This year’s Christmas list features nine incredible books from authors I’ve interviewed throughout the year. And for the first time, I have my own books to include!
They range from nonfiction to mystery, so hopefully, you can find something to suit the tastes of your loved ones … or treat yourself.
Women’s Fiction
Title: Christmas Actually
Author: Lisa Darcy
Age group: adult
Interview: Lisa Darcy on Christmas Actually
Blurb: Time spent with family can be challenging, especially at Christmas actually . . .
Kate Cavendish is stuck in a rut. That is until a former colleague contacts her and offers her a chance to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a successful photographer. But with her focus pulled in all directions by her children, her pregnant sister, her newly dating mother, and the niggling worry that her husband might be having an affair, Kate is filled with self-doubt.
Then, as the countdown to Christmas begins, and memories of her own childhood resurface, Kate’s anxiety deepens—both personally and professionally. Can she move on from past events and rebuild her future? And can the power of social media finally stop hindering her family, and help her create something successful?
Christmas Actually is a festive drama about family and forgiveness, and a snapshot of modern family life—addressing subjects from social media to motherhood and everything in between.
Title: The Pact
Author: Lisa Darcy
Age group: adult
Interview: Lisa Darcy on Tuscany and Tennis
Blurb: Sisters are for life, aren’t they?
The Pact is a gripping narrative about winning and losing, and pushing through when you have nothing left to give.
Samantha and Annie Callahan are successful doubles champions – the toast of the Olympics, Wimbledon and Flushing Meadow. But their partnership spirals out of control when Annie’s new boyfriend announces their engagement at the Australian Open.
Amidst rising anger and betrayal, Samantha does the unthinkable after a devastating Wimbledon loss.
The sisters must confront the past to take control of the present. But can Samantha and Annie both win?
Title: Weekend Friends
Author: Bella Ellwood-Clayton
Age group: adult
Interview: Bella Ellwood-Clayton on Weekend Friends
Blurb: For girls, middle school is practically The Hunger Games—for their mothers, it’s worse.
Food photographer, Rebecca, and her tween daughter, Willow, move from Alaska to Boca Raton, leaving behind their terrible secret about the death of Rebecca’s husband. They’re ready to start anew in the warmth of the sunshine state, hoping it will help vanquish Willow’s night terrors.
As her daughter becomes controlled and bullied by the popular group, Rebecca is drawn closer to the charismatic head of school, Mr. Brady. A hot and steamy – though uncertain – relationship begins. Soon, lies, deception, and secrets cause everything to spiral out of control and both mother and daughter find themselves on the wrong side of their gated community with devastating repercussions.
Full of dark twists and turns, Weekend Friends makes you grateful you’re no longer a tween … or the parent of one.
Title: The Photograph
Author: Diane Clarke
Age group: adult
Interview: Diane Clarke on wartime evacuation and her novel, The Photograph
Blurb: Caryl Hunter believes she lost her brother during the wartime evacuation of 1939. Her adoptive mother denies his existence and Caryl was too young to remember with certainty.
When she finds a black and white photograph of her family standing on a London station in the company of a mystery boy, her determination to find him reignites.
In 2020, Caryl’s daughter, Megan, takes up the search for her missing uncle. Confronted by her own secret, will she ignore it, or will she remember Caryl’s lifelong torment and avoid the mistakes of the past?
Nonfiction
Title: Vessel, The shape of absent bodies
Author: Dani Netherclift
Age group: adult
Interview: Dani Netherclift on writing to resolve grief
Blurb: Who would think to call Ophelia a corpse? She is but a woman emptied of herself.
In 1993, when she was 18 years old, Dani Netherclift witnessed the drowning deaths of her father and brother in an irrigation channel in North-East Victoria. Or, she saw her father and brother disappear beneath an opaque surface and never saw these loved ones again. But also, never stopped imagining the shape of this bodily loss. Not viewing the bodies grows into a form of ambiguous loss that makes the world dangerous, making people seem liable to suddenly vanishing.
What would it have been like to have seen them, after the fact? To have looked upon their bodies. To picture the emptied vessels of her father and brother is to reach toward a sense of closure; a form of magical thinking in which goodbye is made possible. Vessel pulls together a language of space and ruin, interleaving stories of what it means to lose the physical body of a person you love with a bricolage of literature, history and (vessel) translations, and the realisation that all bodies become in the end bodies of text, beautifully written palimpsests—elegies—inked on the skins of the dead.
Title: The Writer Laid Bare
Author: Lee Kofman
Age group: adult
Interview: Lee Kofman on The Writer Laid Bare
Blurb: The Writer Laid Bare is a book for everyone who loves the craft of good writing. Be they a voracious reader wanting to know more or an emerging writer themselves, best-selling author and writing coach Lee Kofman has distilled her wisdom, insight and passion into this guide to writing and emotional honesty.
A combination of raw memoir and a professional writing toolkit, Lee examines her own life, rich in story and emotion to reveal how committing to a truthful writing practice helped her conquer writer’s block and develop her own authentic voice.
‘Show don’t tell’ has never been so compelling.
Inspired by her popular writing courses, Lee also offers practical advice on drafts, edits and how to achieve a life/writing balance. How combining her writing with motherhood led her to recognise that ‘the pram in the hall’ issue is real.
Plus the ultimate reading list of books you really should read, from Chekhov to Elena Ferrante and Helen Garner.
Title: John Martin’s, The Story of South Australia’s Beloved Department Store
Author: Paul Flavel
Age group: adult
Interview: Paul Flavel on Capturing Memories of John Martin’s
Blurb: The doors to John Martin’s are open once more thanks to the stories from former staff and customers, rarely seen photographs and Paul Flavel’s impeccable research that fill the pages of this book. It tells, for the very first time, the history of a beloved and iconic department store.
Opened in 1866, John Martin’s flourished for over 130 years, until the unthinkable happened and the store in Rundle Mall, Adelaide, closed in 1998. The passing of the years has not dulled South Australians’ love for ‘Johnnies’. Thousands of people worked there and even more loyally shopped there. John Martin’s was the company that brought The Beatles to Adelaide, and the store that delighted generations of children with its Christmas Cave and pageant.
Run by the illustrious Hayward family for most of its existence, John Martin’s gave everything it had to the people of South Australia. As you read Paul Flavel’s comprehensive and endearing John Martin’s, memories of riding in the lifts, dining in The Buttery, or getting ready on pageant day will take you back to a bygone era of retail in Adelaide.
Mystery
Title: The Godfather of Dance
Age group: adult
Author: Andrea Barton
Blog: Writing a Mystery: Introducing Jade Riley
Blurb: Murder. Dance. Family secrets.
Rookie journalist Jade Riley moves to Houston, determined to write the story that will launch her career. Soon, her ballroom dance instructor leads her to an infamous cold case.
Anton Valencio has spent years trying to outrun his past. Born into a notorious New Orleans crime family, now a respected dance instructor, Anton is consumed by grief – and suspicion. His fiancée’s murder remains unsolved, but he’s convinced he knows who killed her.
Together, Jade and Anton delve into a tangled web of betrayal and long-buried secrets. But danger lurks: someone is determined to keep the family’s darkest truths hidden … and will stop at nothing to silence them. Can Jade solve the case before she and Anton become the next victims?
A fast-paced, atmospheric mystery, THE GODFATHER OF DANCE is the first book in Andrea Barton’s Jade Riley Mysteries series.
Title: A Killer Among Friends
Author: Andrea Barton
Age group: adult
Blog: Writing a Mystery: Crafting a Series
Blurb: Soon after journalist Jade returns from abroad to her hometown, Melbourne, her friend Nick is found dead in a dumpster. She turns to their tight-knit circle for answers, only to uncover a web of lies.
Mounting evidence suggests her best friend Elena’s suicide three years earlier is connected. Was she, too, murdered?
As Jade closes in on the killer, she realizes the suspects are all people she loves. Her life depends on knowing which of them to trust.
Best of luck with your Christmas shopping. I hope you can find something here for your book-lover friends (or spoil yourself and choose one you’ll enjoy).
Here’s last year’s list: Christmas Book List 2023
Next time: Invitation to Christmas book signing
Brightside Story Studio 
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