Ahhh, December. The hustle and bustle of finding the perfect gift for those you love. The choir concerts and the baking, the wrapping and the decorating. And the reading! Amid the stress and busyness of the month, make sure to carve out some time to curl up with a good book. Pick one from our list of ten excellent holiday-themed books below, or ask a librarian for a suggestion.
Last Christmas in Paris
By Hazel Gaynor
Adult Fiction
Avie Elliot’s plans to visit her brother, Will, and his best friend Thomas in Paris at Christmas are destroyed by the beginning of World War I. Her letters form an epistolary tale woven with Thomas’s visit to Paris during the Christmas of 1968.
The Crying of Lot 49
By Thomas Pynchon
Adult Fiction
“If you’re wanting a good story, this probably isn’t what you’re looking for (so, by all means, blame the author for having read the wrong book). If you’re looking for a good story told with a compelling use of language—language to be savored and considered and wallowed in—this is a great one.”
Suffused with rich satire, chaotic brilliance, verbal turbulence and wild humor, The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover’s estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness, and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting the Crying of Lot 49.
Life After Life
By Kate Atkinson
Adult Fiction
“While it’s not perfect, I was completely swept away by Life After Life and this is something I’ll re-read in the future. I found so much humanity in this read, and it was so well-written, I couldn’t help but be moved and informed and entertained by it.”
What if you could live again and again until you got it right? On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war. Does Ursula’s apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can—will she?
Mr. Dickens and His Carol
By Samantha Silva
Adult Fiction
Love Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol? Try this historical fiction novel, which imagines the story behind the writing of the classic tale.
Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker
By Gregory Maguire
Adult Fiction
In a dark weaving of Germanic legends and fairy-tale motifs, the origin story of the toymaker Drosselmeier from The Nutcracker ballet brings depth and detail to the tale of Klara and her magical toy soldier.
The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived our Holiday Spirits
By Les Standiford
Adult Nonfiction
Part writing memoir, part study of Dickens’s impact on modern Christmas traditions, this nonfiction book looks at how the author’s humanism continues to influence us.
A Redbird Christmas
By Fannie Flagg
Adult Fiction
When Oswald T. Campbell leaves Chicago for the tiny town of Lost River, Alabama (believing he’s experiencing his last Christmas ever before his emphysema kills him), the many widows of the town take an immediate interest. But it is the cardinal Jack and the lonely little girl named Patsy who really steal his heart. Plus: Holiday recipes!
Take a Look at The Five and Ten
By Connie Willis
Adult Fiction
With her trademark quirkiness and wit, Connie Willis blends a holiday tale with a bit of speculative fiction. Every year, Ori navigates a minefield of holiday dinners with people she’s barely related to (due to her father’s many marriages). Her ex step-grandmother Dottie’s vivid memories of a seasonal job at Woolworths in the 1950s coincide with a medical student’s research on traumatic flashbulb memories, leading Ori down unexpected paths.
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas: A Hercule Poirot Mystery
By Agatha Christie
Adult Fiction
When the tyrannical old man Simeon Lee is found dead on Christmas Eve, Hercule Poirot assists with the investigation.
Louisa May Alcott’s Christmas Treasury: The Complete Christmas Collection
By Louisa May Alcott
Adult Fiction
While many readers love Louisa May Alcott for her book Little Women, there is much more to her work than Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. She also wrote gothic tales, thrillers, and many short stories. Collected here are more than ten Christmas-themed stories that are full of wonder, whimsy, and hope.
by Amy S, Assistant Librarian
