Must Read: Christmas books

Every Wednesday on the Sarah Brett show we'll be hearing about some of the best books around.

This week author and book reviewer Jen Campbell brings us her top five Christmassy books to get you in the festive spirit.

Have you read any of these books or do you have another favourite to recommend?

Comment below to let us know what you think.

A Snow Garden and Other Stories by Rachel Joyce

"Rachel Joyce was one of the first people to have a 'long book title', hers was The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. You get so many books with titles like that now but she was one of the first in that trend.

"A Snow Garden and Other Stories is her collection of seven Christmas stories which are all linked and set in the last fortnight of the year, through Christmas and New Year.

"The stories include a husband and wife who are building their son a bicycle and deconstructing their happy marriage, an airport that comes to a standstill, and a story about a woman called Minnie who had broken up with her husband and is in a relationship with someone called Oliver, who suddenly told her he's met someone else. It's just like that moment in Love Actually when Emma Thompson finds out Alan Rickman has been cheating on her.

"In the introduction she describes it as a collection of characters who refused to be in her novels, the characters that were too big to be contained in someone else's narrative so she had to remove them from those books and give them a story of their own.

"This book seems to be about everybody else's perceptions of your life and you feeling like nobody understands you, while noticing the problems other people are going through and deconstructing that a little bit.

"She's very good at having a balance between heart-warming, joyful and brutally honest, which I think is something we're all navigating in life a lot."

Daddy’s Gone A Hunting by Penelope Mortimer

"Daddy's Gone A Hunting is published by Persephone Books who reissue classics which are mainly written by women. I love them at this time of year because they mostly publish very cosy books.

"This book was first published in 1958 and is a story set in the 50s about a woman called Ruth who is trying to find meaning in her life now that her kids have gone off to boarding school.

"Ruth finds out her 18-year-old daughter Angela is pregnant, but what Angela doesn't know is her mum was 18 when she got pregnant and feels she's given a lot up to become a mother. Angela is deciding if she wants to have her child and the book is about the miscommunication between them, you can see both of their points of view - I'd describe it as Desperate Housewives but in the 1950s!"

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

"This book is slightly cheating because it has nothing to do with Christmas, but I associate it with this time of year because it's one of those cosy books to get lost in on a dark evening.

"Remarkable Creatures is about Mary Anning, who was a real person alive at the beginning of the 19th century, she was the daughter of a carpenter and was struck by lightning as a baby. The person holding her died, as did the people around her, but Mary survived and grew up to be one of the most famous fossil collectors we've ever had.

"Mary was rarely credited for her finds because they were labelled by the men who bought them from her, but she discovered lots of different creatures. This book is about her discoveries and her relationships with other budding palaeontologists, including William Bullock and her friend Elizabeth Philpot.

"I was torn between mentioning this book and Little Women, which is Christmassy, but I feel most people will have read [that]. I mention both of these because they are both due to have a film out about them very soon."

Winter by Ali Smith

"Ali Smith has taken on a challenge to write a book every year that reflects current political climates, but is also a novel in its own right.

"When she planned to do this, she had no idea we were about to enter some very interesting political times! Autumn, the first book, came out just after the EU Referendum.

"Winter came out in 2017 and I think the element of winter was supposed to signify we were in a no-man's land when it came to politics after the referendum. Nobody knew when Brexit was going to happen, which felt kind of like a Narnia forever winter thing.

"The book is about a man called Art who is going to visit his mother in Cornwall for Christmas and he promised to bring his girlfriend Charlotte with him, but she left him and he decides instead to pay a woman called Lux to pretend to be his girlfriend.

"It's all about performance and the line where real-life and fiction meet. Lux is pretending to be someone she's not, Art is pretending to be successful and has this blog which makes him feel his online self is more real than his real life self. His mother Sophia has her own family secrets and is herself performing a role.

"The book is filled with a very British chaos with lots of passive aggressive, family at Christmas stuff."

Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson

"Jeanette Winterson's mother was religious in a cultish way and believed the world was ending. She wouldn't allow Jeanette to have books in the house and when she discovered her daughter had been storing books under the mattress, she threw them out of the window and burned them.

"Despite her unusual upbringing, Jeanette has such a love of Christmas and has written this collection of short stories which range from a ghost story to one about a snow mamma.

"She's also included recipes in this book, one of which is her mother's recipe for mince pies.

"I think it's a beautiful book to give to someone for Christmas because it's centred around the 12 days of Christmas so you can start it on Christmas Day and read right the way through to January."

Listen to an interview with author Trisha Ashley, who wrote The Christmas Invitation