Festive Favourite with Topping & Co.

David Recommends

Small Things Like These — Claire Keegan

There’s a feeling, this time of year, of standing on a ley line -- somewhere between death and renewal. Of latent, frosted-over potential, just out of eyes-reach. Claire Keegan’s novella transports us to New Ross, Ireland, Christmas 1985. All is calm, all is bright, for the townspeople and for Bill Furlong, local coal merchant.  But they’re walking on thin ice, we’re quick to discover.

Just beneath the surface, waiting for the thaw, is a Magdalen Laundry, where “fallen women” are confined and forgotten. When Furlong encounters one of these women, cracks quickly begin to form. Keegan is a master of these ‘small things’, the small-but-mighty details, small fissures which add up to a seismic shift - ‘the things which, when added up, amount to a life’. Immense power is held within these few pages. ‘Small Things Like These’ is a gripping, unputdownable winter read.

Ruby Recommends

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead — Olga Tokarczuk

It’s hard not to feel cosy when you realise you could be trudging through the bleak midwinter Polish countryside, in a blizzard-beaten investigation of your neighbours’ murders. But this is far from your classic Christmas crime. Nobel-winning Olga Tokarczuk guides us through this frosty terrain with one of the most charmingly cranky, joint-achingly compelling narrators I’ve ever encountered. Dostoyevsky said that ‘to go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s’, and Janina’s way is paved by star-signs and Blake lines, and a well-earnt cynicism for the machismo bloodsport her fellow residents engage in. We’re asked: Is female rage reserved for the young? Who deserves to live, die, kill? If meat is not murder, what is it? Charming and quirky, full of wit and melancholy, Tokarczuk’s protagonist is the eco-feminist anti-hero you never knew you needed. And now the leaves have fallen and days are becoming dark, this book is a little glowing hearth to warm yourself by. 

Carla Recommends

A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens

Sometimes, Christmas just feels like a season of forced cheer. Ebenezer Scrooge begins A Christmas Carol much the same — bitter and disconnected from the world around him. But as the story unfolds, he learns that love and connection often surround us more than we realise, and that we are never truly alone. While his mistakes and regrets can’t be undone, Dickens reminds us that it’s never too late to change. In the face of life’s hardships, this timeless tale inspires us to believe in second chances and rediscover joy even during the toughest times — a classic that still warms the heart.