I like to read my way into the Christmas spirit between Advent (30th November this year) and Christmas Eve by reading Christmas-themed genre novels or short stories. Here are the five that I’ve added to my Christmas shelf this year. Take a look and see if any of them would brighten up your Christmas.

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Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire’s husband slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn.
Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they’d reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.
It isn’t long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it’s just a forest animal—a moose, maybe, since the property manager warned her about them, said they’d stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody’d find it ’til spring.
But moose don’t walk upright like the shadowy figure does.
They don’t call Christine’s name with her dead husband’s voice.

I enjoyed ‘Bless Your Heart‘, Lindy Ryan’s horror novel about a family funeral parlour dealing with the rising dead in Texas in 1999, so I took a look at her back catalogue and found this Christmas-themed novella, dealing with grief She published ‘Cold Snap’ last year but it was only released as an audiobook in April 2025. A Christmas horror about grief and loss may not feel seasonal but I think it calls out the dark side of the holiday.

When a down-on-his-luck shopping mall Santa is abruptly fired just days before Christmas, he decides to unleash holiday hell on the staff who wronged him. As the body count rises, shoppers at Merryvale will soon discover that this Santa’s got a bag full of wicked surprises – and he’s ready to deliver!
The Very Naughty List is a wickedly funny, twisted, blood-soaked yuletide horror.

What would Christmas be without a little blood splatter? I bought this book to make me smile (in a dark, twisted and possibly unhealthy way) on the run up to Christmas. I’ll be doing a Buddy Read from 1st December onwards.

Two of Meg’s cousins, members of Mother’s vast Hollingsworth clan, are getting married, and both have chosen Caerphilly for their Christmas destination wedding . . on the same day, in the same venues. But while they’re cousins they’re also lifelong enemies. Mother’s efforts to keep the peace are wearing her down, and the battling brides (and their mothers) are making the holiday season miserable for everyone. So Meg steps in to keep the peace. And it was going badly even before she stumbles over the murdered body of the wedding photographer.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of suspects. The photographer has been hitting on many of the guests, bridesmaids . . . possibly even one or both of the brides. He’s also been slinking about and taking candid shots that are unflattering, embarrassing . . . occasionally even incriminating.
Can Meg help the local police nab the killer in time for the weddings to go on as planned? Unless, of course, the killer was one of the brides or grooms, in which case she needs to identify the killer in time to reveal their identity when she hears those fateful words, “If any of you can show just cause why they may not lawfully be married, speak now; or else forever hold your peace.”

Listening to a Meg Langslow Christas mystery has become a seasonal tradition in my house. Some are bettter than others but they always keep me entertained. I like the idea of adding wedding drama to the seaonal mayhem.

A hit woman’s work doesn’t stop for the holidays. As the advent calendar winds down, Paige slips into a palatial house, ignoring a blizzard of texts from her ex-husband. No surprise—Julian always gets maudlin this time of year. The real shock comes when the target is not alone. His young daughter is there too.
Risking the wrath of her organization, Paige retreats. There are some lines that, for personal reasons, she just won’t cross. But when she returns on Christmas Eve to finish the job, the girl is still there…along with someone even more startling. As the ghosts of her past gather—to haunt or to help, it’s unclear—Paige must confront old traumas and outwit her superiors to make it to Christmas morning alive.

I’ve got a couple of Lisa Unger thrillers on my shelves that I’ve been meaning to get around to. When I saw that she’d published a short story about a Christmas assassination attempt and an assassin with a troublesome conscience, I thought it would be a great opportunity to sample her work and encourage me to pull her books to the top of my TBR pile.

She’s making a list, she’s checking it twice…
Jessica Williams loves Christmas: the food, the drink, the fairy lights, the opportunities to take out all the miserable people who ruin the festive season for others. And what better cover for her murderous intentions than taking a job as Mrs Claus at the Ellsbury Christmas Market grotto? After all, who would possibly think Mrs Claus could stab a man through the eye with a Phillips-head screwdriver?
Fearne Dixon hates Christmas. As the long-suffering wife of the Ellsbury Christmas Market’s manager, she’s sick to the back teeth of it and it’s still only November. But then the bodies start piling up, an old rival arrives back in her life, and Fearne reaches breaking point.
When the lives of the two women collide, who will end up on the Naughty List?

‘How To Slay At Christmas‘ is Sarah Bonner’s third ‘How To Slay‘ book. They’re all standalone humorous wish-fulfilment novels about women who kill. I thought I’d read this one to see if the humour works for me. If it does, I’ll go back and read ‘How To Slay At Work‘ and ‘How To Slay On Holiday‘.