Okay. I am going to attempt a Books of the Year thread. Before I get started, my personal remit here was books to give as presents to literally anyone you know. You have time to get to a bookshop, find a bookseller, and load up on gifts before the big day.

These are my personal favourites: I've read almost all of them but a couple are on my own wish list. And I've failed to include everyone I love. I hope no one feels left out. Happy for people tag on their own recommendations if they think someone has been overlooked.

I deliberately didn't include the most enormously massive bestsellers of the year but just because you know about them already, not because I'm bitter and envious. It is SO GOOD for booksellers and crime to have Richard O and Lucy F and Cormoran selling stacks of books.

And I didn't include children's books or YA because people like the amazing @sarahwebbishere do that so brilliantly.

And they're not in order of merit but I love them all.

Book 1: Here is the Beehive by @SarahCrossan - THE most delicate and dangerous and brilliant novel about the end of an affair. Not a word wasted. I read it in one sitting and it's stayed with me all year.

Book 2: A Ghost in the Throat by @DoireannNiG - recognised by the Irish Book Awards as the best publication of the year, and by @Foyles as their best NF, this is glorious and original and groundbreaking.

Book 3: Handiwork by Sara Baume (from @TrampPress, like Doireann) - a small but HUGE book that delves into grief and creativity and the physical and emotional effort of making. Give it to your arts-y friends as solace after this year.

Book 4: The Paper Bracelet by @EnglishRachael - fiction is sometimes the best and only way we have of dealing with our histories. A gorgeous book. One for mothers and daughters.

Book 5: Ok, Let's Do Your Stupid Idea by @PatrickFreyne1 - I think Patrick is a genius and I'm so glad that essays are back in fashion because this is a joy.

Book 6: The Bird in the Bamboo Cage by @HazelGaynor - such a moving book about hope amid horror based on true events in World War II.

Book 7: Grown Ups by @MarianKeyes - okay, I'm breaking my own rule by having a solid gold bestseller on the list but look, it's Marian, and I don't know anyone who would be disappointed to find this under the tree!

Book 8: Okay, back on brand here with crime but with another very successful novel that anyone would love to receive. The TOTALLY gripping Fifty Fifty from @SSCav is a winner - fast-paced and entertaining.

Book 9: The Less Dead by @DameDeniseMina - if you've read her you know it will be brilliant and it does not disappoint. Compelling and angry in the best way about society's values but also just a really good crime novel!

Book 10: Our Little Cruelties by @lizzienugent - I adore Liz, I adore her writing and I adored this one, about a dysfunctional family absorbing damage like radiation until the inevitable happens. Who's dead and who did it? A joy.

Book 11: The Nothing Man by @cathryanhoward - an absolute treat. She was first out of the gate with this crime novel centring on a podcast about a horrifying killer, and I can't see how it will be bettered. Set in Cork and it feels worryingly real!

Book 12: The Hunted by @gobergmoser - my discovery of the year! Not for the faint-hearted but this Australian thriller about things going very badly wrong in the middle of nowhere is a future classic.

Book 13: The Invisible Girl by @lisajewelluk - my perpetual pick for book club joy because Lisa is the best storyteller I know and so good at characters. This one is impeccable, and deadly, and beautifully told. I adored it.

Book 14: My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell - a powerful, challenging novel that was one of the best debuts I read all year. Not exactly a crime novel but deeply disturbing and brilliant.

Book 15: Magpie Lane by @lucyatkins - superbly written crime novel set in Oxford. It has all of my favourite things: the setting, darkly ironic humour, characters you will love and loathe.

Book 16: The Split by @AuthorSJBolton - Sharon is one of the finest crime writers around, absolutely unerring in her control of her plots and her settings. This is an ice-cold corker.

Book 17: We Begin at the End by @WhittyAuthor - what a book! One of those novels that rolls you up in its world and leaves you breathless at the end. Epic in the best way.

Book 18: The Last Crossing by @BrianMcGilloway - an elegy for lost innocence, this edgy and beautiful thriller about looking for the body of a victim of IRA terrorism is profound and absolutely relevant to today.

Book 19: One By One by @RuthWareWriter - a complete change of pace but if you are missing a skiing holiday this year, or the workplace, this might make you glad to stay at home! Vivid, fast-paced, clever and a glorious array of characters to suspect!

Book 20: The Diabolical Bones by @rowancoleman in her Bella Ellis persona - the Brontes, but investigating murder! Completely true to the Brontes' actual natures and impeccably researched, these books are so much fun (and very good crime).

Book 21: Box 88 by @CharlesCumming - a new twist on a Cold War spy novel. Very good indeed, especially for le Carre's multitude of fans.

More to come; we're on the home stretch!

Book 22: A Double Life by @PhilbyWrites - as an author my favourite theme is how women engage with a world set up for men and this brilliant, twisty spy novel does it beautifully.

Book 23: Blood Red City by @Rod_WR - a gritty London thriller that is impeccably crafted; don't plan on blinking until you and journalist Lydia find out what really happened on that train.

Book 24: Remain Silent by @SusieSteiner1 - truly one of my favourite authors this latest Manon Bradshaw novel will break your heart as well as keeping you thoroughly entertained and amused. SO accomplished.

Book 25: The Lantern Men by @ellygriffiths - if you're not reading this series, why not?! But if you're new to it, you can start here, fall in love with Ruth Galloway and her complicated life, and then go back to the start!

Book 26: Grave's End by @william1shaw - this is another series that you should be reading, combining a brilliant heroine, DS Alex Cupidi, a superbly realised setting in Kent, and bang up to date plots. Exemplary.

Book 27: The House Guest by @mredwards - Mark is such a huge bestseller but if this one passed you by, it's a thoroughly entertaining, page-turning read about an Englishman getting into harm's way in New York.

Book 28: Body Language by @AnyaLipska - I got to read this one early; it's the first in a new series and you will love the heroine, a feisty goth mortuary technician who talks to the dead...

Book 29: All the Rage by @CaraHunterBooks - again, I hope everyone is already reading this brilliant Oxford-set series of police procedurals but if not, DI Adam Fawley is a thoroughly modern police officer but in the great tradition of Dalgliesh and Alleyn.

And if you STILL haven't found something for the crime reader in your life, please make sure they have the latest from @valmcdermid , Still Life, book 30 on the list. Brilliant as always.

Moving on to other kinds of fiction, book 31 is of course Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. It's heartbreaking and beautiful and on everyone's list for a reason. And if you loved it, what about...

Book 32: This is Shakespeare by @OldFortunatus , the best book about Shakespeare and his work that I've read. Accessible and erudite at the same time (neat trick!) I think this came out in 2019 but sure look, it's a joy.

Book 33: Small Pleasures by @ClareDChambers - I was told I'd love this novel about a 1950s journalist investigating a reported virgin birth and I did, completely, in every way. A remarkable achievement.

Book 34: V is For Victory by @LissaKEvans - probably my most joyful reading experience this year; I loved every line of it. Wartime London has never felt so real.

Book 35: Square Haunting by @francescawade a non-fiction book that is perfectly aligned to my interests: five women living their lives in Bloomsbury between the wars including Dorothy L. Sayers.

Book 36: Underland by @RobGMacfarlane one of those blissful books about everything, drawing in science and nature and literature and biography and what might happen in the future but written with the pace of a thriller and the soul of a poet. Also 2019 but I read it in 2020, so.

Book 37: Funny Weather by Olivia Laing - this one is on my Christmas list so I'm assuming it's great but I adore her and everything she writes and this is essays about the arts so go on, get it.

Book 38: The Fire of Joy by Clive James - also on my Christmas list. Clive writing about ANYTHING was a joy, but especially poetry. The last light from a very bright star.

Book 39: Motherwell by Deborah Orr - another irreplaceable voice that fell silent too soon. This literary memoir is typically sharp and clear-eyed.

Book 40: On Chapel Sands by @LauraCummingArt - I adore her writing and this is an impeccable crime book in memoir form. Personal, insightful and at times jaw-dropping.

Book 41: House of Glass by @HadleyFreeman - a very personal memoir that feels immensely timely, about her Jewish family in the twentieth century.

Book 42 (le pant, le phew!) no list of this year can leave out The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. My lockdown companion and a fittingly downbeat ending to a tyrant's enabler. Thank goodness we don't have those anymore.

And that's it! I read many other excellent books this year and I do try to tweet about them as I go so if you're not on the list but I said I loved you, I meant it!

For 2021, look out for new books by @willrdean @janeharperautho @sarah_hilary @mserinkelly @sarramanning @SpainJoanne @Phoebe_A_Morgan @carolinesgreen @HowardLinskey - I have read and loved them already.

And for myself in 2021, a resolution: to read more books in translation and by not-white authors (a huge absence from this year's list and I'll do better) and to keep using my local library as well as wonderful bookshops like @WELBooks and @gutterbookshop .

There. Done.