The last month of 2022 was full of holidays parties so in between catch-ups and cocktail hours I tried to squeeze in as much reading as possible with as little to do with Christmas as possible (well, with one exception anyway.)

First up it was Ben MacIntyre’s Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies. I was lucky enough to see MacIntyre recently when he came to town to do a talk about his most recent book Prisoners of the Castle. He’s a very engaging speaker and he’s just as good on the page. This is a wild ride from start to finish as we follow a truly unique group of men and women who, through a variety of spy tactics ranging from clever to mad (often both) helped the allies achieve success on D-Day.

Next was the quick but darkly fun Reader, I Murdered Him by Betsy Cornwell. Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer but set in Jane Eyre’s universe. Cornwell acknowledges the fear and violence faced by women in Adele’s time and offers us a character who fights back. It’s not the kind of gritty, believable historical fiction I usually like but every time Adele stands up for herself and the women and girls around her it serves up a revenge fantasy that is a different kind of satisfying.

My one Christmas read was Christmas Past by Brian Earl and it was a great series of little details about all of things that surround us during the Christmas season. Some of the stories were magical, some mundane, and some just mysteries (we still do not know where Candy Canes come from!) It’s a perfect seasonal coffee table book.

My plane book to head away for a family Christmas trip was The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. The story was very interesting and Dr. W. C. Minor’s additions to the Oxford English Dictionary were remarkable even if they were only a part of his eventful and tragic life. Unfortunately, Winchester tried to tackle three topics in only 242 pages– Dr. Minor, Professor James Murray, and the drafting of the Oxford English Dictionary – and his primary interest is clearly with Minor. Restructuring the text as a biography of Minor would likely have made both reader and writer a bit more satisfied.

My final two reads were completely different time periods, genres, characters… the only thing they have in common is how much I loved them.

I picked up The Family by Naomi Krupitsky from my local bookshop on a whim. I love female focused historical fiction and one of the cover quotes mentioned The Sopranos so I was expecting a plot heavy mafia book. Instead, I got a highly emotional third person narrative – but I loved it. This is not a rapid page turner but a thoughtful book about life, expectations, and relationships. Because this is a mafia novel, there is a gun and some violence, but the real heart of the novel is the points between.

And I finished off the year in my PJs and in front of the fireplace with a massive bestseller that came out years ago – The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. If you, like me, somehow missed out on this well loved English country murder mystery well the time has come: on your next rainy day make a pot of tea, put on a warm jumper, and get ready for a collection of quirky and loveable characters, low to medium level criminals, heartbreak, and murder. You won’t regret joining the club.

Happy New Year everyone. May our future be just as full of really good books.