Book of the month

Welcome to Book of the Month. Every month, we pick one book we love and share it with you. Get ready for amazing tales, can’t miss books and conversation – online and in real life.

Read along with us, and crime fiction fans across the UK, and  join the conversation by using the hashtag #HIFYoureBooked.

Our pick for November 2024 Book Of The Month is…

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson

We’re thrilled to introduce our November Book of the Month: The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson.

The bestselling author of Nine Lives and Rules for Perfect Murders spins a thrilling closed circle mystery, as a bright American student accepts an invitation to spend Christmas at her classmate’s family’s old manor where not everything is what it seems.

CLICK HERE TO DISCOVER THIS MONTH’S BOOK OF THE MONTH

Previous Picks:

You’re Booked

Welcome to You’re Booked – bringing the very best of Harrogate International Festivals to your digital doorstep. Here you’ll find a host of author interviews, book reviews, and a peak inside their houses as authors share with us their bookshelves, their must-reads and the book they always go back to.

Get involved and contact us with your own book reviews, articles and blog posts. You have the right to remain silent, but that would be exceedingly dull. Put your feet up and make yourself at home!

Eva Dolan Author’s Bookshelf

Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like? This is the main one and it's in my office. My desk is set up facing away from it so I don't get distracted. There

Adrian McKinty Author’s Bookshelf

The first thing to be said about my bookcase is what a fiasco it is. I built this thing myself from an Ikea flat pack and it looks horrible. The back fell off within weeks

Mark Billingham Author’s Bookshelf

Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like? Well, it’s one of several bookshelves in my office at home. I’ve gone for the traditional wooden planks and battens arrangement and, not wanting to

Elly Griffiths Interview

If you were stranded on a desert island and could take one crime novel, one DVD boxset and one character from a crime novel, who/what would you take? This is the sort of question I

Author’s Bookshelf: Antonia Hodgson

Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like? I have a tiny flat, but there’s always plenty of room for bookcases. Where there’s a wall there’s a way. The bookcase in the picture

Martina Cole Interview

Find out more about Martina Cole in our interview.

Author’s Bookshelf by Claire Kendal

Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like? I’m going to start with a confession. I have four bookcases, all in my study, but they are so messy I can’t bear to let

Authors Bookshelf by Nick Quantrill

Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like? I’m maybe a bit strange in that I give most of my books away to charity shops once I’ve read them. It’s mainly a practical

Authors Bookshelf by Jason Dean

Where’s your bookcase located? I’ve got two fairly large wooden bookcases propping up the living room wall, and as you’ll see from the photo they’re already dangerously close to overflowing. And while it would be

Authors Bookshelf by Howard Linskey

Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like? I have an office at the top of the house, which contains a tall, dark brown bookcase near my desk (‘Shelfie’ photo below). It’s there

Authors Bookshelf by Elly Griffiths

 My bookcase is in the sitting room of my house in Saltdean, just outside Brighton. There are bookcases in every room but I’m especially fond of this one because it was built for us by

Authors Bookshelf by Sabine Durrant

Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like? This bookcase takes up one wall and both alcoves of our front room. There are over-spills in other parts of the house, but this is

Author’s Bookself by Michael Robotham

What author have you discovered and loved recently? Emily St John Mandel is my recent discovery. I read one of her earlier novels The Singer’s Gun, a thriller about a man who cannot escape his

Author’s Bookshelf by Malcolm Pryce

My bookshelf is in Bang Kwang Central prison Bangkok. I don’t actually keep books, although I know this will probably surprise many people. In my early thirties I set off on a trip round the

Authors Bookshelf by Cath Staincliffe

Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like? There are four of them, rescued from skips or bodged together from spare wood and fitted in the alcoves in my work room. The one

Authors Bookshelf by Frances McNeil

I’m jealous of people with antique bookcases and extensive shelving. As well as four shelves in my study, inconveniently placed by the sloping roof, my bookcases are four large IKEA Billy jobs, plus four small

Authors Bookshelf by Martin Edwards

Books overflow throughout the house. The challenge of finding space for them all intensified as I tracked down old novels while researching The Golden Age of Murder. A loft conversion was my first solution, and

Authors Bookshelf (or Shelves!) by Christopher Fowler

Where’s your bookcase located and what does it look like?
 I live in a mainly glass apartment so my bookshelves are located away from the light. They’re built around steel skeletons that mean you don’t

Authors Bookcase by Kate Rhodes

This bookshelf is one of many in my small, crowded house in Cambridge. I seem unable to pass an Oxfam shop without sneaking inside to hunt for literary bargains. Luckily my husband Dave is a

You’re Booked speaks to Simon Kernick

Harrogate has its fair share of human misery, crime and heck, occasional violence: it can get ugly watching beige-clad pensioners battle for a window seat at Bettys. So asking Simon Kernick what his mum thinks