Bestsellers
Is your bedside table stacked with books or muslins and wet wipes!? We've kept it so simple that we only chose five top books, the first of which is, in itself, the only book you might ever need. The rest have terrific value and can be referred to time and again.
I've struggled to get this list down to twenty. But this is the list of books which I'd give to my best friend or my mum, or take on holiday if I happened to be having a particularly long one. It's the list of books I'm most excited about reading, and which I strongly suspect will be some of the most talked-about of the year.
I asked 20 bestselling authors to recommend the best books they read in 2014. Here are their favourite reads of the year.
Since we all know there's no better gift - at Christmas or any other time - than a book, here are some of the best books published this year to gift this Christmas. There's something for everyone - even that person who always hates every present they're ever given...
Today, more books than ever before in history are being published. Thanks to self-publishing, over 10 thousand new books are hitting the shelves every month. 20 years ago, if you'd written a turkey and couldn't find an agent or find a publisher, then you'd just have to go off into some dark pit, lick your wounds, and write a better book. Not any more though.
It has taken me 15 years to pick up a history book ever since that horrendously mundane exposure, but what a book to pick up! A Little History of the World by E.H Gombrich. Of course, I had to opt for the paperback as the dear old book has been in print now since 1935. Nevertheless, despite its age, this book was a profoundly excellent read.
One of seven children, Monica McInerney grew up in Australia and then came to live in the UK before moving to Ireland where she married.