A new book of stories, the first in nine years from Montana’s finest, Thomas McGuane, one of my very favourite authors.

Great title too, obviously.

Less good the stain on the scanner that makes it look like someone has snotted on the jacket.

I once saw John Cooper Clarke at the Lyceum with Pauline Murray and The Invisible Girls, supported by Duran Duran.

Like the best poetry, this stuff is timeless.

By the author of Beautiful Ruins (voted the shop’s favourite book of 2013) Citzen Vince is an earlier Edgar Award winning ‘crime novel’ and the second book that I read this year set against a backdrop of the Carter/Reagan election. I was talking to an editor from a literary imprint recently, who said, Jess Walter? I always thought he was a bit ‘popular’, which may explain why this book is, as Nick Hornby says, inexplicably out of print in the UK. Whatever, it’s brilliant.

Gorgeous board book made from early Warhol drawings, perfect for the hip nipper in your life.

This year why not tell him to knit his own stocking.

Today’s Book of the Day is not a book but a kit containing five stainless steel etched pieces which fold and lock together to make a model of the Crystal Palace. The kit includes step-by-step instructions, a short building history and an attractive envelope for posting as a gift.

Excellent advice on most forms of writing, with a bonus cover by the inimitable Steven Appleby

After last night’s debacle – a catalogue of errors and a hatful of chances missed – half an hour with this little beauty is just what the doctor ordered.

NB page 102 ‘it’s possible to pinpoint the exact moment a manager becomes beleaguered. The perimeter of the technical area suddenly becomes a precipice as he stands all alone…’

First book, and equally funny, by the author of Francis Plug How to be a Public Author.

A sort of, How to be a Public Drinker.

Dedicated to his wife, for the many late night police station visits, the flowers at the hospital, the bail money and the legal representation.

Signed copies.

Did Julian Barnes fly up to the gallery of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on tiny wires before his head fell off? Find out this evening when Paul reads from one of the funniest, cleverest novels for many a year.

Order or reserve a signed copy and put it towards your pension fund. But read it first.

One of my favourite books of the year; for fans of the American short story that invoke the C-word (Cheever) and even more so, Tobias Wolff (who gets a namecheck in the acknowledgements). These elegantly well-told stories, mainly concerning the monied denizens of Manhattan, fraying at the edges. People who tip waiters $20 because they lied to them. People bewildered by the limits, or otherwise, of their own morality. People who get told by old ladies whom they have robbed, You are not who you think you are.

Excellent stuff.

Revisiting the characters and setting Of Gilead and Home.

Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a church in the small town of Gilead in Iowa – the only available shelter from the rain – and ignites a conversation and a romance that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister and widower, John Ames.

£12.99 Virago Hardback