We're feeling very festive here at Serpent's Tail HQ. Bookshops are open, window displays sparkling, tables packed with bookish treats. Read on to find out which of our incredible 2020 reads we recommend you pick from the shelf this Christmas.
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Sarah Perry's Essex Girls, a feminist manifesto for reclaiming the much-aligned term, was the Guardian's #1 stocking filler book of the year. In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's acclaimed, ground-breaking memoir of abuse in a queer relationship. The latest in our Classics series, Langston Hughes' Selected Poems is a powerful collection from 'the poet laureate of black America' (New Yorker).
Now in paperback, Alix Nathan's The Warlow Experiment is a gripping tale of 18th Century isolation. Yun Ko-eun's The Disaster Tourist, translated from the Korean by Lizzie Buehler, is a satirical eco-thriller with a fierce feminist sensibility. Attica Locke's award-winning Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Heaven, My Home, explores race in America.
Title of the year goes to Nina Renata Aron's Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls, a powerful memoir of co-dependency. James Clarke's Hollow in the Land is made up of interlinked stories of a community in Lancashire. Bestselling author Alain Mabanckou's The Death of Comrade President is a poignant tale of family and revolution in postcolonial Africa.
Jami Attenberg's All This Could Be Yours is an unputdownable story of a New Orleans family in self-destruct mode. Susan Choi's National Book Award winning Trust Exercise looks at consent in a high school - and has a shocking twist. The Moth: Occasional Magic is the latest collection of jaw-dropping true stories from the chart-topping podcast.