I like everything Jenny Colgan writes but this wintery novella is a jewel. I saw it offered as an Amazon First Reads and couldn't click on it fast enough. It was an excellent choice.

The hunt is on for a very special book - a unique edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. I don't know whether this book is really rumoured to exist but that's not the point. For terminally ill Violet it represents her childhood and memories of her father and she would like to see it one more time.

Mirren loves her great-aunt and would do anything for her even though this seems very much a wild goose chase. Enter Theo, who is the nephew of an antique bookshop seller in London. His uncle wants that book at any cost and tells Theo to shadow Mirren in her quest.

The two of them go up and down the country, from London to Hay-on-Wye to Edinburgh, getting closer each day - but can Theo be trusted?

This book is a romance but more than that it's a declaration of love to antique bookshops that evoke childhood memories and are fabulous treasure troves. It's just what a bookworm needs this Christmas, and with a gorgeous cover to boot.

"It smelled not unlike Great-aunt Violet; an aura of books, of reading, of curling up and being cosy, of deciding, in a queue or on a train or a bus, just to step out of your normal world for a little while, go visit Narnia, or medieval England, or Persia, or the cockpit of a fighter plane; a hot air balloon; crime-ridden streets of Victorian."