Given we’ve already had the first snow day of 2024, we’re calling it: the festive season is upon us. That means it’s time to turn on Mariah Carey, try and unravel last year’s fairy lights and eat a sickening amount of mince pies.
Another of our favourite festive pastimes? Snuggling up with a good book. From old favourites to TikTok-viral romances, here are the best Christmassy books to enjoy over the festive period.
Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
It’s Christmas, and the Birch family is getting together for the first time in years. Olivia, the oldest child, has returned from treating an epidemic abroad and must quarantine for a week, and her mother, Emma, has decided it’s the perfect opportunity for some bonding.
For seven days, no one can leave or enter the house. That’s a long time to be bundled up with your nearest and dearest – particularly when everyone is harbouring a secret. One of whom is about to come knocking on the door…
The Christmas Jigsaw Murders by Alexandra Benedict
On 19th December, renowned puzzle setter, loner and Christmas sceptic Edie O’Sullivan finds a present on her doorstep. It’s six jigsaw pieces, and when pieced together, they show part of a crime scene. There’s also a message: ‘Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.’
Despite her nephew, DI Sean Brand-O’Sullivan, insisting she should stay out of it, Edie quickly realises she’s the only one who can solve the puzzle. Will she manage to stop the killer in time, and in doing so, finally lay her past to rest?
Window Shopping by Tessa Bailey
Two weeks before Christmas, Stella is standing in front of a garish shop front when a charming man, Aiden, asks her opinion on the decor. ‘It’s a tragedy in tinsel,’ she replies. It soon transpires the handsome stranger actually owns the shop, and tasks Stella with coming up with a better window design. Can she rise to the occasion, and avoid falling for her new boss in the meantime?
The Winter Spirits by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Horror fans rejoice! The Winter Spirits is a collection of new and original ghostly tales authored by some of today’s most loved and lauded writers of historical and gothic fiction – including The Binding’s Bridget Collins, Pandora’s Susan Stokes-Chapman and The Hoarder’s Jess Kidd. The stories are all centred around Christmas or Advent, and will take you from a haunted Tuscan villa to a remote Scottish island with a dark secret.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Is Christmas really Christmas without a reread of the most famous festive novel ever? Revisit Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter old man who’s visited on Christmas Eve by three ghosts. Guided by them, he visits his past, present, and what will be his future, should he not come to learn the true meaning behind the holiday.
In A Holidaze by Christina Lauren
It’s the most wonderful time of the year… but not for Maelyn Jones. She’s living with her parents, hates her job and her love life is a nightmare. It’s also her last ever Christmas at her family’s winter cabin, and while driving there she makes a simple plea to the universe: ‘Please. Show me what will make me happy.’
When Mae gasps awake, she’s back on an aeroplane, starting the same holiday all over again. With one hilarious disaster after another sending her back in time, she needs to find how to break free of the loop – and finally get her true love under the mistletoe.
Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
Imagine a year without any Christmas festivities. That’s exactly what Luther and Nora Krank want, given their daughter is away and they finally have Christmas to themselves. On 25th December, they’ll embark on a Caribbean cruise – that is if their meddling neighbours don’t get in the way…
The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson
Lonely American student Ashley Smith is studying in London, when she’s invited to spend Christmas at her classmate’s Cotswolds manor house. Add to that her friend’s handsome twin brother, Adam, and Ashley feels like it’s a dream come true.
But she quickly realises there’s something strange about the old house, both stately and rundown. What were the family’s motivations for luring her there, and what horrors might lie in wait?
The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett
Following the phenomenal success of her 2021 debut thriller The Appeal, Lower Lockwood’s local theatre group returns to the stage in Janice Hallett’s The Christmas Appeal.
The Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their Christmas production of Jack and the Beanstalk to raise money for a new church roof, but goodwill is distinctly lacking among the amateur theatre enthusiasts this holiday season. When a dead body is found onstage, lawyers Femi and Charlotte have to identify both the victim and killer before the curtain closes on their holiday production – for good.
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