors.

The Seven Storey Mountain (Thomas Merton).

The story of how a brilliant man became a Trappist monk.  Lucky for the reader, Merton is an astonishing writer. His lifelong search for faith and peace was a rocky one, and utterly inspirational. 

Midwinter (Fiona Melrose).

A mesmerising debut, tender and lyrical. The story of Suffolk farmers haunted by a past they refuse to confront; I was lost in it from the first to last page. A luscious read.  

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