All I want in my stocking this year is...
After book recommendations this festive season? Nine top authors share their top picks with
AS THE festive season approaches, there are so many new books to put on those wish lists, from cookery inspiration to the latest nail-biting page-turners. And whether you’re shopping for gifts or looking to stock up your own reading pile, who better to ask for inspiration than top authors themselves?
Here, nine top authors (whose own latest books may well be on your wish list too) reveal the books they’ll be gifting, along with the titles they’d most like to find in their Christmas stockings this year...
JOHN BOYNE
“THE book I’m most looking forward to is (Viking, £16.99). Coe has been one of my favourite writers for decades, his stories are always so original and witty, and this one, which centres around Brexit, is sure to have a political twist to it. Anyone who follows Coe on Twitter will know that he has very strong views on this topic!
“I’m spending December and half of January in Sydney, Australia, and I’ll bring (Doubleday, £18.99) with me. I read it a few months ago but it’s my favourite novel of 2018, and I’d like to immerse myself in it again when I’m in the city.
“Zusak writes with incredible emotion and raw honesty of five brothers and the father who abandoned them. It’s a novel filled with loud, angry, loving Aussie boys, none of whom can contain their exuberance. Zusak is of course best known for The Book Thief, and readers of that classic novel will not be disappointed by this one.
Jonathan Coe’s Middle England Markus Zusak’s Bridge Of Clay Kate
■ “I’M also looking forward to
(Faber & Faber, £18.45). She has been my favourite singer and songwriter for my entire life. I’m so obsessed with her that I even have a tattoo devoted to Hounds Of Love on my right arm. I know her albums inside out but this is the first time she’s released a book of her lyrics. I’d like to read them as poetry and see what different emotions they release in me.” ■ (Doubleday, £14.99)
Bush’s How To Be Invisible A Ladder To The Sky by John Boyne JACQUELINE WILSON
“ANNE TYLER is my all-time time favourite writer, so wise, subtle and truthful. I’ve read all 21 of her novels with huge enjoyment. Her latest,
(Chatto & Windus, £18.99), looks one of her best.
Clock Dance
“The Letters Of Sylvia Plath, Volumes 1 and 2
(Faber & Faber, £35 each) would be an enormously big and heavy parcel! I’ve long admired Plath and her poetry and her one novel The Bell Jar. I’ve read a shorter volume of her letters, but these would keep me absorbed for months.
“I love reading about bookshops, especially second-hand specialists. I’ve had a browse in
Shaun Bythell’s The Diary Of A Bookseller
(Profile, £8.99) already and love his wry style. I’m going to have to make a trip to his bookshop in Wigtown after Christmas.” ■
My Mum Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
(Doubleday, £12.99)
FREDERICK FORSYTH
“JOURNALIST Frank Gardner was a senior foreign correspondent with the BBC when disaster struck. He was shot by terrorists while reporting in Saudi. He sustained very serious injuries but he was not defeated. Still a roving reporter, he has turned to novels, and (Bantam, £12.99) is his second.
“Once again, the bad guys are as bad as they come – the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Iran’s lust to become a nuclear power is unabated but now a new ‘ultra’ group has appeared and our hero, tasked to stop them, is Luke Carlton of MI6. Lots of twists and turns and a surprise ending. Good stuff.” ■ (Bantam, £20)
Ultimatum The Fox by Frederick Forsyth