9 books that are secretly Christmas reads

The late master of fantastical whimsy here turns his attention to the festive period, with predictably hilarious results. This book explores the gaping vacuum left by the disappearance of The Hogfather – the Santa Claus figure of Pratchett’s sprawling Discworld universe. While Death attempts to fill the role of chief festive gift-giver in his own inimitable (and somewhat ineffectual) way, the porcine figure’s granddaughter embarks on a search and rescue operation. It’s a typically riotous tale, and a suitably atypical Christmas fable.

Bret Easton Ellis’s debut novel, released in 1985, was published when the author was still a college student. If that doesn’t make you pause for a more sombre form of reflection this Christmas period, just read the book. It’s brilliant, of course, but it also tells the bracing story of a young man returning to his opulent Californian home from college for Christmas – and finding himself completely alienated from his privileged former life. Our young protagonist’s hedonistic rampage across the LA party scene doesn’t fit neatly into your traditional list of Christmas activities, to put it mildly.

You wouldn’t expect carols and mince pies from the master of private investigator stories, and in The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett duly delivers the most hard-boiled of Christmas tales. Set in New York during the Christmas of 1932, it offers a pleasingly twisty–turny plot filled with bantering detectives, mysterious murders, and hard-drinking socialites. It was the last novel Hammett ever wrote, and is notable for taking a slightly more frivolous tone than his earlier work – though such things are, of course, all relative.

Want to get seriously meta this Christmas? This book takes a step back and considers how one of the seminal pieces of festive fiction – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – had such a profound effect on our modern conception of Christmas itself. Literary fans will be even more interested to learn of the way in which Dickens was forced to self-publish the book during a serious low point in his career. It would go on to free him from serious debt, and to ultimately lay the foundation for his late-period masterworks. A true Christmas miracle, if ever there was one.

Jonathan Franzen’s 2001 novel is a painfully real kind of Christmas novel, in that it captures a recognisable family dynamic rather than the fuzzily fake glow that typically accompanies such festive fiction. Alfred and Enid seek to bring their family together for one last big Christmas, before Alfred succumbs to Parkinsons and dementia. Their kids, of course, have their own problems, from depression and alcohol dependency to failed relationships and ruined careers. It’s all pretty tragic stuff, but Franzen’s skillful writing – and particularly his humour – make this a strangely uplifting Christmas story. Of a sort.

‘Alternative Christmas’ doesn’t necessarily need to mean ‘dark and moody Christmas’ or ‘bah humbug’. Matt Haig’s charming and family-friendly book is very much filled with traditional Christmas spirit and positivity – it just goes about things in a slightly different way. The book essentially tells an alternate origin story for the big jolly red man himself, Father Christmas. Left in the care of his evil aunt, young Nikolas sets out on a quest to track down his father, and along the way encounters a reindeer, a town full of elves, and a strangely familiar red hat.

Those after a dose of high-level speculative fiction, mingled with some good old 2019-style pandemic paranoia, for Christmas should check out this brilliant 1992 book. It won author Connie Willis both the Hugo and Nebula Awards of the time. Doomsday Book concerns a group of future historians who send one of their number back to the Christmas of 1348 in Oxford, smack bang in the middle of the Black Death pandemic. Meanwhile, an influenza epidemic ravages their own time. Just the sort of meaty fiction you want to indulge in while everyone around you is sniffling into their sherries.

Planning on enjoying the latest Knives Out movie this Christmas? Then you might be in the mood for some more classic whodunnit fiction, perhaps with a little extra tinsel around the edges. Permit us to recommend Hercule Poirot's Christmas by detective novel queen Agatha Christie. It presents a classic locked room mystery, in which the wealthy host of a family Christmas get-together is found murdered in a private room. Naturally, said family is a who’s who of ne'er-do-wells and grudge bearers, and it falls to everyone’s favourite Belgian sleuth (sorry, Tintin) to wrap the case up.

One of the biggest literary crimes de nos jours has to be that Sally Page isn't better know; with the razor sharpness observation of Richard Osman, the description of Sarah Winman, and the storytelling of Kate Atkinson, she is a brilliant author across the board (as is her daughter Libby). Her second novel, The Book of Beginnings takes place in a leafy, wintery Hampstead in a cosy stationary store. It follows Jo Sorsby, a woman hiding from her past when she agrees to run her uncle’s beloved stationery shop. Glimpsing the lives of her customers between the warm wooden shelves, as they scribble little notes and browse colourful notebooks, distracts her from her bruised past. Not only is it filled with heartwarming community and optimism, it's the gift that keeps on giving, with a sequel: New Beginnings for Christmas, an even more festive-filled treat, which was only released at the end of October this year.