Best Christmas reads from Kerr's Bookshop Clonakilty

With Christmas just around the corner what better time to pick up a new book either as a treat for yourself or as a gift for a friend or loved one?

We've teamed up with Kerr's Bookshop Clonakilty to bring you suggestions that we hope will make your holiday season even more enjoyable.

Every month our friends at Kerr's Bookshop Clonakilty recommend a selection of books that cater to all tastes and we post them here.

Let us know if you read any of the books below and tell us whether you loved or hated them. Happy reading!

All of the books listed here are available to buy from Kerr's.

The Secrets We Kept by Laura Prescott

1956. A celebrated Russian author is writing a book, Doctor Zhivago, which could spark dissent in the Soviet Union. The Soviets, afraid of its subversive power, ban it.

But in the rest of the world it’s fast becoming a sensation.

In Washington DC, the CIA is planning to use the book to tip the Cold War in its favour.

Their agents are not the usual spies, however. Two typists – the charming, experienced Sally and the talented novice Irina – are charged with the mission of a lifetime: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago back into Russia by any means necessary.

It will not be easy. There are people prepared to die for this book – and agents willing to kill for it. But they cannot fail – as this book has the power to change history.

Lara Prescott's dazzling debut novel is a sweeping page turner, and now a global literary sensation.

The Family Gift by Cathy Kelley

Freya Abalone has a big, messy, wonderful family, a fantastic career, and a new house.

But that's on the outside.

On the inside, she's got Mildred - the name she's given to that nagging inner critic who tells us all we're not good enough.

And now Freya's beloved blended family is under threat. Dan's first wife Elisa, the glamorous, manipulative woman who happily abandoned her daughter to Freya and Dan's care and left the country, has elbowed her way back into their lives.

But Freya knows that when life gives you lemons, you throw them right back.

Can Freya put her family - and herself - back together? Find out in Cathy Kelly's warmest, wisest and funniest book yet...

Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor

1878: The Lyceum Theatre, London. Three extraordinary people begin their life together, a life that will be full of drama, transformation, passionate and painful devotion to art and to one another.

Henry Irving, the Chief, is the volcanic leading man and impresario; Ellen Terry is the most lauded and desired actress of her generation, outspoken and generous of heart; and ever following along behind them in the shadows is the unremarkable theatre manager, Bram Stoker.

This exceptional novel explores the complexities of love that stands dangerously outside social convention, the restlessness of creativity, and the experiences that led to Dracula, the most iconic supernatural tale of all time.

The Women At Hitler's Table by Rosella Postorino

East Prussia, 1943. Hitler hides away in the Wolfsshanze – his hidden headquarters. The tide is turning in the war and his enemies circle ever closer.

Ten women are chosen. Ten women to taste his food and protect him from poison.

Twenty-six-year-old Rosa has lost everything to this war. Her parents are dead. Her husband is fighting on the front line. Alone and scared, she faces the SS with nothing but the knowledge every bite might be her last.

Caught on the wrong side of history, how far is Rosa willing to go to survive?

Blue Moon by Lee Child

In a nameless city, two rival criminal gangs are competing for control. But they hadn’t counted on Jack Reacher arriving on their patch.

Reacher is trained to notice things.

He’s on a Greyhound bus, watching an elderly man sleeping in his seat, with a fat envelope of cash hanging out of his pocket. Another passenger is watching too ... hoping to get rich quick.

As the mugger makes his move, Reacher steps in.

The old man is grateful, yet he turns down Reacher’s offer to help him home. He’s vulnerable, scared, and clearly in big, big trouble.

What hold could the gangs have on the old guy? Will Reacher be in time to stop bad things happening?

The odds are better with Reacher involved. That's for damn sure.

Boulevard Wren and Other Stories by Blindboy Boatclub

Boulevard Wren and Other Stories is the stunning follow-up to the bestselling Gospel According to Blindboy, and a warped mirror held up to the Irish psyche.

Provocative and unsettling, the stories rove through the centuries, from the barren fields of Famine-struck Meath to the chaotic landscape of the near future, where social media has colonised the deepest recesses of the human subconscious.

This is a world populated by characters lost and at odds with the demands of contemporary life, for whom the line separating redemption and madness has grown impossibly fine.

Razor-sharp social satire, it is an era-defining work from one of Ireland’s most anarchic satirists and a quietly devastating portrait of a society in disarray.