POPULAR FICTION WENDY HOLDEN

MR DICKENS AND HIS CAROL by Samantha Silva (Allison & Busby £12.99)

This unashamedly sentimental story imagines the circumstances in which A Christmas Carol was written — bad ones! Chuzzlewit has tanked, Mrs Dickens’s spending has gone off the dial and Charles’s publishers are on his back demanding a Christmas hit.

Bitter, twisted and devoid of inspiration, Dickens walks the seamy London streets and meets a beautiful, poor young woman who, with her frail, tiny son Timothy, relights his creative flame.

it’s chock-full of Dickensian atmosphere as well as literary jokes.

SEVEN DAYS OF US by Francesca Hornak

(Piatkus £12.99) ChrisTMAs is a time for families, not all of whom always get on — which is why this is the perfect present. it’s a brilliant comic drama in which curmudgeonly restaurant reviewer Andrew, his sweet sloaney wife Emma and their frivolous daughter Phoebe are in quarantine in Norfolk over Christmas because their other daughter, disdainful, superior Olivia, a doctor, is back from an African charity possibly carrying an Ebola-like virus.

Enter the utterly wonderful Jesse, a sunny, funny, camp Californian who arrives in freezing Cromer on the trail of his natural father. Who could that possibly be?

YOUNG JANE YOUNG by Gabrielle Zevin

(Little, Brown £14.99) This isn’t Christmassy in the least, but utterly of the moment as it’s all about sex scandals.

Don’t be put off by the awful title, this is a clever, thoughtful and witty read which imagines the fallout among victim, family and friends after twentysomething Washington intern Aviva succumbs to a flaky congressman.

her reputation and career prospects trashed, she moves away, relaunches herself as (irony!) a wedding planner and achieves something remarkable. The tale is told brilliantly in many female voices, including Aviva’s sharp Jewish mother and the congressman’s unexpectedly funny wife.

Definitely one to ginger up the Christmas lunch!