23 November 2023
OUR YEAR IN BOOKS
It’s getting colder. Days are getting shorter. Fairy lights are twinkling from windows and balconies. It can only mean one thing… Time for some Christmas reading recommendations!
We present you with a selection of the glorious books we’re extremely proud to have published this year, and which we *bet* any one of your loved ones would also love to read.
From moving literary debuts to alternate worlds, thought-provoking nonfiction and sweet stocking-fillers, Serpent’s Tail has you covered for a truly spectacular Christmas.
Happy reading!
Find us at @SerpentsTail and @ViperBooks
STOCKING FILLERS
Cheri by Jo Ann Beard
A masterpiece of fiction and memory, Cheri is a heartbreaking but glorious celebration of all the moments of beauty and pain that make an individual life, right up until its very last moments.
Seven Cats I Have Loved by Anat Levit
Anat Levit never considered herself a cat lover, but when her life was thrown into upheaval, she found herself adopting one cat at the suggestion of her daughters, and then six more. She delves into the feline mind with gentleness and compassion, while also revealing a moving human story.
Love Me Tender by Constance Debre
‘Destined to become a classic of its kind’ Maggie Nelson
‘One of the most compulsive voices I’ve read in years’ Olivia Laing, Observer
A starkly beautiful account of impossible sacrifices asked from mothers, Love Me Tender is a bold novel of defiance, freedom and self-knowledge.
Alison by Lizzy Stewart
Alison is newly married, barely twenty and struggling to find her place in the world. A chance encounter with an older artist upturns her life and she forsakes convention and her working-class Dorset roots for the thrumming art scene of London in the late seventies.
“Every now and again a book comes along that is such a bright joy, so true, so beautiful and moving. Alison is one of those books. I loved it.” – Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
BEST BY FIRESIDE
Critical Hits edited by Carmen Maria Machado and J. Robert Lennon
Whether you’re an avid gamer, a Twitch subscriber, or just an incidental Subway Surfer, video games have changed the way you interact with the world and have been part of our lives for over fifty years. Critical Hits is a celebration of play and playfulness through sharp, impassioned and inquisitive essays.
Prostitute Laundry by Charlotte Shane
Prostitute Laundry is a taboo-breaking and radically honest account of love, friendship and sex work. This serial memoir follows Charlotte over the course of several years as she falls in and out of love, muses on the nature of sex work and the value of beauty, discovers hidden emotional complexities and contemplates leaving her profession.
Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison
‘A masterpiece’ Helen Macdonald
‘It will surprise you, sometimes astound you, and leave you profoundly changed’ Jonathan Coe
One of our greatest and most original living writers sets out the perils of the writing life with joyful provocation. This is his first memoir, an ‘anti-memoir’, written with aphoristic daring and trademark originality and style.
DECK THE SHELVES
Queen K by Sarah Thomas
Exquisitely written and deliciously unreliable, Queen K takes the reader to some of the most luxurious places in the world. But a dark refrain sounds from the very beginning of the story and grows towards its operatic finale: a novel about insatiable material desire can only ever be a tragedy…
A Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates
A nephew. An uncle. A psychopath – but which of them is it?
Gil knows his nephew Matthew is dangerous, but to the women in the family he is charming, intelligent, wry. When he disdainfully joins Gil’s classes at the local university, Matthew makes his real intentions clear. Why is Gil the only one who can see this? Is he losing his mind?
Sanderson’s Isle by James Clarke
1969. Thomas Speake comes to London searching for his father and a place to belong, but instead joins the search for a stolen child through swinging London and the Lake District. There he finds Sanderson instead, a larger-than-life TV presenter, who hosts ‘midweek madness’ parties where the punch is spiked with acid…
THE GHOST OF (POSSIBLE) FUTURES
Bliss & Blunder by Victoria Gosling
An inventive, magisterial reworking of the King Arthur legend for the 21st century and a heartrending novel of power, friendship and betrayal.
Jungle House by Julianne Pachico
‘Mother is not like other mothers. She gets angry when Lena draws her with a face. When Lena challenges her to portray herself, she paints a tiny yellow dot surrounded by swirling black. She is a bastion of light, she says, against an army of darkness.’
A suspenseful literary novel, with a premise perfect for fans of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, that asks: will humans and AIs form families, and what are the implications of this?
Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis
A satirically funny, poignant and dark novel for fans of cool contemporary fiction. Follow weed-growing couple Kevin and Amber, as Amber is selected for a reality TV show to win a one-way ticket to Mars.
THE BOOKS THAT STOLE CHRISTMAS
Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
‘Writers are monsters. We eat everything we see…’
This book will be Wilder’s revenge on Sky, who betrayed his trust and died without ever telling him why. But as he writes, Wilder begins to find notes written in Sky’s signature green ink. Is Sky haunting him? And who is the dark-haired woman drowning in the cove, whom no one else can see?
Scarlet Town by Leonora Nattrass
1796. A rigged election. A town at war. A murderer at large…
Disgraced former Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago and William Philpott have escaped America by the skin of their teeth. In this third instalment in the Laurence Jago series, they return to Laurence’s home town of Helston, Cornwall, where they find themselves in the middle of a tumultuous election that has the inhabitants of the town at one another’s throats.
The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett
One dead Santa. A town full of suspects. Will you discover the truth?
Christmas in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive pantomime. Sarah-Jane is fending off threats to her new position as Chair, the fibreglass beanstalk might be full of asbestos, and a someone is intent on ruining the panto even before the curtain goes up. Of course there’s also the matter of the dead body. Will the show go on?