Looking for a Christmas read

Thanks for the good ideas. I am not really looking forward to spending Christmas on my own, so I have just made a book list from all your good ideas.

Also, my Oxford World Classics edition of Dickens' A Christmas Carol has four other Christmas stories by him in it. It's this one,
www.waterstones.com/book/a-christmas-carol-and-other-christmas-books/charles-dickens/robert-douglas-fairhurst/9780199536306
Or might be worth looking in the library?

Hatcham

For something really different, you could try 'The Dark is Rising' by Susan Cooper

Yes! I listened to the Dark is Rising on BBC Sounds www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w13xtvp7 because I thought it might be suitable fare for a grandchild who is an avid reader. Wrong! Much too scary for an 8 year old, but very dramatic, and unexpectedly entertaining for an adult.

Most of these sound right up my street. We need more days in Advent.

Last year, I enjoyed Dead of Winter by Nicola Upson, a murder mystery set on St Michael's Mount in 1938. Definitely had the required atmosphere!

Rosamund Pilchard ! 🤣 Got to love auto correct !

Ohh … lovely question. I’d recommend Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher. A great feather bed of a novel, as publicists say.

Hatcham

For something really different, you could try 'The Dark is Rising' by Susan Cooper

I've got my copy ready Hatcham, it's now part of my Midwinter Rites! First chapter with a hot chocolate just as daylight fades out this afternoon, bliss.

Witzend

Aveline

Try Trollope - Christmas at Thompson Hall. He's wordy but the stories are good and I always like his characters. I prefer him to Dickens.

As a Trollope fan I’ve got his complete works on my Kindle but don’t ever recall seeing this! Must have another look….

It's free to read on Project Gutenberg:

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58558

For something really different, you could try 'The Dark is Rising' by Susan Cooper

If you like Detective books, author Alex Pine has written a number of books set around Christmas and winter.
A Christmas Killer is the first in the series.
They are set in Cumbria a place I love to visit.

In fact, I see there are a few Christmas novels by Miss Read. (I was just googling to check that I had the Miss Quinn title in my post above right!)

There is a Christmas novel by Miss Read. It’s called No Holly for Miss Quinn. I absolutely love all her novels. I have one by my bedside constantly. Ideal for just before going to sleep.

Oreo

keepingquiet

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. Not Christmassy as such but quite scary.

Well….there is snow!
A very scary story indeed, that stays with you.

I have never forgotten it- which is why it came in my head. There are some others but I would have to have a good think...

Another one I enjoyed was The Gift by Cecilia Ahern. The main theme is the value of time, and how we choose to spend it. A stressed businessman has his attitudes challenged by a homeless man who’s taken up residence outside his company building. Not a bit schmaltzy, but it is touching.

keepingquiet

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. Not Christmassy as such but quite scary.

Well….there is snow!
A very scary story indeed, that stays with you.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. Not Christmassy as such but quite scary.

😂 that sounds like fun Maggiemaybe

I’d recommend Hello from the Gillespies. A harassed mum sends out the wrong Christmas round robin - the one she typed out in a rage, that tells about the family’s life as it really is.

Aveline

Try Trollope - Christmas at Thompson Hall. He's wordy but the stories are good and I always like his characters. I prefer him to Dickens.

As a Trollope fan I’ve got his complete works on my Kindle but don’t ever recall seeing this! Must have another look….

Glad to be reminded of the Miss Tead books, I will seek them out, but at Christmas I’m another one who likes a Golden Age type crime set in a country house.

Christmas Jigsaw Murders by Alexandra Benedict is good fun, full of puzzles.

Another one for Miss Read. I love her stories of gentle country folk and their Christmas activities.

I've earmarked a book for December, The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, nominated for the Booker. I've recently read a good book by this author. This one is set in the harsh winter of '63. Possibly not a Christmas theme though. I'd also go with WW's suggestion, vintage crime in a big house to evoke a specific seasonal feel.

How about The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories?

Truman Capote makes whisky-soaked fruitcake in Alabama; Laurie Lee slides across a frozen pond in Gloucestershire; and Shirley Jackson is outwitted by a wily Santa Claus at the bank. Ghosts haunt the Christmases of Muriel Spark and Elizabeth Bowen, while Dostoyevsky, Daphne du Maurier and Italo Calvino take a cynical view of the season and Selma Lagerlof and Angela Carter celebrate its miracles. Ranging from Cork to Lagos to the Wild West and from Paris to San Paolo to outer space, this is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short-story writers of all time.

Available in paper book and audio book formats.