The best books for giving this Christmas

Into the Storm, Cecelia Ahern

RRP £22 (Harper Collins)

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Driving at night through torrential rain in the run-up to Christmas, Dr Enya Pickering is flagged down by a man who has found a boy injured in the road. She performs CPR, revives him, but nothing can breathe life into her dying marriage, and the time has come to start over.

The hunt is on for a hit-and-run driver, as Enya leaves her husband and teenage son to reinvent herself as a rural GP. Gripping and complex.

The Bells of Westminster, Leonora Nattrass

RRP £16.99 (Viper)

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Georgian London and the great Gothic mausoleum of Westminster Abbey provides a backdrop for Nattrass’s new historical romp. Dean’s daughter Susan Bell wryly relates a tale of murder, ghostly hauntings and weird happenings.

A teenage William Blake, a garrulous parrot named Cuthbert, the exhumed remains of Edward I and a bunch of antiquaries make for a rich mix.

Murder Under the Mistletoe, the Reverend Richard Coles

RRP £12.99 (W&N)

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Champton is beginning to look a lot like Midsomer, with another suspicious death for Canon Daniel Clement and DS Vanloo to solve. It’s Christmas Day at the rectory, where Daniel and his mother, Audrey, are hosting guests when an encounter under the mistletoe proves to be the kiss of death.

A prosecco sort of novella, light and airy cosy crime from the irreverent Communard Richard Coles.

My Animals and Other Animals, Bill Bailey

RRP £25 (Quercus)

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When Bill Bailey comes home it’s to a menagerie because, you know, one guinea pig leads to another. And to parrots. Owls and pussycats. Always dogs.

Such a lovely paean to the joys of creatures great and small! 

Jokes, Jokes, Jokes, Jenny Eclair

RRP £25 (Sphere)

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Grumpy old woman she may be, self-confessed ‘miserable old bag’ and now a granny, but at 64, Jenny Eclair is as funny, bawdy, frank and fearless as ever.

Here the comedian and former Loose Women star rattles through her life story – from Lytham to London – and ‘very funny’ her memoir is too, even if she does say so herself. 

England: A Natural History, John Lewis-Stempel

RRP £25 (Doubleday)

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From the sludgy Thames Estuary to shining Crummock Water, this extraordinarily fine writer tours England with an eye for every living thing. 

A work of beauty, deeply informed, a fantastic gift, and, he says, his last full-length book on nature.

The Wood at Midwinter, Susanna Clarke

RRP £9.99 (Bloomsbury)

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Wind, woods, animals, snow, a young woman communing with nature, set on mothering a baby bear… This is a quirky, illustrated short story from the author of 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction winner Piranesi, as ever defying categorising. 

A little Christmas cracker.

There and Back, Michael Palin

RRP £30 (Orion Publishing Co)

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The as-it-happened quality of a journal has great appeal, and in the fourth volume of diaries from the Monty Python alumnus, we get to hang out with this thoughtful, amusing, affectionate, intellectually curious man over a decade to 2009. One day a jog on Hampstead Heath, another in the Himalayas. Lunch at iconic London restaurant J Sheekey. In Niger on 9/11.

This is full of friends (numerous, often famous), funerals and fun.

Fairy Shopping, Sally Gardner

RRP £9.99 (Zephyr)

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Singing lollipops, dressing gowns for dragons, flying umbrellas, three gift-wrapped wishes, wands and wings.

Children will adore browsing Silverbell Street, with its tiny windows to peer into, shop names to read and interiors to explore, while parents delight in Gardner’s witty, zany, enchanting artworks.

A Thousand Feasts, Nigel Slater

RRP £20 (Fourth Estate)

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TV chef Nigel Slater has the recipe for happiness. The ingredients – small moments of joy to savour. Macaroni cheese. Miso. Mangoes shared with a taxi driver in a monsoon in Goa. Night bathing in Japan. Eating under a pergola in a friend’s garden. Food for thought.

Cooking & the Crown, Tom Parker Bowles

RRP £30 (Octopus Publishing)

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Queen Victoria ate breakfast with gusto, alfresco, at Balmoral, to the skirling of bagpipes. For the abstemious Queen Camilla, it’s a bowl of porridge with honey. She and King Charles (champion of great British produce) love to forage for wild mushrooms before 5pm tea.

Here her food writer and critic son Tom Parker Bowles invites us to dine at the royal table with recipes from palace kitchens past and present. 

Christmas at Hogwarts, J K Rowling

RRP £16.99 (Bloomsbury Children's Books)

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Christmas features in all the Harry Potter books, but nowhere more joyfully than in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Fans will remember the snow, the Great Hall decked with 12 towering Christmas trees at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There’s a roaring fire in Gryffindor common room, where Harry and Ron toast crumpets and marshmallows. 

Now Ziyi Gao’s illustrations bring it all to life.