Booktails Podcast

The Gingerbread Christmas Village by Kiley Dunbar

Festive Frolics 4: Serena's Recommendation
Christmas is just around the corner and we are heartbroken that this is our final festive frolic of the podcast this year! But we've put the perfect gift under your tree in the shape of this delightful mature romance in a picturesque English village complete with quirky ensemble and disastrous dates! You'll want to try our yummy Gingerbread Margi-rita, the perfect accompaniment on these chilly winter nights!
Don't wait to unwrap this gift of an episode which includes discussions on real life gingerbread villages, representations of female aging and why you would never want to live in a remote English countryside village. We hope someone nice comes down your chimney and wish you a wonderful Christmas!
Make sure to join us next time for an episode of our best books of the year! 

The Twelve Topsy-Turvy, Very Messy Days of Christmas by James Paterson & Tad Safran

Festive Frolics 3
On the first day of Christmas Booktails gave to you a baby Alan in a pear tree!  It's the 12 days of Christmas as you've never seen them before! A grumpy widower and his children start receiving very specific and familiar gifts on the days leading up to Christmas... but who is sending them and what could they mean? 
Join Rachel and Serena as they rake through ladies dancing, unbelievable children, lords a leaping, maids a milking, unfit fathers, lack of Christmas activities, five gold rings, ghost mothers and whatever happened to that partridge chick in the pear tree?!

Jenny Colgan Interview - The Secret Christmas Library

Festive Frolics 2: The Secret Christmas Library and interview with bestselling author Jenny Colgan. 
It's a big one readers: it's our first author interview and we were over the moon to have the one and only Jenny Colgan on to discuss their new book with us!
Join us as we drink a festive old fashioned, chat about real life castle libraries, why books are always the best Christmas gifts and play a festive game of Red Flag Green Flag! Will the love interests in this book will be on the naughty list this year? Only one way to find out! 

The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox

Festive Frolics 1: Rachel's recommendation 
It's the most wonderful time of the year! That's right, the season is upon us, time to roast those chestnuts and sing some carols in the snow! And for this first romantic romp you might just want to look out the mistletoe!
Join Serena and Rachel as they follow identical twins who swap lives for the twelve days before Christmas in this Hallmark-esque holiday adventure, featuring just about every festive romcom trope going, from small town bakeries to Christmas eve blizzards! Just don't forget the sourdough starter! 
 

Butter by Asako Yuzuki

Prize Winners 3: British Book Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year
We hope you're hungry readers, because if not you're about to be! Based on a true case this book explores murder, feminism and most importantly, the joys of eating. It's never too late to change your life or to start eating good food!
After today's game Rachel and Serena will never be eating margarine again. We're even putting butter in our cocktails these days! So grab a knife and join us for Butter!

The Safe Keep by Yael van Der Wouden

Prize Winners 2: Women's Prize for Fiction Winner
Let's go girls! The Women's Prize was set up in response to the lack of female writers being shortlisted for the Booker Prize despite being more numerous than males, and they have been paving the way for representation and equality ever since! Yasss Queens!
This week we dive into the Safekeep and discuss literary wartime lesbians, hare obsessions, twist endings and what pears have to do with any of it! Get yourself a Pears and Hares cocktail and let's get into it!

James by Percival Everett

Prize Winners 1: Pulitzer Prize Winner
First up in this prize winning books of 2025 category is a retelling of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which will turn that tale on its head with an unforgettable narrator and a completely new spin on the hi-jinks of a couple of children in the American South!
Travel down the Mississippi with Serena and Rachel as they discuss past mojito trauma, the language of slavery, absurd travelling royalty, the power of writing  and the ultimate reveal. YOU'RE NOT MY FATHER! OH YES I AM!

Misery by Stephen King

Spooky Stephen King 4.
Misery is the undisputed perfect name for this 1987 Stephen King classic, but we are here to ease your misery today!
Listen along as we discuss the bodice ripping novel-within-a-novel, Annie's unhinged psyche and iconic quotes and an unexpected ending, all paired with a delicious Suffering Bastard cocktail courtesy of Hauntingly Good Spirits.
Is it a horror or a thriller or just plain cockadoody? You decide.

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Spooky Stephen King 3: Serena's Recommendation 
This is the book King himself rates as his scariest and it's clear why! A normal young family moves to rural Maine and is ripped apart by the forces at work in the ancient burial ground in their backyard. This week Serena and Rachel find hidden Stephen King universe Easter eggs, learn what kind of pet would haunt them, find unexpected spicy scenes and realise that Stephen King is absolutely not a cat person.
The perfectly paired cocktail this week courtesy of Hauntingly Good Spirits is the Corpse Reviver and this might have been our favourite of the collaboration. Just try it and thank us later.
In the iconic words of Jud Crandall "Sometimes dead is better" but since it's spooky season let's revive some corpses and dig up Pet Semetary! 

IT by Stephen King

Spooky Stephen King 2: Rachel's Recommendation 
Whoa it's a biggie this week! Over one thousand pages to be exact! We are diving headfirst into the sewers and into one of the spookiest Stephen King stories around!
Journey with us to Derry, Maine where danger lurks just below the surface. Rachel and Serena become honorary members of the Losers Club this week as they sip on Drunk Ghost cocktails courtesy of Hauntingly Good Spirits, and discuss fear, success, trauma and friendship and the ongoing mystery of Bob Gray aka. Pennywise aka an alien?!
We all float here at Booktails Podcast and we have a sneaking suspicion you'll float too...