The Best Books to Gift This Season

Winner of this year's National Book Award (and nominated for nearly ever other word), this action-packed novel reimagines Twain’s classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of his enslaved sidekick Jim as he embarks down the Mississippi in search of freedom. "Huck Finn' is a masterpiece. This retelling just might be, too," raved The New York Times.

Get ready to cozy up with the latest from the beloved London-based chef and bestselling cookbook author. Featuring 100 global recipes that redefine comfort food like Cheesy Bread Soup, Caramelized Onion Orecchiette and Garlicky Aligot Potato. The longtime Guardian columnist’s inventive dishes are heartwarming, satisfying, and perfect for the cooler months ahead.

As we gather with family and friends, take a moment to reflect on the things that really matter in life with this gorgeous, highly anticipated book by a bestselling Native American botanist. "Robin Wall Kimmerer, celebrated author of Braiding Sweetgrass, gifts her readers once again with this gorgeous meditation on reciprocity and abundance in nature,” raved Oprah Daily. “Beautifully illustrated, brimming and buzzing with plant and animal life, The Serviceberry is a lyrical call to action."

Publishers Weekly was delighted by this "boldly experimental and emotionally devastating story of estrangement" from the sensational millennial Irish author. "This feels like Rooney's most fully realized work, especially as she channels the modernist styles of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf... Even the author's skeptics are liable to be swept away by this novel's forceful currents of feeling."

The first book of Elena Ferrante's highly lauded series of Neapolitan Novels was named best book of the century by the New York Times this year. The full quartet of novels ushers readers into the world of a literary friendship that feels so specific, yet relatable, that it feels like you’re “riding a bike on gravel: It’s gritty and slippery and nerve-racking, all at the same time,” according to The New York Times Book Review.

Publishers Weekly hailed “this ideal stocking stuffer" from the acclaimed author of Piranesi, which won the Women's Prize for Fiction, calling it a "bite-size Christmassy fairy tale" with “thoughtful and sometimes unsettling atmospherics.” Beautifully illustrated, it’s an enchanting short story tailor-made for a cozy holiday read by the fire.

It’s impossible to go wrong with this literary treasure chest - whether you’re shopping for a bonafide Didion fanatic or someone starting to dabble in the zeitgeist-defining Californian writer. This stunner features all of her major works of fiction, journalism, and memoir together for the first time in an irresistible 3-volume boxed set, including renowned works like Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Play It As It Lays, and the New York Times best sellers The Year of Magical Thinking, Blue Nights, and South and West.

With Joan Didion as an aunt, Carrie Fisher as a best friend, and acting and production roles in Martin Scorsese's After Hours, few people have had as much access to the intimate lives of America's cultural aristocracy as Griffin Dunne. On the page, all the glitz and glamour, combined with the devastating killing of his younger sister and the high-profile trial which followed, make for a complicated, eclectic, and fascinating read about a singular life.

After growing up in Columbus, Ohio during the 1990s and watching local legends like LeBron James, this poet, essayist, and cultural critic reflects on the game of basketball and explores what it means to be a role model, expectation versus execution, sports stardom, and more.

Join six men and women from America, Russia, Italy, Britain and Japan orbiting Earth at over seventeen thousand miles per hour in this slender, mesmerizing novel that “satisfies both my lifelong obsession with space travel and my hunger for sentences and paragraphs that demand to be read and reread. A day in the life of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station, that’s all, but my goodness this novel is beautiful,” raved novelist Mark Haddon in the New Statesman.