The countdown to Christmas has started and we’re all starting to come up with present ideas for family and friends.
A good book is always a great gift, so we’re looking at the year’s best to give you a few ideas.
Waterstones has become one of Britain’s biggest booksellers since being established in 1982 and each year choose their favourites.
From children’s books to thrillers, and educational books to cookbooks, here are their 15 picks of the year.
9. Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
"Avery, a strait-laced lawyer living in London, is the typical eldest daughter, though she’s hiding a secret that could undo her perfect life forever. Bonnie was a boxer but, following a devastating defeat, she's been working as a bouncer in LA – until a reckless act one night threatens to drive her out of the city. And Lucky, the rebellious youngest, is a model in Paris whose hard-partying ways are finally catching up with her. Then there was Nicky, the beloved fourth sister, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie and Lucky reeling. When, a year later, the three of them must reunite in New York to stop the sale of their childhood home, they find that it's only by returning to each other that they can navigate their grief, addiction and heartbreak and learn to fall in love with life again." | Contributed
10. I Am Rebel by Ross Montgomery
"'I’m Tom’s dog, and he’s my human. We belong to each other.' Rebel is a good dog, and he loves his simple, perfect life on the farm with his owner Tom – until one day the war comes too close… Now Tom is determined to join the rebellion to defeat the king’s men. But Rebel knows war is dangerous, and he will stop at nothing to save the human he loves. Rebel must bring Tom home before it’s too late." | Contributed
11. Cloudspotting for Beginners by Gavin Pretar-Pinney and William Grill
"Clouds come in all manner of shapes and sizes, from low-lying Stratus to high-flying Cirrus via roll clouds, banner clouds and tornados. This beautifully illustrated guide reveals the facts, secrets and stories of all the major cloud types, and how they shape the weather around them. We learn their fancy Latin names, explore the parts of the sky where they like to hang out, marvel at the ways they play with sunlight – and even visit them on other planets, where they are sometimes made of acid. Cloudspotting for Beginners will inspire curious minds with a lifelong sense of meteorological wonder." | Contributed
12. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
"Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women - his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude - a period of desire, despair and possibility - a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking." | Contributed