Stocking fillers
What were the must-read novels of 2023? We look back on the best fiction to add to your Christmas list…
Birnam Wood Eleanor Catton Granta, £20
The 2013 Booker Prize winner Eleanor Catton returns with the story of an anti-capitalist guerilla gardening collective who accept money from an eccentric billionaire before realising he has a hidden agenda. This thought-provoking firecracker of a book is as action-packed as any thriller.
Normal Rules Don’t Apply Kate Atkinson Doubleday, £18.99
Kate Atkinson interlinks 11 absorbing, poignant, and often hilarious tales. Many have the atmosphere of dark fairy stories and you’ll want to read this collection in one mystical sitting.
Romantic Comedy Curtis Sittenfeld Doubleday, £16.99
Sally is a writer on a late-night sketch show and she unexpectedly bonds with guest host Noah Brewster, a world-famous singer songwriter. But he’d never be interested in an ordinary woman like her… would he? An engrossing, blissfully escapist romance.
Perilous Times
Thomas D Lee Orbit, £16.99 The Arthurian knights rise from the dead whenever England is in peril and, here, they materialise in near-future Britain where climate change has left half of the country underwater. They join forces with squabbling climate change protestors as a cabal of wealthy people seek to save their own skins. It’s a novel as it is entertaining and comical as it’s enraging. Everything’s Fine Cecilia Rabess Picador, £16.99
Rabess’s observant, sharply funny debut tells the story of Jess, a principled, workingclass Black woman who falls for privileged, right-wing white man Josh. Is their romance doomed?
The Be e Sting
Paul Murray Hamish Hamilton, £18.99 A family lurches into financial and emotional crisis in full view of judgmental neighbours in this astute, remorselessly funny novel that switches between survivalist father Dickie, spendaholic housewife Imelda, surly teenager Cass and her loner brother PJ. Crook Ma ni festo
Colson Whitehead Fleet, £20 In 1970s’ New York, Ray has turned his back on a life of crime. But his daughter is so desperate for gold-dust Jackson 5 tickets that Ray taps up an old contact, only to end up reeled back into Harlem’s criminal underworld. A powerful, fast-paced novel simmering with tension. Cahokia Jazz
Francis Spufford Faber & Faber, £20
This taut, gripping murder mystery opens in 1922 with a detective attending the scene of a Ku Klux Klan member’s ritual murder. Cahokia, Mississippi, was already a melting pot teetering on the edge of anarchy and the discovery sparks a week of racial unrest in Spufford’s barnstorming page-turner. GoodAMaterial
Dolly lderton Fig Tree, £18.99 Failing stand-up comedian Andy is devastated when his girlfriend
Jen breaks up with him out of the blue. Alderton explores the trials and tribulations of finding yourself unexpectedly single in your mid-30s in a novel as witty as it is perceptive. Prophet Song
Paul Lynch Oneworld, £16.99
The Booker Prize winner tells the dystopian story of a Fascist dictatorship seizing power in Ireland. As society begins to unravel, a mother must decide how far she will go to save her family.