Find out which books your favorite writer is giving to family and friends this holiday!

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Elizabeth GilbertPatricia CornwellSue GraftonJohn SandfordJan KaronNick Hornby*Walter MosleyGeraldine BrooksStuart Woods

Sue Monk KiddAnn Kidd TaylorJan BrettEric Jerome DickeyRobert B. Parker*Robert CraisKate Jacobs*Kathryn StockettChang-rae Lee

Sarah WatersC. J. BoxT. Jefferson ParkerMike LupicaSarah DessenStewart O’NanTana FrenchJanice Y. K. LeeMark Kurlansky

Leonard MaltinRafe EsquithCraig JohnsonFrank Bruni*Jonathan TropperAntony BeevorReif Larsen Ron Currie, Jr. Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Mehmet Mura SomerSophie HannahLaura ShapiroJohn Green Ace AtkinsRanda JarrarCeridwen DoveyVicki RobinClara Villarosa

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Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)

Give Get• My favorite novel of the year was Nicholson

Baker’s The Anthologist, whose hero—a delightfully unequipped-for-real-life poet—is the most wonderful company I’ve found in a narrator for a very long while. As far as non-fiction goes, I’ll be giving the marvelous The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson to all the scientific minds in my life—and, strangely, I am surrounded by a lot of them. And all the young adult readers in my circle will be getting the sumptuously illustrated steam-punk adventure novel Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.

• I’m planning a nineteenth-century literature bender this year, to fill in the novelistic gaps between all the Dickens and Austen that I’ve already been enjoying for years. So I’ll be exploring all those wonderful Penguin Classics titles, like George Eliot’s Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss. (I just finished Middlemarch, and could not believe I had denied myself that pleasure for so many years.) I’ll also be stocking up on a whole bunch of marvelous books by Anthony Trollope, as well as some nineteenth-century writers I don’t know at all, like Mary Oliphant and Elizabeth Gaskell. I’m hoping for another cold and rainy year, so I can justify remaining curled up on a couch indoors, pretending I’m living in an English village somewhere.

*To see and download video messages from Frank Bruni, Kate Jacobs, Nick Hornby, and Robert B. Parker, please visit our site at penguin.com/whattogive

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Patricia Cornwell (author most recently of The Scarpetta Factor)

Give Get• The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. Sheer poetry and a

magnificent story.

• Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick. Hauntingly detailed nonfiction account of Elvis that inspired my visit to Graceland.

• Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson. An astonishingly brilliant nonfiction thriller about Lincoln’s assassination and the pursuit of James Wilkes Booth.

• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. The writing is breathtaking and the moments captured in this young couple’s lives are unforgettable.

• Million-Dollar Throw by Mike Lupica. It’s an inspiring story about a boy who wants to help his family out and would be a great gift for a young person.

• Spooner by Pete Dexter. It just came out recently and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I’m a fan of Pete Dexter’s so this is on my wish list.

• South of Broad by Pat Conroy. I haven’t read it yet and I adore anything by him.

Sue Grafton (author most recently of U is for Undertow)

Give Get• Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power

of Thinking without Thinking

• Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett

• Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly

• Montse Stanley’s Reader’s Digest Knitter’s Handbook

• Knitting in Plain English by Maggie Righetti

John Sandford (author most recently of Rough Country and Wicked Prey)

Give Get• The Stieg Larsson books The Girl with the

Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire.

• Cézanne and Beyond from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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Jan Karon (author of the Mitford series, and, most recently, Home to Holly Springs)

Give Get• To all the aspiring writers (and who isn’t one?) whom I know,

I would give Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write, which Carl Sandburg called “The best book on writing ever written.”

• To all those who read passionately, I would give Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, and if they thanked me warmly enough, I would give them Halldór Laxness’s Independent People. If they were still around after these two fiercely epical and demanding reads, I would give them The Message, which translates the New Testament into street language.

• As for looking after my own interests, well, I would simply do everything in my power to keep on good terms with my lovely publisher, who is always kind to send me any book I wish to have from their store of great, good works.

Walter Mosley(author most recently of The Long Fall)

Give• The City & The City by China Mieville,

because he sees so clearly the world we live in and the one we miss.

• Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat, because love does not die.

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, because Mr. Díaz takes us out beyond the limits we have placed on our literature.

Get• Books by Michael Moorcock, because he is at the

top of his field and a man of infinite insight.

• Going Rouge edited by Richard Kim and Betsy Read, or books and features by The Nation writers on Sarah Palin, because I need to know where this train is going.

• The Essential Chomsky, because the insights of Noam Chomsky are essential to understanding the underpinnings of American doctrine.

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Stuart Woods (author most recently of Hothouse Orchid)

Give Get• I’d like to give Jon Meacham’s American Lion,

a biography of Andrew Jackson. Jackson is an almost forgotten American president, except for the Battle of New Orleans, but this biography reveals him as an extraordinary man, principled, passionate, and charming.

• I’d also like to give the forthcoming Harry Benson’s New York, in which the famed photojournalist collects his photographs of New Yorkers he has known.

• I’d like to receive Ted Kennedy’s True Compass, the only autobiography written by a member of the extraordinary Kennedy family, and Pat Conroy’s new novel, South of Broad. Pat is a marvelous entertainer and a very fine writer.

Geraldine Brooks (author of March and People of the Book)

Give Get• I will be giving A New Literary History of

America edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors, from Harvard University Press. Its essays provide a stunning tour of the past through the eyes of some of our best thinkers.

• To the young children on my list, Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion and the Mouse. The illustrations are magnificent and the book invites each reader to invent a new narration. I think it is destined to be a favorite and a classic for children the world over.

• I would like to get Wanting by Richard Flanagan—a novel by a writer I admire, set in a place I love, about characters who have always fascinated me: Tasmania, Jane Franklin, and her adopted Aboriginal daughter, Mathinna.

• I would also like to get The Literature of Australia: An Anthology edited by Nick Jose with a foreword by Thomas Keneally. It’s a rich assortment of writing that stretches the usual boundaries of this kind of collection.

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) Sue Monk Kidd (author of The Secret Life of Bees and coauthor of Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story)

Give Get• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore.

I loved Lorrie Moore’s long-awaited new novel about a college student who works as a nanny. It’s for those in my life who are avid readers of literary fiction.

• River Flow: New and Selected Poems by David WhyteLast Christmas one of the best gifts I received was this marvelous book of poetry. I think the poetry lovers on my list will be inspired not only by the beauty of the words but also by the revelations of a deeply lived life.

• Hope for Animals and Their World by Jane GoodallThis one is for my green, animal-loving friends. The book is a celebration of animals, giving us reason to feel hopeful about endangered animals and their future.

• The Help by Kathryn StockettI can’t believe I haven’t yet read this novel about the plight of black maids in Mississippi during the 1960s. I’m eager to get my hands on it and savor a book everyone seems to love.

• The Red Book by C. G. JungThis book is the controversial “self-exploration” by Swiss psychiatrist, C. G. Jung, which his family would not allow to be published until recently. Containing his art, writings, and calligraphy, this strange and exotic book is the source for Jung’s discoveries about the human personality.

• Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West by Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni RendonThis book is the ultimate book lover’s travel guide, with five hundred literary sites in the U.S. and Europe.

Ann Kidd Taylor (coauthor of Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story)

Give Get• The Power of Art by Simon Schama

• Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle

• For the children in your life: Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book of Animals

• The Coral Thief by Rebecca Stott

• The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society by Frans de Waal

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett

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Jan Brett (author of Jan Brett’s Snowy Treasury)

Give Get• This year, I’m giving a thought-realigning nonfiction book to my

outdoorsy children, nieces, nephews, sister, and trainers. It’s called Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, and is about a runner who has had some physical setbacks. An inaccessible canyon of Mexico is peopled by extraordinary athletes who, McDougall searches out to revitalize his running, and they do. My sister, daughter, and I have enjoyed long-distance running in my hometown of Boston, and in far away places like Japan, Scotland, and Africa. It’s a way we all stay connected.

• Tomie dePaola’s Mother Goose to read to my new granddaughter. I can delight in Tomie’s artwork as I sing the nursery rhymes.

Eric Jerome Dickey(author most recently of Resurrecting Midnight) Give• Under the Dome by Stephen King

• Small Crimes by Dave Zeltserman

• Level 26 by Anthony E. Zuiker and Duane Swierczynski

Get• Dark Corner by Brandon Massey

• The Asylum Prophecies by Daniel Keyes

• Anything by Harlan Coben

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Robert Crais (author of The Watchman and the forthcoming The First Rule)

Give Get• My New Orleans by John Besh

I’m a foodie. I love the south Louisiana cuisine I grew up eating, and love to cook, and Chef Besh’s monster cookbook is a treasured addition to my library. The recipes are killer, but, for me, the sidebars on food, culture, and the people of New Orleans and south Louisiana make this book more than a collection of recipes. It was like reading about my friends and relatives back home. My foodie friends around the country will be gifted with this book because I love spreading Lousiana love!

• The Lineup by Otto PenzlerYes, I’m in it, and I’ve already ordered several copies as gifts for my mystery-loving friends. Where else can you find the World’s Greatest Crime Writers together in a single volume, each of whom is writing about his or her own creations. Check out some of the twenty-two authors represented: Anne Perry, Lee Child, Faye Kellerman, Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, and—ta-dah!—me. There is something for everyone here, no matter what their preferred style of reading pleasure. What could be better?

• Ford County: Stories by John GrishamI’m very much looking forward to John Grisham’s first book of short stories. Advance reviews tell me the book contains seven short stories set in Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill. I’m in. I love Mr. Grisham’s novels, and especially admire his sympathetic and insightful handling of “Old South” characters. I’ve already been dropping hints to “certain people” that Ford County is a must-read.

• Los Angeles: Portrait of a City by David Ulin and Kevin Starr, edited by Jim HeimannMy friend Jim Heimann, who is the Executive Editor at Taschen Books-America, and a world-class pack rat for all things L.A., has assembled an amazing collection of more than five hundred photographs of the city I call home. Ulin and Starr, each well-known in his own right, have contributed accompanying essays that set the stage and context for the photos. Anyone interested in “the cutting edge” of American society (especially in a retro kinda way) will love this book. Meaning me, so I want my own copy. Family, are you listening?

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Kathryn Stockett (author of The Help )

Give Get• City of Thieves by David Benioff

• Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle

• Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

• Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls

• A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr

Chang-rae Lee(author of Native Speaker and the forthcoming The Surrendered)

Sarah Waters(author of The Little Stranger, a finalist for the Man Booker award)

Give• Evening’s Empire by Zachary Lazar is a

brilliantly conceived genre-bending story that features taut, exquisite prose about the murder of the author’s father, via modes of the memoir, the novel, and investigative journalism.

Get• Books by Ryszard Kapuscinski, journalist

extraordinaire. I’m reading his book on Africa, The Shadow of the Sun, and now want to read the rest of his works.

Give• Me Cheeta by James Lever. This is easily the

most entertaining novel I’ve read in years: funny, clever, moving—absolutely brilliant.

• London: A Life in Maps by Peter Whitfield. For city lovers and map nerds everywhere, this is a glorious book: a beautifully produced anthology of five hundred years’ worth of London maps, with fascinating information about the city’s evolution.

Get• Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin

Stannard. I’m a big fan of Spark’s witty, acerbic novels, but know next to nothing about Spark herself. So I’m hoping this biography will fill in the gaps.

• Mütter Museum: Historic Medical Photographs by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. A slightly ghoulish choice—but what I’ve seen of these archive photographs of medical curiosities reveals them to be strange, moving, and wildly compelling, so I’d like to see more.

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C. J. Box(author most recently of Below Zero)

Give • Iron River by T. Jefferson Parker. Despite the

fact that he’s a good friend of mine, Iron River showcases what makes Jeff Parker a special author and the recipient of three Edgar Awards. Literate, timely, and with sentences that smoke off the page, this is the third Charlie Hood novel (following L.A.Outlaws and The Renegades) and it’s one of his best. I love novels that are about the human condition in the real world, and this one can be given to readers who think they don’t like mysteries.

• The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. One of the few books I’ve read three times in my life. This is a magnificent, sweeping, fascinating biography that not only tells the definitive story of one of America’s greatest men but in doing so frames American exceptionalism, the nascent conservation movement, loss and redemption, and incredible will and love of family. It should be in everyone’s library but, more important, it should be read.

Get • Blood’s a Rover by James Ellroy. Yes, he’s insane.

But no one writing today combines history, great characters, manic prose, conspiracy theories that make you break out in a sweat, and balls-to-the-wall narration like Ellroy. The completion of the Underworld USA trilogy, I need to read this book to figure out Ellroy’s no-doubt fever-crazed explanation of how we came to be how we came to be.

• Still Midnight by Denise Mina. She had me with hello or, more precisely, with the first page of Field of Blood. And she’s everything I don’t normally flock to: Scottish, female protagonist, dark to the point of eclipse, supremely cynical, and stories set in dank and dark working-class England. But her prose, humor, and intelligence shine through to reveal her as one of the best writing today.

T. Jefferson Parker(author of The Renegades and the forthcoming Iron River)

Give• I’d give Don Winslow’s The Dawn Patrol to

everybody who likes a good thriller with big waves in it. And to everybody who would appreciate a chilling true-crime book I’d give Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. But there’s more to life than crime, so to every single person who can read English I’d give Jim Harrison’s latest collection of poems, Saving Daylight. Beautiful stuff.

Get• I’d like to get whatever Thomas McGuane

publishes next. Another article about his bird dogs would be good enough. I’d also like to get John Lescroart’s Treasure Hunt and the next Joe Pickett story from C. J. Box. I’m greedy.

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Mike Lupica(author of Million-Dollar Throw)

Stewart O’Nan(author of Songs for the Missing)

Give • I would like to give Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard,

which shows that one of the truly great American writers is still at the top of his game.

Get • And I would like to get Spooner by Pete Dexter,

who is always worth the wait.

Give • My book-loving family and friends will be getting

copies of Brian Evenson’s mind-blowing story collection Fugue State. This one nearly escaped me, and what a loss that would have been. Smart, ironic, creepy tales that remind me of Poe, Kafka, and John Gardner. I’ll also be giving Lorrie Moore’s novel of inner space, A Gate at the Stairs. Her voice is as strong and strange as ever, line after indelible line.

Get • I’m hoping for Alice Munro’s new story collection,

Too Much Happiness, signed by the author herself.

Sarah Dessen(author of Along for the Ride)

Give• Jill McCorkle’s new collection of stories,

Going Away Shoes, is the best I’ve read in such a long time. They’ll make you laugh, cry, and shudder. Just like real life.

• For the pop culture lover in my life, I’ll be picking Official Book Club Selection, Kathy Griffin’s no-holds-barred memoir. You expect it to be funny and scandalous, and it is. But it’s also surprisingly honest and moving at times.

Get• I can’t wait to read Anne Tyler’s latest, Noah’s

Compass. It doesn’t come out until January, but any gift card I might be lucky enough to receive for the holidays will be going right toward buying it the day it is released.

• I’m also dying to read Nick Hornby’s latest, Juliet, Naked. I love his books: the characters, his style of writing, and just how fun, really, they are to read.

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leTana French(author of In the Woods and The Likeness)

GiveThis year a lot of people are going to get mystery books—hey, in tough times, we mystery types have to support each other! I’ll mostly be going with these four:

• Cornelia Read’s A Field of Darkness, for wonderful, vivid characters and an intelligent, witty voice that leaps off the page and makes you long to meet the narrator.

• Sophie Hannah’s Hurting Distance, for doing strange, dark things to the borderlines of the genre.

• Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, for a little of both.

• And Ariana Franklin’s Mistress of the Art of Death, for a lovely balance of whodunit and atmospheric historical detail.

Get• Mary Renault’s The Mask of Apollo. I lent my

copy to someone, I’m pretty sure I’m not getting it back, and everyone who’s passionate about theater should own it.

• Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, for basically the same reasons. It’s one of the loveliest pieces of writing ever, and my bookshelves feel wrong without it.

• Pat Conroy’s South of Broad. Every sentence he writes is so rich you could eat it.

• And Dr. Seuss’s Fox in Socks, which I loved making my parents read when I was a kid, and which I now need to find in a nice solid edition that my daughter can chew on.

Janice Y. K. Lee(author of The Piano Teacher)

Give• Personal Days by Ed Park is The Office in book

form: laugh-out-loud funny and perfect for so many people: your college-age nephew, your twenty-something friend in advertising, your thirty-something friend who’s a full-time mom, your friend in his forties who just got laid off, and so on. In fact, I can’t think of anyone it wouldn’t be great for, except your friends without a sense of humor. Don’t give it to them.

• Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips made me weep—a gorgeous symphony of a book about a luminous child and his sister, the human aftermath of too many haunting events.

• David Benioff ’s City of Thieves is like watching a wonderful movie, except you’re reading a beautifully paced, elegantly written book about an impossible hunt for eggs in WWII Russia.

• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. Possibly my favorite writer. I would read her grocery list, but luckily her new book is out so we can read that instead.

Get • I would like to receive all of Jane Austen’s books in

a beautiful matching set (if that exists) so that I can look at them on the bookshelf and read through them again and again.

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Mark Kurlansky(author of The Food of a Younger Land and the forthcoming The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Marcorís)

Give• Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species. I

would like to give On the Origin of Species to most everyone I know. Darwin’s classic is not read enough today and those who read will get a much clearer understanding of the environmental issues we face today.

• Nami Mun, Miles from Nowhere. Both tough and innocent, the harshness and sweetness of life, a novel of a runaway child in a thoroughly original and engaging voice.

• Cynthia Ozick, Dictation. Four novellas by one of the best contemporary fiction writers.

• Richard Bausch, Peace. One of the great craftsmen tells a small, simple story that shows that the best way to make an antiwar statement is to describe war, in this case a minor incident in the misery of the Italian campaign of WWII.

• Stefan Merrill Block, The Story of Forgetting. If I were to tell you that this is a book about early onset Alzheimer’s you would not want to read it. But it is a profound book about the role of memory in our lives and a book of such deep understanding of human relations, especially parenthood, that it is hard to believe it is a first novel by a twenty-six year-old.

• Nadeem Aslam, Season of the Rainbirds. Aslam is a young Pakistani-British writer of rare and lyrical skills and a great storyteller. This beautiful little book was his first. There have been others since.

• Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke. This book takes on one of the sacred notions. It questions whether World War II was really unavoidable, and if Churchill and Roosevelt had noble intentions. Since the myths of WWII are often used to justify other wars, this is worth considering. I wrote in my review for the L.A.Times that it could be the most important book you ever read, and I know a lot of people who need to read it.

Get• Melvin Urofsky’s new biography of Brandeis,

Louis D. Brandeis. Not my favorite type of reading, but Brandeis was such a fascinating and extraordinary man—a judge who proved the worth of judicial activism. You only have to appoint someone with a great conscience.

• The new Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry edited by Cecilia Vicuña and Ernesto Livon-Grosman. An unusually broad selection in both Spanish and English. I would also like a complete works of Yeats, but everybody loves Yeats. Can’t help it. I do, too.

• The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway. I look forward to reading this because I love books that celebrate music and also I play the cello.

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Leonard Maltin(author of Leonard Maltin’s 2010 Movie Guide)

Give• I’ve been telling everybody I know about Cari

Beauchamp’s incredible book Joseph P. Kennedy Presents, a real eye-opener that details the Kennedy patriarch’s adventures in Hollywood—so it’s a book I plan to give this year. I’m also fond of a labor-of-love picture-and-text volume called Errol Flynn Slept Here by Robert Matzen and Michael Mazzone that chronicles the life of a famous house in Hollywood history.

Get • I love movie books but I also like to escape into the

world of fiction, so I’m always happy to discover an author I haven’t already read. Any friend who’s an avid reader could easily find a novel I haven’t read and make me very happy.

Rafe Esquith(author of Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World)

Give• This season I will be giving A Bell for Adano, John

Hersey’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Although it is a World War II story, I think its theme is particularly touching for people who are working awfully hard to make our world better. I seem to know many people today sacrificing themselves and wondering if their efforts are worth it. This touching masterpiece reminds all of us that though we may lose many battles, we can still win the war. It has connected both with my former students in middle and high school and my peers.

Get• What would I like? Simple! I’d like an original

signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That shouldn’t be too much to ask!

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Craig Johnson(author of the Walt Longmire mysteries and, most recently, of The Dark Horse)

Give• John Steinbeck’s America and Americans, and Selected

Nonfiction. Three of the twenty best-selling Penguin Classics are by Steinbeck; this book isn’t one of them, but it should be.

• The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, by Brady Udall. This is one fabulous book that I feel hasn’t gotten the recognition it deserves.

• Anything by Ron Carlson, including his latest and elegant The Signal.

• Either Rennie Airth’s The Blood-Dimmed Tide or River of Darkness—a charming man and a limitless talent.

• Some of those nifty black 100% brushed cotton Penguin baseball caps featuring a structured crown and precurved visor with adjustable Velcro strap—even if I have to buy them.

Get• The entire collection of Penguin Classics for my

cabin up in Montana. Yeah, so it weighs over seventy pounds and costs just under $8,000, but the shipping is free.

• Anything from the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser, a man I consider to be one of the funniest writers who ever lived. RIP, you cad.

• H. H. Bancroft’s History of Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming.

• Jack R. Gage (governor of Wyoming 1961-1963) The Johnson County War Is/Ain’t a Pack of Lies

• One of those nifty black 100% brushed cotton Penguin baseball caps featuring a structured crown and precurved visor with adjustable Velcro strap. I get gimme caps from ranching supply and rodeo equipment firms and I get stiffed by my own publisher for five years . . .

Jonathan Tropper(author of This Is Where I Leave You)

Give• I’ll be giving How It Ended by Jay McInerney. I love

his writing, and, as always, Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, since it remains my favorite novel and I like to make sure everyone I know has read it.

Get• As for books I’d like to get: I’m strangely drawn to

the new Stephen King, Under the Dome. I haven’t read him in quite a while, and this one sounds like it may very well be a return to the epic humanism he does so well. And at 1,088 pages, it will be either a disaster or the gift that keeps on giving.

• Also, Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem, because he’s always interesting.

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Antony Beevor(author of D-Day: The Battle for Normandy)

Give • To my daughter for long flights and long waits,

Stieg Larsson’s totally addictive Millennium trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

• For almost anyone, Javier Marias’s third volume of his trilogy, Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow, and Farewell, which is, in my view, one of the greatest novels to have appeared in the last twenty years.

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Get • A leather-bound early edition of my favorite book,

Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons.

• Lustrum, Robert Harris’s third volume in his Roman trilogy.

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Reif Larsen(author of The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet)

Give• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.

A wonderful spiralic portrait of interconnected 1970s New York. Gritty, detailed, ambitious—this is the kind of book that makes you believe in the magnetic, transcendent power of words, sentences, punctuals.

• Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower. An amazing collection. Restores my faith in the American short story. Nothing is forced here, everything is smoldering with electric, ballsy bravado. I savored every word.

• The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher. I never grow tired of this coffee table book—a beautiful portrait of how New York City functions, from trash collection to water delivery through those huge scary pipes from the Catskills. The diagrams are like cocaine, the systematics are music for the soul. It will change how you view urbanity/humanity.

• Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini. This book will blow your brain open. I am not kidding. But you may have to buy it from an ornery Italian bookseller with a gentle limp.

Get• The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. I think

this guy brings it every time he steps up to the plate—he twins curiosity with know-how in a beautiful tango that is much trickier than it comes off on the page (see The Ghost Map). This one’s about electricity, scientific ego, and cholera. Where can you go wrong, Santa?

• Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1910–1911) by many bespectacled scholars of this world. I always heard this was the best edition of Britannica, the year complete world knowledge was at a perfect tipping point—we knew just enough and not a drop more. Now trying to write a comprehensive encyclopedia is like trying to drink the ocean.

• Stoner by John Williams. One of those books that keeps coming up in late-night conversations with people I love/admire. Ah, yes, I must remember this book! And then I forget it by the time I am walking the goat herd at dawn. But here it is: supposedly a magical read not about potheads but about a professor emerging from the chrysalis of language. A New York Review of Books rerelease. They do good things, those NYRBers.

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Ron Currie, Jr.(author of God Is Dead and Everything Matters!)

Give• The Slide by Kyle Beachy really blew my hair back

when I read it last year, and hasn’t gone away since. Too often the work of a great stylist is primarily about the language and, therefore, a little lean on humanity, but Beachy’s tale of a recent college graduate returning home to St. Louis hits all the right emotional notes. It’s a family saga, left-field coming-of-age tale, and a love letter to the Midwest, all rolled into one.

• I was reminded recently of the greatness of Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again. The first time I read this, years ago, it completely reconfigured my sense of what was possible in a novel. Ambitious, sweeping, and gorgeously written, it’s a doorstop of a book that reads as quick as a two-hundred-pager.

• Too often a great author’s lesser works get all the attention, while their true masterpieces go ignored. I’d say this is the case with Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion and Jack London’s Martin Eden. Not to take away from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or White Fang, but Sometimes a Great Notion, a genuinely epic and heartbreaking tale of a family of loggers in Oregon, and Martin Eden, London’s story of a poor young man who tries, through self-education, to join the class of the literary elite which has no interest in him, are undeniably superior to their authors’ more famous works.

Get• I’ve experienced a resurgence of interest in reference

books, and one I don’t have is James Rogers’ Dictionary of Clichés. Everyone’s got their Roget’s Thesaurus and Concise OED, but I’ve never had a dictionary of clichés and, like every writer, I really ought to.

• It’s not sufficient to refer to myself as a fan of David Foster Wallace—I’m continually in awe of the man’s work, and so when The Pale King, the novel he was working on when he died, is released I probably won’t wait for someone to be kind enough to give me a copy. Still, it’s worth mentioning.

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Bich Nguyen(author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner and Short Girls)

Give • I’m planning to give Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth

Strout to anyone who hasn’t yet read this incredible and luminous short story cycle.

• I’m also planning to give War Dances by the won-derful Sherman Alexie.

• For those interested in memoir writing, I’m giving Tell Me True: Memoir, History, and Writing a Life edited by Patricia Hampl and Elaine Tyler May.

• And for foodies, Asian Dumplings (cookbook) by Andrea Nguyen.

Get • I’d like to receive Too Much Happiness by

Alice Munro because you can never have too much Munro.

• Penelope Lively’s Family Album.

• The Lost City of Z by David Grann.

• Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.

Perez Hilton(author most recently of Perez Hilton’s True Bloggywood Stories)

Give• How to Be Famous by Heidi and Spencer. Give

it to Tara Reid. Show her how other D-listers work the field.

Get• Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. Then I’d give it

right back.

• The Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze and Lisa Niemi. Because he was a true Hollywood star who had talent and class.

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Mehmet Murat Somer(author of The Kiss Murder)

Give• The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larsen;

a wonderfully fresh approach, both literally and format-wise . . . And considering that the multi-talented Reif Larsen also draws everything in this amazing book!

• The Museum of Innocence by Nobel literature award winner Orhan Pamuk. A simple, basic, broken, but at the same time heart-warming love story, told like a visitors guidebook to the museum of mementos of that twenty-year-long love affair.

• Any book, but preferably coffee table ones, about Audrey Hepburn, with plenty of pictures! The pinnacle of grace, elegance, and style!

• The complete “Tom of Finland” comics! Gorgeous black-and-white ’70s hardcore, better in larger format!

• A detailed companion book to listen to G. F. Handel in depth, like the biography Handel: Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks by authentic music performances and ancient music master maestro Christopher Hogwood.

Get• A leather-bound, gold-stamped edition of all of

Jane Austen’s titles. Handsome in bordeaux or cinnamon!

• A colored, leather-bound edition of at least ten books of Honoré de Balzac, including Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes and Illusions Perdues—they will look nice on my shelf next to my leather-bound copies of Le Père Goriot, Eugénie Grandet, Le Lys dans la Vallée, Le Cousin Pons, La Cousine Bette.

• A literature atlas, for both traveling and tracing the unforgettable works. Which author wrote what in that particular part of the world, city, district, street, even the building or the room? Yummy!

Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein(author of Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between)

Give• We’re giving Scott Spencer’s Willing, a very

funny and insightful novel about the male condition. Perhaps not a good choice for any radical feminists on your gift list…

Get• We’d like to get The James Deans by Reed

Farrell Coleman, one in his series featuring Brooklyn private eye Moe Prager.

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Sophie Hannah(author of The Wrong Mother and Little Face)

Give• The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch. A brilliant, startlingly original

novel that manages to be everything at once. It’s a story of passionate, doomed love, but it’s also an intriguing murder mystery, a saga involving two families, and a serious novel about philosophy and literature. Its genius is that it seems to encompass many genres, while at the same time being very hard to categorize. It’s gripping and clever and one of the great novels of all time.

• Wendy Cope’s poetry. She’s written several books of poems: Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, Serious Concerns, If I Don’t Know, The River Girl, Two Cures for Love. Most of Wendy’s poems rhyme and scan and make sense, which is great. They’re what a lot of people would call “proper poetry,” and they’re also witty, moving, and memorable.

• Coming from Behind by Howard Jacobson. The funniest novel I’ve ever read. Almost every sentence is hilarious in its own right, as well as contributing to a hilarious whole. It’s about a disillusioned academic who has a job he hates at a terrible university and does everything he can to try to escape, with disastrous results.

• See Jane Run by Joy Fielding. An unbelievably gripping psychological thriller, in which all the clues are perfectly placed and the outcome is satisfyingly unpredictable, even though you’ll kick yourself when you realize you should have known but didn’t!

• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. This is subtitled “A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, but for the non-spiritually-inclined, it’s still a brilliant read. It revolves around one basic idea: that if we were always focused on the present moment, we would have far fewer problems. It’s primarily a philosophy book, and Tolle’s worldview is wise and fascinating (if a little hard to put into practice for those of us who still worry about the future and obsess about the past even though we know we ought not to!).

• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. This book is a superb gothic mystery with loads of sinister atmosphere and a strong grip factor. The story is savage but beautiful. I think this novel is the Wuthering Heights of the twenty-first century.

• Tiddler by Julia Donaldson. A fantastic rhyming story for children about a fish who makes up wildly imaginative stories that aren’t true, and gets in trouble for it. But then he gets lost in the sea, and meets another fish who happens to have heard one of his amazing stories, and by tracing the story back from teller to teller, Tiddler is able to find his way home. This book is the polar opposite of the boy-who-cried-wolf story. I love it because it’s a brilliant narrative poem and it encourages people to make things up!

Get• Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of

Mysteries in the Making by John Curran. I’m dying to read this book! Curran is an archivist who was lucky enough to find a stash of Christie’s notebooks, and he has painstakingly arranged, interpreted, and now published them, so that we can see the planning and inspirations that went into Christie’s amazing books.

• The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell. The new Inspector Wexford novel. I love the Wexford novels and am always desperate to read the new one. Ruth Rendell is my favorite crime writer of all time.

• The Disappeared by M. R. Hal. The second in a series of detective novels by a new talent whose first novel, The Coroner, was great. Hall’s detective heroine is a district coroner, Jenny Cooper, who’s very likeable and has a grumpy assistant and, as if that weren’t bad enough, a Temazepam addiction to contend with.

• The Surrogate by Tania Carver. A novel about a serial killer who murders heavily pregnant women and cuts out their unborn babies. Lovely, I hear you say. I don’t usually like really gruesome books, but I’m intrigued by this one because I fear it might turn out that the killer is someone who wants kids but can’t have them, but at the same time I’m pretty sure it can’t be quite that predictable—so I suppose I’ll have to read it to find out.

• Faithful Place by Tana French. This novel isn’t published yet, but I know the manuscript’s been handed in, so I’m hoping it’ll be out next year, and it’s already firmly on my wish list. French’s first two psychological thrillers, In the Woods and The Likeness, were breathtakingly good, and I’m desperate to read her third.

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Laura Shapiro(author of Julia Child: A Life)

Give• Hardball by Sara Paretsky. A new one! This makes

such a great gift that I gave it to myself the week it came out. There are a million reasons why V.I. Warshawski remains the most enduringly fascinating of the tough female detectives, and right up front are her conscience, her politics, her rash courage, and her beautiful singing voice. They’re all in glorious form here. Warshawski’s latest case takes place in the age of Obama, but it’s deeply rooted in the racial bloodshed of 1960s Chicago.

• Ambrose Bierce’s Write It Right: The Celebrated Cynic’s Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised and Annotated for 21st Century Readers by Jan Freeman. Fans of Jan Freeman’s smart, witty language column in the Boston Globe will fall over this treasure with glee. Bierce’s opinionated and more or less scholarly rulings on proper English were published a hundred years ago, and they’re more than ready for a rewrite. Freeman was the perfect choice to meet the old curmudgeon head-to-head.

• The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. To be honest, I wouldn’t bother cooking for one. I would make a salad and be done with it. But Jones is different: she cherishes the work and the ritual, and she is a master of the simple, appealing recipe. Because she loves dreaming up ideas for the remnants, she’ll prepare a whole chicken, a mountain of mussels, two lamb shanks—quantities designed for leftovers, and just right if you’re cooking for two.

Get• Gourmet Today: More Than 1000 All-New Recipes

for the Contemporary Kitchen edited by Ruth Reichl. I use the previous Gourmet cookbook all the time, and I’m dying to have the new one, but I don’t want anyone to buy it for me and reward Condé Nast even symbolically for shutting down the magazine while retaining “the brand,” as it’s odiously called. So, Santa: wait a year or two, and then slip me a second-hand copy.

• The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth by Frances Wilson tells a story that’s been told before, but rarely so wisely and thoughtfully. Her reading of the Grasmere journals—Dorothy’s best-known legacy—is like a lecture by the most inspiring professor you ever had.

• When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins. The autobiography of everyone, written by everyone’s favorite feminist. Technically, I suppose I should read it before I praise it, but why wait? Gail Collins is a national treasure.

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Randa Jarrar(author of A Map of Home)

Give• The Flaneur by Edmund White. This slim

book gives you the feeling you’ve gone for a walk through Paris, and for those of us who can’t make it to the City of Light for the holidays, what better gift than to feel as though we have?

Get• Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing

Landscape by Raja Shehadeh. In keeping with my Flaneur-ish current obsession, this book details a few hikes through the Occupied Territories. This seems like a magical way to explore the landscape of Palestine without quite leaving home.

John Green(author of Paper Towns)

Ace Atkins(author most recently of Devil’s Garden, and the forthcoming Infamous)

Give • Savvy by Ingrid Law

Get • The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to

the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson

Give • In a three-for-one, I’d give William Kennedy’s

Albany Trio—Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, and Ironweed. Kennedy is everything a novelist should be—funny, insightful, and unpretentious. And I’m sure I’ll hand out copies of Megan Abbott’s latest, Bury Me Deep. Abbott’s new book is my favorite—great literature in a sexy pulp wrapper.

Get • I’d like to get Pete Dexter’s new book, Spooner.

He’s an American treasure. And without doubt, I better receive a pristine copy of The Tao of Wu by The RZA of the Wu Tang Clan.

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Ceridwen Dovey(author of Blood Kin)

GiveWhat I’m hoping to find in the library and take with me in my suitcase, to share with my family:

• Rivka Galchen’s brilliant debut novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, which blew me away with its unpretentious intelligence and by managing somehow to be cerebral and sensual at the same time.

• Peter Godwin’s extraordinary memoir, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, his sequel to Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa. This memoir is so good it made me wonder why I bother to write novels when nonfiction books like this can be so much more compelling and complex. Godwin’s take on Zimbabwe is fascinating and harrowing, honest and thoughtful, and as he uncovers his family’s secret history, you begin to understand how the world is connected in a thousand disturbing and painful ways.

• Simon Critchley’s philosophical meditation on death and literature, Very Little . . . Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature. Philosophy tomes tend to intimidate me, but Critchley refuses to let jargon or academic metalanguage get in the way of his powerful claim that “literature is the name of that place where the issue of religious disappointment is thought through,” and he insists that we find ways to experience—rather than interpret—the language of literature.

Get What I’m hoping my family members will bring with them in their suitcases:

• Samuel Beckett’s one-act play Endgame, which I’m embarrassed not to have read (and Critchley—above—speaks a lot about Beckett!).

• Geoff Dyer’s new novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.

• Anything by the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector.

• T. C. Boyle’s novel The Tortilla Curtain.

My agnostic, globe-dispersed family reunites at Christmas in a thatched-roof hut with no running water on a wild beach in South Africa. We do pretty much nothing but sleep, eat boerewors, bodysurf, and read for a couple of weeks. Buying Christmas presents is forbidden (by family consensus), so the only things we stuff our suitcases with are library books we’ve been dying all year to read, and these get passed around and between family members (the only rule is: whoever brought it gets to read it first), and are returned to their respective library homes around the world a little sandier in the New Year.

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Visit www.penguin.com/whattogive

for more Penguin author holiday wish lists.

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Vicki Robin(coauthor of Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence)

GiveSince I believe we are heading into times that may be materially challenging . . . but socially rich:

• The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times by Albert Bates

• Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook by David Werner, with Carol Thurman and Jane Maxwell

• Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook edited by Peter Blood and Annie Patterson

• The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully by Joan Chittister

GetBecause living through these times, we’ll need to have a sense of humor and a sense of perspective:

• And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft by Mike Sacks

• Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone

• The Second City Almanac of Improvisation by Anne Libera

• Zen Flesh, Zen Bones Classic Edition: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki

Clara Villarosa(author of Down to Business: The First 10 Steps to Entrepreneurship for Women)

Give• Toni Morrison’s A Mercy for my friends who

appreciate a book that makes them think and enjoy storytelling with compelling characters.

• Carla Harris’s Expect to Win for those who have a job and want to keep it.

Get• E. Lynn Harris’s Mama Dearest—I want to

savor the last book written by an author who I followed and read for years.

• John Cassidy’s How Markets Fail—I wan to know more about today’s economic calamities.