Books Are Great Gifts Guide 2025

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Books Are Great Gifts Guide

It seems that holiday shopping starts earlier and earlier each year. Halloween was barely over and the Christmas decorations were being put out. So now it’s time for Books Are Great Gifts Guide. Books make great gifts: they always fit, are never the wrong color or size, and are so easy to wrap.

For your best friend who always reads the celebrity book club selections and loves great fiction, Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief about an Indian woman who has her passport stolen just when she was to leave for America is an Oprah Book Club pick and has garnered much critical acclaim. 

For your favorite neighbor who enjoys lighter fiction, Adriana Trigiani takes the reader from Lake Como, New Jersey to Lake Como, Italy in her novel The View From Lake Como. It’s got humor, heart, and no one writes a better family story than Trigiani. 

Mysteries are always popular, and Richard Osman’s latest in his Thursday Murder Club series is The Impossible Fortune ,where our four residents of Cooper’s Chase retirement community come back together to solve the disappearance of a wedding guest. Fans of the Netflix movie will enjoy this one. 

Fantasy books are hot now and no one is hotter than R.F. Kuang whose new novel Katabasis is perfect for fans of her previous works, Babel and The Poppy War. 

You’ll impress your adult niece who grew up with the Harry Potter books when you give her SenLinYu’s Alchemised. It’s a Romantasy, a new genre that combines Romance with Fantasy and it’s on the top of the bestseller lists today. 

For Romance readers who prefer a more traditional contemporary story, you can’t go wrong with anything by Emily Henry, including her latest Great Big Beautiful Life, about two writers who compete to write the biography of an heiress and daughter of a scandalous family. 

For your father-in-law who loves to do Wordle every day, Puzzlemania! from the New York Times has Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, Minis, and more in book form. It would be great for family activities after your Thanksgiving gathering this year as well. 

For your uncle who watches CNBC in the morning, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929 tackles the seminal year in American history when the stock market crashed and led to the Great Depression. 

For your nephew who grew up loving the movies “Uncle Buck”, “Home Alone” and “National Lampoon’s Vacation”, Paul Myer’s biography “John Candy- A Life in Comedy” looks at the life of the comedic genius gone too soon.  

For your aunt who cooks all the big family meals, there’s Ree Drummond’s The Pioneer Woman Cooks The Essential Recipes featuring her best recipes from her long-running Food Network show. 

For your sister-in-law who creates beautiful parties, Martha Stewart’s first book, Entertaining has been reissued and is a timeless classic. 

Coffee table books are big this time of the year and there are several lovely ones available. Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s The Look is filled with photos and stories about all of the  gorgeous gowns she wore to official White House functions. 

National Geographic always has wonderful coffee table books, and this year they have three: Photographs features a collection of the iconic photos from years past, along with stories about some of their photographers.

The Traveler’s Atlas of the World divides the world into continents and has statistics, important information, fun facts, photos, and drawings of the different countries. It would be a great gift for the adventurer or armchair traveler on your gift list. 

With air travel being as unpredictable as it is today, 100 Train Journeys of a Lifetime is another great gift for the traveler on your gift list. From the fanciest of trains to the less glamorous, from long journeys to day trips, this book has it all. 

We can’t leave the kiddies out, they love books. Teens who loved Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games would be thrilled to get the newest in the serie, Sunrise on the Reaping. 

Once they have finished the Harry Potter series, Sangu Mandanna’s Vanya and the Wild Hunt takes middle grade readers to a fantasy adventure inspired by Indian mythology and English folklore. 

Two popular series for younger readers have new books- Jeff Kinney’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” has Party Pooper and Dav Pilkey’s “Dog Man” has Big Jim Believes. You can’t go wrong with these.

 

The littlest ones would love to find any of the newest books from Pete the Cat, Don’t Let the Pigeon, Llama Llama and The Little Blue Truck series. 

Happy shopping!

The 2023 Books Are Great Gifts Guide Is Here

Reprinted from auburnpub.com:

Thanksgiving Day is coming upon us and that means holiday gift shopping gets into full gear so it’s that time of year for the annual Books Make Great Gifts Guide. Books make great gifts- they always fit, are never the wrong color or size, and easy to wrap.

For your best friend whose television is tuned permanently to the Hallmark Channel this month, Sarah Morgan’s The Book Club Hotel has a charming Vermont boutique hotel setting at Christmas, best friends, and a romance. 

Jenny Colgan’s The Christmas Bookshop is set in lovely Edinburgh, Scotland and centers on a young woman determined to save the bookshop where she is employed from being purchased and turned into a tacky tourist shop. 

 

Mary Kay Andrews’ annual holiday book Bright Lights, Big City takes place in New York City as a brother and sister come up from North Carolina to sell their family’s Christmas trees in Greenwich Village in New York City and save the family business. 

For your sister who loves true crime podcasts and fictional mysteries and thrillers, Jessica Knoll’s novel Bright Young Women tells the story of two women connected to the crimes of real life killer Ted Bundy. 

Tess Gerritsen starts a terrific new thriller series with The Spy Coast, where a few retired CIA spies have settled in a small town in coastal Maine. When one of them is threatened by someone from her past, the spies bond together to save the day. 

For your aunt who likes to read historical fiction and recently binged the miniseries All the Light We Cannot See, Kelly Rimmer’s The Paris Agent is a tense novel about ordinary British women who become undercover spies in WWII France, and the price they pay to try and save the world. 

Turning to Nonfiction, for your uncle the history buff, David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon, has a new book, The Wager about a shipwreck, mutiny, and murder in 1740. It’s gotten rave reviews. 

Rachel Maddow’s new book Prequel has been getting a lot of buzz. It tells the true tale of Nazis sympathizers who infiltrated power positions in Congress, media, and religion in the United States in the lead up to WWII. 

Moving up chronologically, Loren Grush’s The Six is about the first six women in NASA’s space shuttle program in the 1960s and 1970s. This one is for your niece who read Hidden Figures.

Speaking of the 1970s, Henry Winkler’s fascinating memoir Being Henry takes him from his childhood through his breakout role as the Fonz on the TV hit “Happy Days’ through his struggle with dyslexia to his Emmy-winning role on HBO’s “Barry’ and more. This one will be a great gift for so many people on your holiday list. 

“General Hospital” heartthrob, Uncle Jesse on “Full House” star, and perpetually youthful-looking John Stamos has a memoir out as well that will appeal to fans of his many years in popular culture titled If You Would Have Told Me. 

For the person who loves to be creative in the kitchen, there are two good cookbooks out. Natasha’s Kitchen by popular blogger Natasha Kravchuk has 100 “family-friendly and foolproof” recipes, including some from her native Ukraine.  

Molly Baz shares her motto More is More in her cookbook that is great for cooks of all skill levels. Molly believes in intuitive cooking not so much in exact measurements. 

 Fans of The Games of Thrones have their next read in Rebecca Yarros' two novels

 Fourth Wing and Iron Flame.  

For Young Adults, Rebecca Ross’ Divine Rivals is a popular fantasy one, the first book in her Letters of Enchantment series. 

Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy has been repackaged in a three-book set for those who love the Prime series it is based on. 

Middle grade readers are big fans of Rick Riordan’s series of novels, and his new one in the Olympians series is The Chalice of the Gods. 

Christopher Paolini’s new addition to his popular Eragon series is Murtagh. 

Other popular series for children are The Magic Tree House which has over 50 books in the series, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, and The Bad Guys series. 

Mo Willems has a new picture book for youngsters, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Sleigh and poet Amanda Gorman’s Something, Someday teaches about kindness. And you can’t go wrong with a Sandra Boynton board book for babies.

Remember that you can support independent booksellers buy purchasing on bookshop.org.

Happy Thanksgiving!