Last Minute Gifts For Every Book Lover on Your List (promotion)

There’s no denying that your most tech-phobic friends will devour this page-turning memoir that Stephanie Danler calls “generation-defining.” Named one of the ten best books of 2020 by The New York Times, Anna Wiener’s revealing account of the inner workings of the tech world is enthralling, to say the least. Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is the memoir equivalent of “Joan Didion at a startup” (Rebecca Solnit).

There’s no shortage of books on Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most perennially fascinating figures in history, but Francesca Fiorani’s The Shadow Drawing manages to draw new territory. Taking a fresh look at da Vinci’s notebooks, Fiorani shows how his life as an artist and his life as a scientist were not disparate periods but intertwined. Perfect for the art and history lovers in your life, The Shadow Drawing is an intriguing biography that Walter Isaacson calls “insightful and beautiful.”

If anyone maintained their cool during 2020, it was probably your cat. The perfect gift for anyone looking to channel at least half of their cat’s chill, John Gray’s Feline Philosophy is an essential guide to living with the unshakable grace and fortitude that we love cats for.

Heralded as an “urgent and compelling account of great bravery and passion” by fellow library lover Susan Orlean, the award-winning journalist Delphine Minoui’s The Book Collectors tells the unforgettable story of a band of young rebels in a besieged Syrian town who built a library from the rubble of war. An NPR Best Book of the Year, this “testimony to the power of reading” (Nancy Pearl) is the perfect gift for the friend whose most missed place to visit during lockdown was the library.

Looking to light up your Zoom book club this winter? Look no further than Angie Kim’s Miracle Creek, a novel that Erin Morgenstern has called “that wonderful, brilliant sort of book that you want to shove at other people as soon as you’ve finished.” Edgar Award winner, national bestseller, and Goodreads Choice Award finalist, this “compulsively readable” (The Washington Post) debut draws on the author’s own experiences as a Korean American, a former trial lawyer, and the mother of a “miracle submarine” patient, to create a “gripping page-turner” (Bustle). Steeped in suspense, packed in heart, and stuffed with vivid characters, Miracle Creek has “everything you’re looking for in a book” (Reading Women podcast).