The 23 Best Books to Gift This Season

Critics fell head over heels for the National Book Award winner’s latest, as will fortunate readers on your holiday list. The New York Times raved about this “murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel…charming, smart, heart-blistering and heart-healing."

This Booker-shortlisted novella packs plenty of hope and holiday spirit into a slim 116-page package. We can’t think of a merrier way to enjoy post Christmas days than curled up with some sweets and this literary delight that’s inspired by the ultimate Dickens holiday classic.

Our apologies to the elf chosen to lug around this handsome three-pounder, but we promise that each novel in the multi-volume set is worth its weight in noir gold. Among the nine timeless crime reads there’s a tightly-wound heist from Richard Stark, a gritty cop caper by Ed McBain, cerebral suspense from Patricia Highsmith, and other 60s classics so good they’re criminal.

The legendary Beastie Boys, The Strokes and Run DMC producer slides his singular wisdom down our chimney with a book Ezra Klein likened to a spiritual tract: “It’s a guide to finding and cultivating and inhabiting states of mind that foster creativity, but not just the kind of creativity that leads to art. You don’t have to be an artist to get a lot out of this. How to really listen to another person.”

You can’t really go wrong with this 2023 Pulitzer and Women’s Prize winner, Oprah Book Club pick, and year-long resident on the NYTimes bestseller list. It’s a Dickens-inspired survival story that follows a plucky boy born to a single mother in poverty-stricken Appalachia.

The foodies on your list will love these unforgettable dishes and drinks from America’s best spots, courtesy of the renowned experts at Eater. Bound to be a conversation piece when they unwrap it, this debut cookbook from the celebrated epicurean brand contains coast-to-cost hits like lobster rolls from Maine seafood shack McLoons, migas from Austin’s Veracruz All Natural, pies that are on par with Una Pizza Napoletana, and martinis from New York’s legendary piano bar Bemelmans.

Who doesn’t want a suspense-filled end-of-year getaway? The latest historical non-fiction from the acclaimed New Yorker writer and Killers Of The Flower Moon author is a nautical page-turner set in the 1700s that “unfurls like a great sail...He fixes his spyglass on the ravages of empire, of racism, of bureaucratic indifference and raw greed...one of the finest nonfiction books I've ever read," raved The Guardian.

A bestselling historian’s sweeping history of families from prehistory through the present. From the fossilized footprints of a family of five out for a stroll 950,000 years ago, to the romances and rivalries of clans like the Bonapartes, Habsburgs, Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Saudis, Kims, Assads and many more, this epic by the acclaimed author of The Romanovs offers a masterful account of world history through its dynasties.

The legendary French chef teaches home cooks to save time, effort and money in “a mix of recipes that feel fancy and ones that are weeknight friendly” praised Food & Wine, which added that the highlight is “the array of colorful paintings and illustrated menus scattered throughout, which were all done by Pépin himself."

Who can resist curling up by the fire with this wintry novella by the 2023 Nobel Prize winner? The Financial Times said this dreamlike 75-pager about a lost man’s strange forest encounter “feels so momentous… You never quite know where you’re going. But it doesn’t matter: you want to follow, to move in step with the rhythm of these words.”