For years Jeanette Winterson has loved writing a new story at Christmastime, and here she brings together 12 of her brilliantly imaginative, funny and bold tales. For the 12 Days of Christmas - a time of celebration, sharing and giving - she offers these 12 plus one: a personal story of her own Christmas memories. These tales give the listener a portal into the spirit of the season, where time slows down and magic starts to happen. Perfect for listening to by the fire with loved ones or while traveling home for the holidays.

Have Yourself a Very British Christmas is a 12-stage sleigh ride through the best, worst, strangest and funniest aspects of the Christmas holiday, with cultural icons saluted, national habits dissected and personal reminiscences from those who've eaten all the mince pies and lived to tell the tale. The essential Christmas stocking filler for every Brit who's ever found themselves on a deflating airbed wedged up against the washing machine in their parents' spare room come Christmas Eve.

A Christmas anthology from legendary historian and Christmas Cracker compiler John Julius Norwich. This year go carol singing in the Cotswolds with Laurie Lee or attend church with a grumpy Samuel Pepys. Make plum puddings for bemused French villagers with Elizabeth David; go present shopping with Virginia Woolf, or eat far too much with Agatha Christie. Celebrate Christmas at Chatsworth, in the workhouse or marooned in the ice with Shackleton....

In 1969, John Julius Norwich, the legendary popular historian, gathered together the favourite things he'd come across in the last 365 days into one short charming pamphlet. Initially just a treat for his friends, it rapidly turned into a huge word-of-mouth success. And soon the arrival of John Julius Norwich's latest 'Christmas Cracker' became as essential a part of the English Christmas experience as holly and mistletoe. Norwich had a brilliant eye for a story and telling detail, and his Crackers are full of jokes, warmth and wit. 

The food in The Kitchen Diaries is simply what I eat at home. The stuff I make for myself, for friends and family, for Sunday lunch and for snacks. These are meals I make when I am having mates over or when I want to surprise, seduce or show off. This is what I cook when I’m feeling energetic, lazy, hungry or late. This is the food that makes up my life, both the Monday to Friday stuff and that for weekends and special occasions. 

Kate Turner is happily single - a bit too happily, in fact. Since returning to her hometown of Blexford, a sleepy village where everybody knows each other, and between catching up with her oldest friends Laura and Matt, a flourishing career as a fabric designer, and taking care of her beloved dad, love hasn’t really had a look in. But Kate does love Christmas. So when Laura insists she signs up to the 'Twelve Dates of Christmas', a brand new dating app service, she doesn’t need too much persuading.

The Christmas Chronicles is the story of Nigel Slater's love for winter, for the scent of fir and spruce, for ghost stories read with a glass of sloe gin, and beeswax candles with shadows dancing on the ceiling. With recipes, decorations, fables and quick fireside suppers, Nigel guides you through the essential preparations for Christmas and the New Year, with everything you need to enjoy the winter months.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. 

Truman Capote makes whisky-soaked fruitcake in Alabama; Laurie Lee slides across a frozen pond in Gloucestershire; and Shirley Jackson is outwitted by a wily Santa Claus at the bank. Ghosts haunt the Christmases of Muriel Spark and Elizabeth Bowen, while Dostoyevsky, Daphne du Maurier and Italo Calvino take a cynical view of the season and Selma Lagerlof and Angela Carter celebrate its miracles. Ranging from Cork to Lagos to the Wild West, and from Paris to San Paolo to outer space, this is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short-story writers of all time.

When Jenny inherits her estranged grandmother’s cottage in Sherwood Forest, she has nothing to lose - no money, no job, no friends, no family to speak of, and zero self-respect. Things can only get better.... Her grumpy but decidedly handsome new neighbour, Mack, has a habit of bestowing unsolicited good deeds on her. And when Jenny is welcomed into a rather unusual book club, life seems to finally be getting more interesting. Instead of reading, the members pledge to complete individual challenges before Christmas.

Read by Juliet Stevenson and Simon Callow, A Literary Christmas is a seasonal anthology that collects together poems, short stories, and prose extracts by some of the greatest poets and writers in the English language. Like Charles Dickens’ ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, they are representative of times old and new - from John Donne’s Elizabethan hymn over the baby Jesus to Rudyard Kipling’s "Christmas in India", from Thomas Tusser counting the cost of a Tudor feast to Laurie Lee’s "Cider with Rosie".

The brand-new Christmas romance from the Sunday Times best-selling author Heidi Swain! Perfect for fans of Carole Matthews, Sarah Morgan and Cathy Bramley. 

When 30-year-old Nick loses his prestigious job at a city law firm, he is forced to grudgingly accept work as a Santa at a local Christmas grotto. There he meets five-year-old Alfie, and all Alfie wants for Christmas is for his mum to be happy again. She has been sad ever since his dad died three years ago. Moved by the boy's selfless wish, Nick arranges a date between Alfie's mum, Sarah, and his best friend, Matt.  

The story revolves around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh. Immediately recognisable are the Edinburgh chartered surveyor, stalwart of the Conservative Association, who dreams of membership of Scotland's most exclusive golf club. We have the pushy Stockbridge mother, and her prodigiously talented five-year-old son, who is making good progress with the saxophone and with his Italian.

On the face of it, Rebecca Bloomwood has it all. Confident, single, and happily living in Fulham, she's a financial journalist who spends her days writing articles advising other people on the importance of budgeting and prudent investment. Her private life is a different story though: Rebecca manages her own finances in a way that would make most of her readers' hair curl. For Rebecca is a woman on a mission - she just can't stop spending.