Reads to warm a winter evening

From the Booker winner to heart-stopping page-turners, cold-blooded crime and raunchy romps, our reviewers choose the best books to fill your family’s stockings

LITERARY FICTION ANTHONY CUMMINS THE PROMISE by Damon Galgut (Chatto £16.99)

No arguments about this year’s Booker winner, centred on a white family’s broken pledge to their black housekeeper in postapartheid south africa.

a sobering allegory, to be sure, but also a giddy pleasure, thanks to galgut’s restlessly acrobatic narrative voice, which darts and zooms unpredictably around the action.

HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead (Fleet £16.99)

Whitehead followed his breakthrough hits the

underground railroad and the Nickel Boys with this zesty gangster epic. it is set amid the racial divisions of 1950s New York, where an ambitious black businessman is seduced by the prospect of quick gains in the city’s criminal underworld.

LOVED AND MISSED by Susie Boyt (Virago £16.99)

For emotionally astute storytelling that rings messily true to life, look no further than this tender but steely novel. it’s about a North London teacher who finds herself suddenly in charge of a newborn after her drug-addicted daughter, long since AWOL, turns up out of the blue with news.

CLAIRE ALLFREE KLARA AND THE SUN by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber £20)

CAN you imagine falling in love with a robot? and, if so, what might that say about the human soul? ishiguro may have missed out on the Booker, but he distills the big questions of the day in this deceptively simple fable about the friendship between a desperately ill teenage girl, her terrified mother and an artificial friend.

OH WILLIAM! by Elizabeth Strout (Viking £14.99)

ELIZABETH strout continues the story of the eponymous novelist we first met in my Name is Lucy Barton in her latest miniature masterpiece.

Lucy is grieving her second husband david but still good friends with her first, William, when he asks her to accompany him on a trip to maine to track down a newly discovered step

sister. a terrific novel about loss, self-knowledge and the impact of time passing.

IRON ANNIE by Luke Cassidy

(Bloomsbury £14.99) the flow of irish literary talent continues apace with this electrifying debut which follows aoife, a small-town drug dealer, and her untameable girlfriend annie on a doomed trip to england to offload 10kg of cocaine.

Cassidy excels at combining antic storytelling and vernacular lyricism with piercing observations of parochial irish life. a blast.

STEPHANIE CROSS BURNTCOAT by Sarah Hall (Faber £12.99)

sex, death and art are the three pillars of hall’s searing postpandemic novel. When we meet her, famous sculptor edith harkness is about to complete her last commission, but at the centre of the book is her intense lockdown affair with a chef, described in visceral, indelible detail.

CROSSROADS by Jonathan Franzen (4th Estate £20)

FRANZEN’s giant slab of a family saga (just the first instalment) is perfect for getting lost in this Christmas, not least as its opening section takes place over advent.

Juicy dilemmas abound as the hildebrandt clan, headed up by recently humiliated pastor russ, agonise over how — and indeed whether — to be good.

BEWILDERMENT by Richard Powers

(Hutchinson Heinemann £18.99) this may not be Powers’s strongest novel, but it deserved its Booker shortlisting.

Centring on widowed astrobiologist theo and his greta thunberg-like neuro-diverse son, it engages head-on with the environmental catastrophe that presents an existential threat to us all — and manages to be utterly absorbing.

HISTORICAL EITHNE FARRY THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY by Amor Towles (Hutchinson Heinemann £20)

Crammed full of emotion, madcap escapades and hugely endearing characters, towles’ outstanding third novel criss-crosses 1950s america as three wayward young men, and one sweet kid brother, go in search of fresh starts and family fortunes. damaged by their pasts and heading into uncertain futures, their unruly ten-day odyssey is a beautiful, bittersweet adventure.

GREAT CIRCLE by Maggie Shipstead (Doubleday £14.99)

great Circle is irresistible; an audacious epic that takes flight from the very first page. With two charismatic heroines — one an adventurous aviator, the other a disgraced film star — its dual time soars between Prohibition america and contemporary hollywood, telling a vivid, colourful tale of two women battling to live their best lives.

MATRIX by Lauren Groff (Heinemann £12.99)

IN PERFECTLY pitched, quietly lyrical prose, Lauren groff unfolds the enthralling story of marie de France, an awkward outcast at the court of eleanor, who becomes the powerful poet-prioress of a

once impoverished convent in 12th-century England. It’s a marvellously told story of devotion, desire and ambition in the heart of a female utopia.

CIRCUS OF WONDERS by Elizabeth Macneal (Picador £14.99)

THE Crimean War, the glitter and grime of a Victorian circus, and the complicated relationships between two brothers and a high trapeze artist in Jasper Jupiter’s Circus Of Wonders makes Elizabeth Macneal’s second novel a darkly seductive read.

Gothic in feel, and with finely drawn, convincing characters, it brilliantly explores performance, power and personal autonomy.

PSYCHO THRILLERS CHRISTENA APPLEYARD FOR YOUR OWN GOOD by Samantha Downing

(Michael Joseph £12.99) THIS is a ferociously funny black comedy about the splendid Ted Crutcher, a public school teacher who thrives on inventing hells for his entitled pupils. But things become weird when Fallon Knight, one of his victims from the past, suddenly turns up at the school as a teacher. People start to die and matters go from strange to evil. Original and startling.

THE SCORPION’S HEAD by Hilde Vandermeeren

(Pushkin £9.99) A CONTRACT killer with a conscience, a distraught mother suspected of trying to harm her son and a delicious Bond-style mastermind called Dolores Bartosz are the key characters in this dark, twisty tale.

Exactly who is guilty of what isn’t clear until the very last page. It’s written by a psychologist who is also a truly gifted storyteller. Worth reading for the character of Dolores alone.

DREAM GIRL by Laura Lippman

(Faber £14.99) LIPPMAN produces another winner with this tale of an American writer, high on opioid painkillers following an accident, who thinks a female character from one of his books may be trying to harm him.

There are brilliant insights into the egotistical traits of writers, a compelling plot with welldrawn characters and an explosive ending. A perfect psychological thriller for fans or someone you would like to convert to the genre.

THE MAIDENS by Alex Michaelides

(W&N, £14.99) THIS is a terrific follow-up to Michaelides’s smash hit The silent Patient. set in a sort of amped-up backdrop of Cambridge University, Marianne, a young widow, investigates the death of her niece’s friend. she has to grapple with a secret society of beautiful young women, a suspiciously attractive professor and her own demons. Gripping.

POPULAR WENDY HOLDEN STILL LIFE by Sarah Winman (4th Estate £16.99)

THE best new book I read this year. A motley group of Cockneys leave the war-battered East End for the beauty, warmth and light of Florence. We follow them through the subsequent decades. Full of love and friendship, this is the kind of story you wish was real.

YOURS CHEERFULLY by A. J. Pearce (Picador £14.99)

EMMY, working on Woman’s Friend magazine, is asked by the War Office for articles recruiting women for munitions work. It’s exciting until she goes to the factories, sees the poor conditions and decides to take action.

Meanwhile, her wedding is approaching. spiffing, warmhearted and comfortingly decent.

APPLES NEVER FALL by Liane Moriarty

(Michael Joseph £20) JOY DELANEY has disappeared and husband stan is suspected of her murder. Their four grown-up children try to work out what happened. Did the strange girl who moved in with their parents have anything to do with it? This sharp and perceptive tale of ambition, pressure and family politics has a tennis theme.

EMILY NOBLE’S DISGRACE by Mary Paulson-Ellis

(Mantle £16.99) Paulson-ellis’s subject is society’s forgotten and overlooked, and this seaside-set mystery is superb. Essie, a crimescene cleaner, and Emily, a police officer, are called when the longdead body of a woman is found in a former boarding house. But whose are the tiny bones? slowly, a terrible story emerges.

DEBUTS FANNY BLAKE EVERYONE IS STILL ALIVE by Cathy Rentzenbrink (Phoenix £14.99)

JULIET, Liam and their son Charlie move into Magnolia road in south-West London. Liam determines to get under the skin of the neighbours by including them in his novel.

But when one of the couples breaks up, new tensions and cracks emerge in the group. I loved the sharp observation of the minutiae of marriage, motherhood and friendship, both hilarious and moving in turns.

MRS MARCH by Virginia Feito (4th Estate £14.99)

Mrs March is married to a bestselling novelist celebrating his latest book. When someone assumes the main character — a prostitute with a dwindling clientele — is based on Mrs March herself, her world begins to fracture. This is a superbly chilling psychological thriller and an extraordinary portrait of a woman on the edge.

DINNER PARTY by Sarah Gilmartin

(One £12.99) HALLOWEEN 2018, and Kate has a dinner party planned to commemorate the tragic early death of her sister. her two brothers come, but not their mother.

Over the course of a dramatic evening, the years are rolled back to get to the heart of this family and where things went so wrong. A beautifully paced and insightful novel that had me utterly gripped.

THE FALLING THREAD by Adam O’Riordan (Bloomsbury £14.99, 272pp)

In 1890 Charles is at home from university, bored, and sets his cap at hettie, the young governess of his two sisters.

When she becomes pregnant, his parents arrange their marriage and life changes for both of them. This beguiling family portrait traces not just their fortunes but Charles’s sisters’ too, over the following decades of social change.

SCI FI AND FANTASY JAMIE BUXTON THE WISDOM OF CROWDS by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz £20, 528pp)

FIRST came war, then peace and now, with the revolutionary spirit alive in the Middlerlands, the peasants are revolting and everyone’s life is turned upside down. saddle up for vivid characters, garotte-tight plot twists, the best writing in the genre and the delicious sense that no good deed goes unpunished.

THE BLACK LOCOMOTIVE by Rian Hughes (Picador £16.99)

WHAT? A gigantic, spaceship from prehistory discovered under London and the only way in is with a pre-war steam engine, hidden in secret government tunnels?

The problem is knotty but the solution worthy of a Boy’s Own comic in this conceptually complex, graphically gorgeous, full-steam-ahead masterpiece.

UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR by T.J. Klune (Tor £16.99)

IF Bill Bryson visited Limbo, he’d just love the tea shop at Charon’s Crossing — the afterlife’s waiting room. Wallace doesn’t. he’s a crabby accountant’s ghost who must learn it’s never too late to live and love — even when you’re dead. In short, enchanting.

NOTES FROM THE BURNING AGE by Claire North

(Orbit, £18.99) SINCE the Burning Age, religion has been all about living in harmony with nature, but with a new, populist movement intent on repeating the mistakes of the past, it’s time to ditch old loyalties. A gripping, utterly involving, dystopian eco-thriller that balances the intimacies of betrayal against global climate collapse.