Give a Festive Cheer for Fiction this Year!

We’re wrapping up the year with a whole lot of excellent fiction. If you’re looking for a gripping story to cosy up with or searching for the perfect gift for a loved one, keep scrolling to find the ultimate thrilling crime read, immersive historical novel and intriguing speculative fiction to light up your December.

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Cheating Death
By Maxie Dara
Berkley – US | 9780593815816 | Paperback | £15.99 | Out Now

When a determined killer targets her brother, a grim reaper risks everything to save him in this delightful cosy mystery.

Nora Bird works for S.C.Y.T.H.E., which might seem odd for someone as terrified of death as she is. But ever since her parents died in an accident when she was six, she’s been obsessed with avoiding risk, and what better place to learn how to cheat death than the company that employs the nation’s grim reapers? The work enables Nora to learn all about the myriad ways you can kick the bucket, which is comforting… until one day, a file crosses her desk with a name she recognises. Her twin brother’s. The twins haven’t spoken in six months, but Charlie is all Nora has left. Completely against her cautious nature, Nora steals the file and flees, racing to her brother’s house. She begs him to trust her that his death is imminent, and they hit the road (with his parrot, Jessica, who has plenty to say) in an attempt to evade both death and S.C.Y.T.H.E., whose sole mission of collecting souls has been disrupted by Charlie’s continued existence. Alas, every time Nora saves him, a new cause of death appears in his file. Someone is determined to take Charlie out, and Nora will have to use everything she’s ever learned about death to discover the culprit.

Casanova 20: Or, Hot World: A Heterosexual Novel
By Davey Davis
Cipher Press | 9781917008174 | Paperback | £11.99 | Out Now

A novel about art, desire, and mortality.

Cursed by an extreme and unrelenting beauty, Adrian has drawn the frenzied attention of adoring strangers since childhood. As a twenty-nine-year-old in New York City, he spends his days drifting between affairs with women (and occasionally men) who provide him with everything he needs, from spending money to luxurious vacations to even, once, a mini yacht. With this generosity comes a dangerous possessiveness that often puts him at risk of much worse than heartbreak. But as people begin removing their masks in the spring of 2021, Adrian’s aimless sexual availability is interrupted by a shocking discovery: he is no longer beautiful.

Across the country, Adrian’s best friend and companion, Mark, a world-famous painter, has returned to the family home in rural Northern California. He’s faced with his own horrible revelation: he’s dying from the same mysterious disease that will soon take his mother and sister. Despite the depth of their platonic romance, neither man reveals his fate to the other. Feeling as if he’s disappearing from sight, Adrian searches for answers among his thousands of lovers. In a race against his failing body, Mark becomes obsessed with watching fifty-two VHS tapes of unknown origin, left to him by his sister, before it’s too late.

The New Year’s Party
By Jenna Satterthwaite
Verve Books | 9780857309327 | Paperback | £10.99 | Out Now

New Year’s Eve hits different in your thirties. Especially when the party ends in murder.

It used to be an annual thing, the raucous New Year’s party. But for Olivia, Bennett and their crowd of couple friends, the chaos of their thirties has totally challenged the definition of annual. It’s been a few years since the close friends were last… close. But this year is going to be different. The burnout, parenting stress, credit card debt, job drama, marriage troubles, addiction — they’re going to set it all aside for the night. No, really. They swear. Oh, except for the secrets. Every last person has one. But secrets are only as good as the people you trust to keep them, and when the wrong one slips out… Well, friends or not, that just might become motive for murder. Everybody thinks they know their closest friends — until somebody winds up dead.

To Save the Man
By John Sayles
Melville House Publishing | 9781685892234 | Paperback | £14.99 | Out Now

Now in paperback: one of America’s greatest storytellers sheds light on an American tragedy: the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the ‘cultural genocide’ experienced by the Native American children at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

In September of 1890, the academic year begins at the Carlisle School, a military-style boarding school for Indians in Pennsylvania, founded and run by Captain Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt considers himself a champion of Native Americans. His motto, ‘To save the man, we must kill the Indian,’ is severely enforced in both classroom and dormitory: Speak only English, forget your own language and customs, learn to be white. As the young students navigate surviving the school, they begin to hear rumours of a ‘ghost dance’ amongst the tribes of the west — a ceremonial dance aimed at restoring the Native People to power, and running the invaders off their land. As the hope and promise of the ghost dance sweeps across the Great Plains, cynical newspapers seize upon the story to whip up panic among local whites. The US government responds by deploying troops onto lands that had been granted to the Indians. It is an act that seems certain to end in slaughter. As news of these developments reaches Carlisle, each student, no matter what their tribe, must make a choice: to follow the white man’s path, or be true to their own way of life…'(A) powerful and sincere depiction of Native American history’.

Peekaboo Bosh
By John King
London Books | 9781739698331 | Hardback | £14.99 | Out Now

A new novella from the author of Slaughterhouse Prayer.

Since he can remember, Simon Spinks has craved privacy, and now, middle-aged and feted by his peers, this craving has only intensified. The claustrophobic is liberating, lockdowns a joy, words best restricted. So when his workplace is violated by an intruder, an obsession with security develops and an old problem returns. Thanks to the support of his trusted assistant Linda Haig, and an overhaul of the company’s defences, he survives. Normal service is restored. Both his official and unofficial investigations are resumed. Spinks is happiest in his special room, spending time with those he loves, and while dedicated to the common good it is only right that he reaps the rewards of his labours. The future is rosy. But beyond the cameras, fences and a poisoned no-man’s land, danger threatens. Mickey Moo and his maverick crew of shapeshifting, undercover thinkers are on the move. The civilised and the primitive are about to collide. This edition also includes the short story Roadblock 2am, where a young traveller faces a life or death decision on the road to Guatemala City.

The Wild One
By Isabel-Clara Simo
3TimesRebel Press | 9781739452872 | Paperback | £13.99 | 18/12/2025

A harsh reflection on the desire for possession and its capacity for destruction.

The arrival of the very young Dorothy — fourteen years old, redheaded, freckled — is a breath of fresh air in the life of Joaquim Simon — in his sixties, rich and divorced. Wanting to turn this ‘wild one’ into a perfect model of which he can be proud, Joaquim takes her in and begins to shape her into his perfect masterpiece, as in the myth of Pygmalion. Dependence and survival, destruction and growth, are the opposites that define the crossroads of experiences and events that shape The Wild One. The novel tells the story of Dorothy, a girl who, living with Joaquim Simon and in the midst of a desire that is never fulfilled, loses her individual freedom and, at the same time, imperceptibly changes her identity. Joaquim controls everything: her name, her behaviour, her education, even her memories. These feelings of possession towards her make him aware not only of his loneliness and cruelty, but also of his old age. The Wild One is structured in such a way that, from our position as readers, we are forced to participate in the thoughts of these two characters through the use of parentheses that complete what is not said. This strategy not only heightens the tension, but also makes us complicit in their transformations and secrets, anticipating their dramatic end.