The Holiday Gift Guide
Books for everyone on your list, especially the ones who swear they don't want anything. They do. They want a book. Here are twenty-seven, sorted by the kind of person who'll unwrap them, and every one ships from an independent bookstore. Tap a cover to buy. Some titles open into our longer take.
Updated October 2026
Still stuck? The Booker 2026 shortlist has six good bets, our Author of the Month has a whole shelf, and the bookstore has everything else.
For the One Who Stays Through the Credits
Start with the film people, because they're the hardest. They've seen everything. They haven't read all of these.
Film critic Erika Balsom on the cinema happening at the margins. For the friend who waits until the last name scrolls by.
One of film's great critics rewrites the history of the movies. Expect arguments over dessert.
Griffin Dunne's family memoir, in his own words: “From the moment I was born, my father told me I was always trying to get somewhere else. My first word was taxi.”
Captain Nemo versus Captain Ahab on the high seas. Rodman makes it an anticolonial adventure, and a witty one.
Highsmith for the Holidays
Speaking of movies, Patricia Highsmith has supplied plenty. Envy, glamour and a Christmas doll: buy both and let them fight it out under the tree.
Tom Ripley falls for Dickie Greenleaf's sunlit life on the Italian coast, then helps himself to it. Pair it with Helen Mirren playing Highsmith in A Talent for Murder.
A department-store clerk and a glamorous suburban mother fall in love over a Christmas doll, then take to the open road. Possibly the most December book ever written.
For the Record Collector
Next, the person who flips the record before it ends and has opinions about the bootleg.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, in his own words: “What I want to make now is music freed from the constraints of time.” Play something quiet while you read.
John Brackett on the Grateful Dead, live recordings and the ideology of liveness. For tapers and thinkers, who are often the same person.
Brackett again, on how the Dead became pop stars. A long, strange trip to the charts.
Psychedelic poster art from the hand behind classic Grateful Dead imagery. The coffee table just got louder.
Ronen Givony on the age of indie music and a decade in New York, 2004 to 2014. Loud, and a little nostalgic.
Sarah Fritz puts Clara Schumann's virtuosic genius center stage, where it belonged all along.
Something Wicked in the Stocking
Then there's the friend who reads with the lights on. Crime, secrets and at least one bad decision on Lake Como.
Murder, monsters and madness in midcentury Hollywood. As William J. Mann puts it: “The cops were being played, likely by more than one player…”
Seichō Matsumoto sets the trap calmly: “Tsuneo Asai was on a business trip to the Kansai region when he heard the news.” It doesn't stay quiet for long.
A sleeper train, a translator and a literary scandal where fiction and betrayal blur. Best read on an overnight trip, if you dare.
Desire, betrayal and a dangerous love triangle, from Manhattan to Lake Como. A summer thriller, which is exactly why it works in December.
For the Coast-Minded
For the friend who'd rather be near the water: salt water, California water, and the end of the world on a beach in Kent.
Joseph Ogilvy on industry, greed and fishing in the Golden State, and everything the California coast pulled from the sea.
Chiara Barzini follows the Los Angeles Aqueduct from Owens Valley to the Salton Sea. Water, Hollywood and California's lost dreams.
A beachcomber scrapes by on the coast of Kent while the world comes apart. Booker-shortlisted, slyly funny and properly strange.
For the Serious Reader
Now the reader who already owns every tote bag. Skip the bag. Bring the book.
Booker-shortlisted Elizabeth Strout, at her gentlest: “It was the middle of June and the sun all day had kept right on shining with sweet mightiness.”
A young man goes home to his strict father on a Calvinist island in the Outer Hebrides. Booker-shortlisted, from the author of Shuggie Bain.
Jonathan Lethem's new and selected stories, bending genre the way only he can.
Twenty essays from 2025, chosen by guest editor M. Gessen. Open it anywhere; it'll be smart about it.
Stocking Stuffers and the Kitchen Table
Last, the little ones that fit in a stocking or live by the stove. Small, funny, well-loved and edible-adjacent.
The classic vegetarian cookbook, hand-lettered and much loved. Every kitchen needs a copy, especially the messy ones.
One beagle, one doghouse, one sworn enemy. “Curse you, Red Baron!”
David Sedaris asks the important questions: “If you had a year, do you think you could eat one of those?”
Colson Whitehead's Ray Carney, a man with priorities: “It's harder to find a good coffee table than it is to fall in love.”
Still Can't Choose? Spin Brigitte.
One spin, one book, no dithering. Brigitte has impeccable taste and zero patience for “maybe the other one.”