Heading into the holidays? Here’s a handy list of favourites I read in 2024 to guide your reading.

The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes – This is climate fiction at its best and most poignant and, as Hughes notes, ‘Climate change is contemporary realism. It will become stranger and stranger to avoid it in your fiction.’ My #1! Moving and riveting.

Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane – These 12 connected short stories revolve around serial killing but it’s not the murders or murderer that McFarlane is most interested in rather the ripple effect of the murderer’s brutality. Dark, clever and intriguing.

The Deed by Susannah Begbie – Four fractious siblings with four days to build their dead father’s coffin together or be stripped of his sizable inheritance. Begbie’s brilliant debut features a vivid rural setting and bucketloads of humour and heart.

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan – This brilliant book blends memoir, history and auto-fiction. Flanagan’s father was enslaved near Hiroshima when the atom bomb was dropped. (And Flanagan once trapped on a wild river.) A deft tale of love and choices.

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson – At Burton Makepeace House a prize painting by Turner has gone missing. Enter seasoned private investigator Jackson Brodie and DC Reggie Chase in this clever twist on a classic murder mystery.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch – A breathless, claustrophobic and disturbing novel depicting a dystopian Ireland, which reflects the reality of war-torn countries and the terror of those who flee them. Eilish quickly becomes desperate. A must read.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout – Part of this little beauty features Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge swapping stories about people they have known. Much of it explores how our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, ‘Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.’

Long Island by Colm Toibin – Ellis Lacey (Brooklyn) is an Irish woman in America, married with two children to Tony Fiorello. Her dislocation is compounded when she hears Tony has fathered a child to another woman. She returns to Ireland where past love haunts her …

Sleeping on Islands by Andrew Motion – This is a moving memoir by a former poet laureate and major figure in British poetry for whom W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin were formative. A nuanced account of the risks, sacrifices and joys of a poetic life.

Red River Road by Anna Downes – Set in the van-life scene on Australia’s West Coast, this is a twisty outback thriller. Katy’s search for the truth behind her sister Phoebe’s disappearance is harrowing. A key theme is women’s empowerment.

Canticle Creek by Adrian Hyland – Jesse Redpath is a savvy cop who isn’t from Canticle Creek, which makes her the perfect person to uncover the truth behind the town’s recent murders. Possum is a great local ally. But will they survive the inferno?

Also great: We All Lived in Bondi Then by Georgia Blain, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, The Pole and Other Stories by JM Coetzee, Graft by Maggie MacKellar, Wall by Jen Craig, Lent Poems by Kate Cayley, The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks, Your Ad Could Go Here by Oksana Zabuzhko, West Girls by Elizabeth Woollett, Florida by Lauren Groff, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found by Frank Bruni, Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr.