Books For Christmas!

[AB Editor]

Christmas is an excellent time for stories - and it's one of the best gifts you can give.

As such we'd like to show you our favourite books for Christmas.

A little heartbreak and tragedy:

Alaska, the 1920s. Jack and Mabel have staked everything on a fresh start in a remote homestead, but the wilderness is a stark place, and Mabel is haunted by the baby she lost many years before. When a little girl appears mysteriously on their land, each is filled with wonder, but also foreboding: is she what she seems, and can they find room in their hearts for her?


Based on a true story:

Based on a true story, Hard Twisted is a chilling tale of survival and redemption, and a young girl's coming of age in a world as cruel as it is beautiful.


Detective Thriller:

Ex-Liverpool Police detective Menno Koopman is enjoying his retirement. He has no plans to ever return to England but when the body on the beach turns out to be his son, Stevie - whom he only ever met once as a baby - he knows he has to go back and seek justice for his horrific murder. But there's a fine line between justice and revenge...


The sequel to The Shining (do we need to say more?)


Legal thriller, family drama:

Andy Barber's job is to put killers behind bars. And when a boy from his son Jacob's school is found stabbed to death, Andy is doubly determined to find and prosecute the perpetrator.

Until a crucial piece of evidence turns up linking Jacob to the murder. And suddenly Andy and his wife find their son accused of being a cold-blooded killer.

In the face of every parent's worst nightmare, they will do anything to defend their child. Because, deep down, they know him better than anyone.

Don't they?

[Zacs-Master]

go on then, don't be shy

[bookbinder]

Makes a change from 'come up and see my etchings', I suppose.

[AB Editor]

We welcome your own suggestions too!

These are all books which have been recommend to me by various people throughout the year - I've tried to pick out a broad range!

Longlisted for the Womens Prize for Fiction 2013:

After the disappearance of their father and the sudden death of their mother, Lee Hart and his deaf brother, Ned, imagine all is lost until Lee starts an apprenticeship at the local funeral home. Here, in the company of a crooning ex-publican, a closet pole vaulter, a terminally-ill hearse driver, and the dead of their local town, old wounds begin to heal and love arrives as a beautiful florist aboard a 'Fleurtations' delivery van, and Lee discovers there is life after death after all.


Witches a tale of sorcery scandal and seduction:

Witches traces the dramatic events which unfolded at one of England's oldest and most spectacular castles four hundred years ago. The case is among those which constitute the European witch craze of the 15th-18th centuries, when suspected witches were burned, hanged, or tortured by the thousand. Like those other cases, it is a tale of superstition, the darkest limits of the human imagination and, ultimately, injustice - a reminder of how paranoia and hysteria can create an environment in which nonconformism spells death. But as Tracy Borman reveals here, it is not quite typical. The most powerful and Machiavellian figure of the Jacobean court had a vested interest in events at Belvoir.He would mastermind a conspiracy that has remained hidden for centuries.


Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England

The nineteenth century saw repeated panics about sane individuals being locked away in lunatic asylums. With the rise of the 'mad-doctor' profession, English liberty seemed to be threatened by a new generation of medical men willing to incarcerate difficult family members in return for the high fees paid by an unscrupulous spouse or friend.

[pastafreak]

I just read The Snow Child...magical and full of descriptions of the harsh,yet exquisite snowbound Alaskan wilderness. Loved it.

[Zacs-Master]

The Kitty Aldridge one sound like my cup-o-tea. Strange how many are about or involve children.

[AB Editor]

I've also worked my way Margaret Atwood's recent trillogy this year... well, the first two:


With this one to, hopefully be unwrapped on Christmas day:

[boxtops]

They all look a bit gruesome, ed, not cheery Christmas reading.... I'd rather have something like this Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

[AB Editor]

I like books about Alaska and the cold Pasta. My favourite is (I've said this millions times, so forgive me) is: Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

I'm not sure what genre the Kitty one is in - it's probably got a bit of magical realism in there somewhere, but then, most things do now :)

[AB Editor]

What about a Ghost story Boxtops?

Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

That's nice and Christmassy isn't it? :)

[AB Editor]

Poetry-wise I liked this very much this year:

Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

[Ken4155]

Stephen King's 11.22.63 is a brilliant and, given the recent 50th anniversary, appropriate read. It is about the JFK assassination, obviously, and one man's mission to travel back in time in an attempt to change the course of history. 11.22.63, The day that changed the world. What if you could change it back?

[AB Editor]

That's a good idea Ken! Might pick that one up for someone actually!

[Ken4155]

The lucky recipient will be eternally grateful, Ab Editor. That is, if they are a Stephen King freak like yours truly. I'm on my 2nd reading:-)

[ethandron]

Just downloaded the snow child to my kindle, thanks Ed and Pasta :)
The light between oceans by m.l. Stedman would be my recommendation.

[boxtops]

Noooo, Barbara Erskine spooky stories scare me witless, even Kate Mosse makes it difficult for me to sleep after reading in bed....

I'm reading this at the moment Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

[emeritus]

Just finished 11/22/63 I agree a really excellent read.

Good value too 850 Pages !

[The Builder]

"He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury seventeen years ago, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper who is entrusted to take care of him. Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are reintroduced to one another, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms between them. The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. He devises clever maths riddles - based on her shoe size or her birthday - and the numbers reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her ten-year-old son. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory."

Wonderful, slightly quirky story. Very Japanese, but well translated.

[The Builder]

Oh well ........ link didn't work. Anyway........

"The housekeeper and the Professor" by Yoko Ogawa

[AB Editor]

There's some great recommendations in here!

The Builder - I've fixed your link. It looks good. Might add it to the list!

[pastafreak]

Ooooo...I love spooky books...and ghost stories were traditional Christmas entertainment for the Victorians.
Ed...if you like stories set in cold climates,look for The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney...a murder hunt by a hardy woman settler in the 1850s.


Also set in the same period...The Last Runaway...leaving England behind,a young Quaker woman emigrates to the US and becomes involved in the antislavery movement.


Also historical- Slammerkin by Emma Donohugh. Set in the 1760s and loosely based on fact. A young woman is "ruined" and cast out by her family. There follows a rowdy romp in Georgian London...followed by an attempt to be good...and then the final fall from grace. Entertaining.