Few things are as satisfying as getting your hands on a new book and being the first person to crack open the covers and then disappear into the world the author has created through the power of words. Here is a list of new books you may want to appear in your Christmas stocking this year…

It is London, 1890. At 221B Baker St a fine art dealer named Edmund Carstairs visits Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson to beg for their help. A strange man in a flat cap – a wanted criminal, who seems to have followed him all the way from America – is menacing him. In the days that follow, his home is robbed and his family is threatened. And then the first murder takes place. Almost unwillingly, Holmes and Watson find themselves being drawn ever deeper into an international conspiracy connected to the teeming criminal underworld of Boston, the gas-lit streets of London, opium dens and much, much more. The Conan Doyle estate has credited the author for ‘getting everything right’.

 

Everything starts somewhere… for elite military cop Jack Reacher, somewhere was Carter Crossing, Mississippi, back in 1997 with a lonely railroad track, a crime scene and a cover-up. A young woman is dead, and solid evidence points to a soldier at a nearby military base. But that soldier has powerful friends in Washington. Reacher is ordered undercover – to find out everything he can, to control the local police, and then to vanish. Reacher is a good soldier. But when he gets to Carter Crossing, he finds layers no one saw coming, and the investigation spins out of control. A novel of unrelenting suspense that could only come from the pen of the number-one New York Times bestselling author, The Affair is the start of the Reacher saga, a thriller that takes him, and his readers, right to the edge and beyond.

 

What if you could go back in time and change the course of history? What if the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? The author takes his protagonist, Jake Epping, a high school English teacher, on a fascinating journey back to the world of 1958 – from a world in 2011 of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of Elvis and JFK, of Plymouth Fury cars and Lindy Hopping, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life.King has probably absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his Baby Boomer American generation as thoroughly and imaginatively as any other writer.

 

What's it like to drive a car that’s actively trying to kill you? This and many other burning questions trouble Clarkson as he sets out to explore the world. He shows how the world of performance cars may be likened to a Battersea dog’s home. He reveals why St Moritz may be the most bonkers town in the whole world. He also reminds us that Switzerland is so afraid of snow that any flakes falling on the road are immediately arrested and he argues that washing a car is a waste of time. Funny, irreverent and sometimes downright rude, the book is packed with fascinating, but otherwise hopelessly useless stories and facts about everything under the sun (and just occasionally cars). It’s Jeremy Clarkson at his brilliant best.

 

The much-anticipated new book in the number one bestselling Monk series, a compelling and timely fable about living your best life in these complex times. Published in over 46 languages, with more than five million copies sold, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari has touched people around the world. When Julian Mantle falls ill, he sends his nephew on to retrieve Julian’s mementoes and secret letters. A moving and fascinating journey from the Bosphorus River in Turkey to a remote fishing community in India to the catacombs of Paris, The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari offers transformational lessons for happiness and true success and shows readers how to live an authentic and meaningful life.

 

Ellen Degeneres’ winning, upbeat candour has made her show one of the most popular, resilient and honoured daytime shows on TV. Seriously... I’m Kidding, Degeneres’ first book in eight years, brings us up to date about the life of a kind-hearted woman who bowed out of American Idol because she didn’t want to be mean. The book is lively, hilarious, and often sweetly poignant. She says about the book: “I've experienced a whole lot the last few years and I have a lot to share. So I hope that you'll take a moment to sit back, relax and enjoy the words I’ve put together for you in this book. I think you’ll find I’ve left no stone unturned, no door unopened, no window unbroken, no rug unvacuumed, no ivories untickled.”

 

Peter Popham’s major new biography of Aung San Suu Kyi draws upon previously untapped testimony and fresh revelations to tell the story of the world’s greatest exponent of non-violent political defiance since Mahatma Gandhi. In April 1988, Suu Kyi returned from Britain to Burma to nurse her sick mother but, within six months, found herself the unchallenged leader of the largest popular revolt in her country’s history. When the party won a landslide victory, she was already under house arrest and barred from taking office. Since then, she has set about transforming her country ethically as well as politically. In November 2010 Suu Kyi was freed. She was greeted by ecstatic crowds, but only time will tell what role this remarkable woman will have in the future of her country.