Your friends who ‘don’t read’

• Why would a man escape from prison the day before he’s due to be released? You’ll have to read Michael Robotham’s Life or Death to find out… This crime thriller won the CWA Gold Dagger this year so comes highly recommended.
• Music lovers may be tempted by The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic. Jessica Hopper’s short and snappy pieces are immensely readable.
• Hadley Freeman’s Life Moves Pretty Fast is a joyous tribute to eighties movies such as Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Pretty in Pink, etc.
• Books that have recently been adapted into films, such as Andy Weir’s gripping page-turner The Martian and Rosalie Ham’s Australian gothic comedy The Dressmaker, often inspire people who don’t normally read to pick one up.
• At just 23 years, Noelle Stevenson has been nominated for a National Book Award for her smartly subversive, action-packed, fantasy adventure Nimona. This graphic novel is too much fun not to keep reading.

An almost-stranger (such as a work colleague, your sibling’s new love interest or neighbour who’s always doing really nice things for you)

• The colouring books for adults craze continues! Lost Ocean: An Inky Adventure & Colouring Book by Johanna Basford is a particularly beautiful choice.
• A Mr Mo Mug is a highly practical, generous-sized vessel to have on hand.
• Tiffany Watt-Smith’s The Book of Human Emotions: An Encyclopaedia of Feeling from Anger to Wanderlust has 200 bite-size entries on emotions, from the universal to the utterly specific.
• We have a wonderful selection of diaries and calendars available. You can find even more in-store; one popular choice is The 2016 Foodies’ Diary.
• The new Women of Letters anthology, From The Heart, once again shares wonderful missives from Australians of note. (As a bonus, all royalties for this book will go to Edgar’s Mission animal rescue shelter.)

An ageing relative who loves books, but is now finding it hard to concentrate

• Those who love language and words will delight in Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words by Ella Frances Sanders.
• Olivier Le Carrer’s Atlas of Cursed Places: A Travel Guide to Dangerous and Frightful Destinations is an unusual and fascinating coffee table book for the map-lover in your life.
• Those who love Australian history will be intrigued by A Steady Hand: Governor Hunter and His First Fleet Sketchbook.
• If you think your relative would be able to read short pieces of fiction (as opposed to a novel), and especially if they love local fiction, A Few Days in the Country brings together Elizabeth Harrower’s stories into a single collection for the first time.
• Coralie Bickford-Smith is an award-winning designer and her first graphic novel, The Fox and the Star, is a beautiful object as well as a moving fable about loss.

One gift for the whole family

• Families who love to travel will likely enjoy The Art of Free Travel: A Frugal Family Adventure by Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman, which shares the inspiring story of their epic 6,000km year-long cycling journey along Australia’s east coast with their two children and dog.
• Speaking of travel… Laura Marling’s latest album, Short Movie, would make for cruisy listening on a family roadtrip.
• Kids and adults alike won’t be able to stop “aaaawing” over the seriously gorgeous photography in Water Babies: The Hidden Lives of Baby Wetland Birds. Naturalist William Burt is known for seeking out wild places and elusive birds, and this book is a stunner.
• The Fixie Pizza Cutter is a simple and stylish kitchen gadget for hipster parents and their hipster children.
• Fashion, mystery and nothing too gruesome, this box-set of all three seasons of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is perfect for family viewing.

One gift for a couple

• The complete series of Seinfeld offers a terrific excuse to stay in and watch TV at home together.
• These modern-day spoofs on the classic Ladybird guides will definitely inspire some laughs. We particularly recommend The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness.
• If the couple you have in mind religiously watch Q&A, then the Short Blacks box-set presents a series of fantastic non-fiction from talented Australian writers.
• The Edible City would make a good gift for a couple who’ve just moved in together; Indira Naidoo offers practical advice on beekeeping, worm farming, composting and more.
• A cookbook is always a gift that’s easy to share with your partner, whether you’re cooking together or for them. Mietta’s Italian Family Recipes is a beautifully presented book with simple, generous recipes.

The person who already owns everything

• Give them an experience, or at least inspiration for an experience with Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travelist: The 500 Best Places on the Planet… Ranked.
• With Ian Buxton’s 101 Gins: To Try Before You Die, your friend can work their way through the A-Z of this on trend drink.
• People who have everything often long to renovate. In Indoor Green: Living with Plants, Bree Claffey demonstrates how plants are able to transform interiors with stories and heart-stopping photography from Lauren Bamford.
• A Bamboo Book-rest will allow the person with everything to display one of their many beautiful coffee table books.
• Though, you can never have too many coffee table books, really… The Terrace House: Reimagined for the Australian Way of Life is a beautiful book and will appeal to architecture fans, especially Melbourne ones.

Your significant other’s parents (who you’re still getting to know)

• You’re sure to impress with John Gould’s Extinct and Endangered Birds which features exquisite full-colour lithographs of birds that are threatened or no longer exist.
• If the parents in question are crime fiction readers, Sulari Gentill’s Australian historical mystery series with the charming Rowland Sinclair is a safe bet. The latest addition to this series is Give the Devil His Due.
• The 2015 adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd from Danish director Thomas Vinterberg is another safe choice, and just so beautiful to watch.
• If you want to give them a history book with some heft to it, Mary Beard is an extremely well respected classical scholar and her new book, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome has been very much anticipated for some time.
• Utopia - The Scripts is for parents who are partial to political satire.

Your friend who’s had a really tough time this year

• Magda Szubanski’s courageous and compassionate memoir, Reckoning, is deeply moving and frequently very funny.
• Give your friend the gift of escaping into somewhere completely different for a while with these top picks for armchair travellers.
• Fiona Wright’s collection of personal essays, Small Acts of Disappearance, is about hunger, and it’s quite simply astonishing.
• For entirely distracting, immersive fiction, Vendela Vida’s The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty is a page-turner of a literary mystery set in Morocco.
• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: The Japanese Art by Marie Kondo is a little bit bonkers, but we’ve also seen proof that it works. Read one of our staff’s thoughts on the book here.