SUSANNA CLARKE’s The Wood at Midwinter is a Christmas short story whose heroine “Nowadays . . . we would probably call neuro-divergent,” writes its author. The strange encounter is illustrated by Victoria Sawdon (Bloomsbury, £9.99 (£9); 9781-5266-7521-7).
Tim Dowley, author of Nowell! A Christmas Miscellany Nowell! A Christmas Miscellany by Tim Dowley (Wipf & Stock, £21 (£18.90); 979-8-3852-1235-4), which he hopes that “the reader will open serendipitously to discover a hitherto unknown quotation, a fascinating fact, or a joke that makes her wince”. Sections include “Christmas Elsewhere” (Dresden, France, Moscow, and the Antarctic are featured), verse, prayers, and carols.
Knowledge can be cheered with Ryan Herman’s And Finally. . . The weird and wonderful world of news (Pavilion Books, £14.99 (£13.49); 978-0-00-864800-8), in which it is revealed how Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant-colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces, saved the world on 26 September 1983. Sister Mary Joy Langdon is mentioned in the chapter “Treat people with kindness”.
The Official Agatha Christie Puzzle Book (Laurence King, £16.99 (£15.29); 978--39962-793-1) is one of the latest whodunnits to solve from your armchair. In Chapter 2, “The murder at the vicarage”, gossip, hymn numbers, gravestones, and the curate’s collection come to the fore.
Adrian Tierney-Jones’s A Pub for all Seasons (Headline, £20 (£18); 978-1-03-540447-6) includes a section, “Pilgrimage”, in which the Vine, Brierley Hill, and the Beacon Hotel, Sedgley, in the Black Country, become the beer-drinker’s “very own Santiago de Compostela”.
Please Consider the Turkey, requests Peter Singer (Princeton, £7.99 (£7.19); 978-0-691-23168-6), as he talks through pardoning turkeys, how to make a turkey, how they live, and how they die. Recipes for “ethical” (turkey-less, plant-based) feasting are provided, such as seitan turkey and hen of the woods. They might be followed by his wife’s vegan warm apple-apricot cake.