Books on Our Radar This December
Welcome to Books on Our Radar, your go-to guide for unearthing the most exciting reads this December. Whether you’re a seasoned bookworm with a fellow book-buying addiction or someone looking to step outside your literary comfort zone, this month’s list is packed with fresh releases as well as some up and coming hidden gems to inspire your next read.
From groundbreaking memoirs to laugh-out-loud satires, poignant explorations of mental health to tales of sisterhood and self-discovery, December’s selection is brimming with stories that are bold, beautiful, and deeply resonant. These books promise to challenge perspectives, spark conversations, and offer a dose of escapism for the winter nights ahead.
So grab a blanket, a cup of tea (or a whiskey if you’re channeling the Slags sisters), and dive into this month’s standout titles. Who knows? You might just discover a new favourite author or a genre you never knew you’d love.
Calling My Deadname Home
Out Now
‘Early in my gender transition, I tried killing off my female past. But my deadname, Talia, fought back. She kept barging into consciousness, insisting on being seen and integrated into the man I was becoming.
This is our story, and it goes beyond gender to explore what it means to come home.’
Five years into his gender transition, Avi is comfortable in his skin. He is a gay, trans bear—a bearded, rugged, warm-hearted man who loves men. But something is missing.
On an LGBTQ+ retreat, Avi has an epiphany, he realises that to grow into the man he knows himself to be, he has to make friends with his female past, invite her back in.
This is the story of Avi’s extraordinary journey, from his early days in a working-class Israeli family, barely finished high school, on to pro-Palestinian activism and then, evading military service by feigning madness. Ultimately, he escaped to the US where he pursued further education attaining a PhD from Yale.
This is a memoir like no other, utterly original and completely engrossing.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Out Now
Margo Millet’s got money troubles. As the child of a Hooter’s waitress and an ex-Pro-Wrestler, she’s always known she’d have to make it on her own. When she finds herself pregnant by her college professor – who is very keen not to be involved – she realizes she will need cash fast.
At twenty, alone with a baby, what Margo lacks in options she makes up for in ingenuity, and soon she has a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, producing content and writing storylines unlike anything else out there. Help arrives in the form of her live-action role-playing flatmate Suzie, and her father, Jinx – a recovering addict and veteran of the wrestling world, who has experience of making an audience fall in love.
Before she knows it, Margo is an online phenomenon. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?
The Story of a Heart
Out Now
The first of our organs to form, the last to die, the heart is both a simple pump and the symbol of all that makes us human: as long as it continues to beat, we hope.
One summer day, nine-year-old Keira suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident. Though her brain and the rest of her body began to shut down, her heart continued to beat. In an act of extraordinary generosity, Keira’s parents and siblings agreed that she would have wanted to be an organ donor. Meanwhile nine-year-old Max had been hospitalised for nearly a year with a virus that was causing his young heart to fail. When Max’s parents received the call they had been hoping for, they knew it came at a terrible cost to another family.
This is the unforgettable story of how one family’s grief transformed into a lifesaving gift. With tremendous compassion and clarity, Dr Rachel Clarke relates the urgent journey of Keira’s heart and explores the history of the remarkable medical innovations that made it possible, stretching back over a century and involving the knowledge and dedication not just of surgeons but of countless physicians, immunologists, nurses and scientists.
The Story of a Heart is a testament to compassion for the dying, the many ways we honour our loved ones, and the tenacity of love.
Perfume & Pain
Out Now
A controversial LA author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction.
Having recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer’s group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions—like Ivy, a grad student researching 1950s lesbian pulp who smells like metallic orchids, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli.
Penelope, a painter living off Urban Outfitters settlement money, immediately ingratiates herself in Astrid’s life, bonding with her best friends and family, just as Astrid and Ivy begin to date in person. Astrid feels judged and threatened by Penelope, a responsible older vegan, but also finds her irresistibly sexy.
When Astrid receives an unexpected call from her agent with the news that actress and influencer Kat Gold wants to adapt her previous novel for TV, Astrid finally has a chance to resurrect her waning career. But the pressure causes Astrid’s worst vice to rear its head—the Patricia Highsmith, a blend of Adderall, alcohol, and cigarettes—and results in blackouts and a disturbing series of events.
Unapologetically feminine yet ribald, steamy yet hilarious, Anna Dorn has crafted an exquisite homage to the lesbian pulp of yore, reclaiming it for our internet and celebrity-obsessed world. With notes of Southern California citrus and sultry smokiness, Perfume and Pain is a satirical romp through Hollywood and lesbian melodrama.
Out of Her Mind
Out Now
For centuries so called 'difficult women' have been labelled as 'hysterical' and 'out of their minds'. Today they wait longer for health diagnoses, often being told it's 'all in their heads'. Although healthcare systems are overburdened, why are women the first to feel the effects of this? Why is it so hard for women to find the kind of help they need? Why is no one listening to them? And why have so many lost faith in mental healthcare?
Drawing on the lived experiences of women, alongside expert commentators, recent history, current events, and her own personal and professional experience, Dr Linda Gask explores women's mental healthcare today. In doing so she confronts her role as a psychiatrist, recalling experiences treating women and as a woman who has received mental healthcare, illustrating the dire need for more change, faster.
Women can't all be out of their minds.
Grounded in the real-life experiences of women with whom readers will be able to identify
Provides an informed, referenced, and balanced overview of what is happening to women's mental health and what must change
Written in an accessible, engaging, and readable style that includes reference to recent history, and literature as well as dealing with the complexity of mental health and illness
Each chapter concludes with a section on 'What must change?' which not only identifies the key problems facing women but suggests ways that changes can be achieved
Slags
Released: 08/05/2025
Sisters Sarah and Juliette are going on a whisky-fuelled campervan road-trip across Scotland to celebrate Juliette’s birthday – and they’re going to dig up some demons from the past.
Sarah is 15.
SEXUAL CONQUESTS: 2.5 (one only went halfway in)
GREAT LOVES: 1 (her English teacher Mr Keaveney, who definitely feels the same way)
HATES: Her annoying younger sister Juliette
LIKES: Her best friend Nessa, boy band 4Princes
Sarah is 41.
SEXUAL CONQUESTS: Rather not say, but that last one was compellingly awful
GREAT LOVES: Nope
HATES: Millennials like Juliette thinking they’ve got it bad
LIKES: Fellow Gen X-ers
From the acclaimed author of ANIMALS and ADULTS, SLAGS is a no-holds-barred, frank and heartfelt exploration of sisterhood, friendship and teenage obsession.
