Our Top 10 Books to Get You in the Mood for Christmas

For years Jeanette Winterson has written a new story at Christmas time and here she brings together twelve of her brilliantly imaginative, funny, and bold tales, along with twelve delicious recipes for the twelve days of Christmas.

Escape to the seaside this Christmas! A sumptuous, feel-good read from Sunday Times top-ten bestseller Veronica Henry about the real magic of Christmas: reconnecting with your loved ones.

A charming gift book that unravels the origins behind the weird and wonderful Christmas traditions from around the world. Beautifully produced and charmingly illustrated, The Book of Christmas is a treasure trove of all things Christmas to delight the whole family.

Hoffmann's classic Christmas fairy tale, immortalised by Tchaikovsky's ballet, is brought to life by the wonderful contemporary artwork of Finnish illustrator, Sanna Annuka. This cloth-bound edition combines the charm of Hoffmann's original nineteenth-century tale with the freshness of Sanna Annuka's gorgeous illustrations. A beautiful gift to give and receive.

A fun and festive tale by Nancy Mitford, the author of The Pursuit of Love. The formidable fox-hunting obsessed Lady Bobbin has put together a Christmas house party at Compton Bobbin. As the house party starts to unravel, so the jokes increase. Nancy Mitford's second novel and one of her earliest forays into the world of the Bright Young Things, Christmas Pudding is the perfect Christmas guest.

Dickens practically invented the popular conception of Christmas with this evergreen novella about personal transformation and the grotesqueries of greed. Through Ebenezer Scrooge’s moral journey, A Christmas Carol provides a feel-good festive tale of eternal popularity.

In A Very Murderous Christmas, ten of the best classic crime writers come together to unleash festive havoc, with murder, mayhem and twists aplenty. Following Murder on Christmas Eve and Murder under the Christmas Tree, this is the perfect accompaniment to a mince pie and a roaring fire. Just make sure you're really, truly alone ...

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn't exist. After all, life isn't a scene from the movies, is it? Following Laurie, Sarah and Jack through ten years of love, heartbreak and friendship, One Day in December is a joyous, heart-warming and immensely moving love story that you'll want to escape into forever.

A Literary Christmas is a seasonal anthology collecting poems, short stories and prose extracts by some of the greatest poets and writers in the English language. Like Charles Dickens's ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, they are representative of times old and new. A wonderful addition to any Christmas book shelf. With a new cover by Sinem Erkas.

They say (said Reginald) that there’s nothing sadder than victory except defeat. If you’ve ever stayed with dull people during what is alleged to be the festive season, you can probably revise that saying. The undisputed master of the English short story, these are four tales guaranteed to delight and disturb any Christmas gathering.