Sit back, relax, and enjoy this season’s best books

There’s nothing like finding a couple of great reads in your stocking on Christmas morning, and nobody better qualified to recommend this year’s top festive picks than those at Topping & Company Booksellers in St Andrews. Here are the team’s top choices t

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

(recommended by Katherine Harsant)

Yaa Gyasi’s incredible debut novel is a powerful and profound exploration of race, family and American history. The narrative charts the fates of two sisters as they experience very different sides of the slave trade, spanning centuries and crossing continents as the consequences of their lives echo through those of their descendants.

The Portrait by Antoine Laurain

(recommended by Andrew Scott)

A collector spies a centuries-old portrait which bears an uncanny resemblance to himself, and slowly becomes transfixed with its history and a possible connection to his own. The painting’s influence over him begins to affect his daily life, and his entanglement with the family to which it once belonged leads him to take drastic action.

The Accident on the A35 by Graeme MacRae Burnet

(recommended by Mary Dodds)

The Accident on the A35 reunites the reader with the troubled detective first introduced in The Disappearance of Adele Beadeau, Georges Gorski. An apparently unremarkable fatal road accident lingers in Gorski’s mind and, as he investigates further, the facade of the victim’s public life is peeled away.

Winter by Ali Smith

(recommended by Michael Grieve)

Winter centres on that most quintessential of experiences: the family Christmas. With Arthur determined to bring along the girlfriend who has recently broken up with him, an aunt who, for once, isn’t chained to a fence, and a mother haunted by the head of a spectral child, this is no traditional celebration.

Munich by Robert Harris

(recommended by Duncan Furness)

Harris weaves a thrilling story around the facts of the Munich Conference and takes another look at Chamberlain’s reasons for believing he had secured peace in our time. Well up to his usual high standards, Munich is a taut thriller that will delight devotees and newcomers alike.