A Picador Christmas

It's our final advent calendar entry! And an in-house one at that, from Picador editor Kris Doyle. 

Happy Christmas and a merry New Year from the Picador team

Ben Myers is a novelist and journalist. His novel Richard - about music, madness and the Manic Street Preachers - was published by Picador in 2010. His latest novel is Pig Iron.

A message from Kirsten: 'This was fun. I don't read much at all when I'm writing, so I skipped the reading part (of the questions), but here are the answers I got to, below.'

Kirsten Reed has lived in Seattle, New Zealand, Germany and various other places in the US, before moving to Australia. Her first novel, The Ice Age, is about a young girl who meets an older man, and their journey across America. 

Laura Harrington's award winning plays, musicals, operas, and radio plays have been widely produced in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere. Her first novel, Alice Bliss, tells the story of 15 year old Alice, whose father goes to Iraq to fight a war she doesn't believe in. 

See Laura's favourite books here

Belinda McKeon's beautiful debut novel Solace won the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book of the Year for 2011 and has been lauded by authors and critics alike. It follows the relationship of Mark Casey and Joanne Lynch, and the family feud that threatens to end their affair.

Read on for Belinda's extensive list of what's worth reading - the books, the blogs and on Twitter.