If you haven’t started your Christmas shopping yet, now is definitely the time to get going. Browse the Topshop Gift Guide to pick up the ultimate fashion gifts and then choose a great book to add on for a present they’ll definitely love. Not sure which books to go for this 2020? We took a look back at some of the best fiction releases of this past year you might have missed and picked the nine best titles made for gifting…
1. Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams (pub 6th Feb 2020 – paperback)
Caught between the Jamaican British family who don’t seem to understand her, a job that’s not all it promised and a man she just can’t get over, Queenie’s life seems to be steadily spiralling out of control. Desperately trying to navigate her way through a hot mess of shifting cultures and toxic relationships and emerge with a shred of dignity, her missteps and misadventures will provoke howls of laughter and tears of pity – frequently on the same page.
2. When The Light Goes Out, by Carys Bray (pub 12th Nov 2020)
Darkly funny and beautifully written, When the Lights Go Out is a novel for our times: a story about cultivating hope and weathering change. Emma is beginning to wonder whether relationships, like mortgages, should be conducted in five-year increments. Her and Chris family’s precarious eco-system is further disrupted by torrential rains, power cuts and the unexpected arrival of his mother. Emma longs to lower a rope and winch Chris from the pit of his worries. But he doesn’t want to be rescued or reassured – he wants to pull her in after him…
3. Fleishman is in Trouble, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (pub 9th July 2020)
Fleishman is in Trouble is a blistering satirical novel about marriage, divorce and modern relationships, by one of the most exciting new voices in American fiction. Finally free from his nightmare of a marriage, Toby Fleishman is ready for a life of online dating and weekend-only parental duties. But as he optimistically looks to a future that is wildly different from the one he imagined, his life turns upside-down as his ex-wife, Rachel, suddenly disappears…
4. A Thousand Ships, by Natalie Haynes (pub 23rd July 2020)
In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective. This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them. In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash..
5. The Twelve Days of Christmas, by Jenny Bayliss (pub 12th Nov 2020)
Kate Turner is happily single – a bit too happily, in fact. Since returning to her hometown of Blexford, a sleepy village where everybody knows each other, and between catching up with her oldest friends Laura and Matt, a flourishing career as a fabric designer, and taking care of her beloved dad, love hasn’t really had a look in. But then a new dating app service called Twelve Dates of Christmas changes everything…
6. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett (pub 30th April 2020 – paperback)
Danny Conroy grows up in The Dutch House, a lavish folly in small-town Pennsylvania taken on by his property developer father. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve. Life is comfortable and coherent. Then one day their father brings Andrea home. Andrea’s advent to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve’s lives.
7. Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke (pub 15th Sept 2020)
Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides which thunder up staircases, the clouds which move in slow procession through the upper halls. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.
8. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig (pub 13th Aug 2020)
Between life and death there is a library. When Nora Seed finds herself in The Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change. The books enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren’t always what she imagined they’d be…
9. Come Again, by Robert Webb (pub 23rd April 2020)
You can’t fall in love for the first time twice… In Come Again, Kate’s husband Luke – the man she loved from the moment she met him twenty-eight years ago – died suddenly. Since then she has pushed away her friends, lost her job and everything is starting to fall apart. One day, she wakes up in the wrong room and in the wrong body. She is eighteen again but remembers everything. This is her college room in 1992. This is the first day of Freshers’ Week. And this is the day she first meets Luke.
Want more gift ideas? Here are 22 gifts for anyone that’s really into astrology…
