Gift Guide: Top Titles from Birch Tree Books for 2023

It’s that time of year again, when the weather gets chilly, lights go up in trees and windows, and holiday shopping season begins. At Birch Tree Bookstore, you can avoid the stress that sometimes creeps up at this time of year by filling your Birch Tree shopping basket with meaningful gifts like books, plants, candles, puzzles, and fair trade toys for the little ones.

Everything at Birch Tree is carefully curated by the owner, Leah Fallon, and staff. The ethos at Birch Tree has always been about connecting our community with quality merchandise and book titles that will be a perfect fit for each reader. This blog will help guide you through some of our favorite seasonal picks and timeless titles as you find the perfect gifts for your friends and family.

Down the hall past the kids room in Birch Tree, you will find the owner Ami Mason planting and propagating in the clinic of Foliage Plants, a business within a business. All the plants in Birch Tree books are from Foliage. And what would be a better gift to pair with a book than a neon pothos trailing from a disco ball planter, or a calathea and a cute watering spike, or a showstopping pink princess?

After browsing this blog, making your list, and checking it twice, come see us at 11 W Market Street, Leesburg, Virginia where we just celebrated our first year anniversary in this amazing location! (Across the street from McEnearney Associates Leesburg location!)

Note from McEnearney Associates: If you would like to support Birch Tree Bookstore as a local independent bookseller but are unable to visit in person, consider ordering online from Bookshop.org. Your order is shipped to you and if you choose Birch Tree Bookstore they will receive the full profit from your purchase.

Board Books

For little ones who are just learning to love books, in Where’s the Snowman? they will find the simple illustrations and soft felt flaps to be fun and engaging.

For a book with a nostalgic, classic feel, pick up Merry Christmas, Little Reindeer.

Children’s Picture Books

Local author Kate Anastasio has written and illustrated one of the sweetest Christmas books of the season, The Bright Red Envelope – a story about brotherly love and being seen and understood.

Mo Willems has done it again with Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Sleigh! A fun holiday take on the modern classic, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!.

Elementary Books

For the nonfiction reader, Science Comics offers graphic novel introductions to a variety of topics from dinosaurs, coral reefs, the solar system, volcanoes, and bats to frogs and so much more!

For the fiction readers, the Dory Fantasmagory series just released the 6th book of Dory’s adventures as she entertains her little siblings and plays make-believe. With a distinctly nostalgic tone, these books are timeless, and you can find all six in the series at Birch Tree.

Middle Grade Books

Hardcover gift: If you grew up as a middle-schooler reading and loving the Eragon series, you can now share the magic with your middle grader in this special new illustrated edition of Eragon. If your middle grader has read series like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson and is looking for a new fantasy world to dive into, this edition of Eragon would be the perfect book to read aloud together.

Stocking stuffer paperback: Kelly Barnhill first became known for The Girl Who Drank the Moon, a universal favorite. She’s back with another beautiful story somewhere between fantasy and fairytale, full of heart and good life lessons with The Ogress and the Orphans.

Young Adult (YA) Books

Hardcover: If you are looking for a breathtaking fantasy with faerie court intrigue, romance, and betrayals, Holly Black is a trusted name in fantasy and this edition of The Cruel Prince has the absolute works: velvet gold foil, beautiful end papers, additional content, and sprayed edges.

Paperback Stocking Stuffer: Ali Hazelwood has become wildly popular for her adult romance-in-STEM books, and now you can get her much-anticipated YA debut Check & Mate about the intricacies of competitive chess and the people you might be competing against.

Nonfiction Books

Hardcover: Along with explaining some of the biggest topics in astrophysics such as the big bang, black holes, and time travel, in To Infinity and Beyond: A Journey of Cosmic Discovery, Neil de Grasse Tyson and Lindsey Nyx Walker also examine what Hollywood gets right – and wrong – about the cosmos.

Paperback Stocking Stuffer: Though this one is a heavy read, Killers of the Flower Moon is an important story to know as David Gann brings to light the historical true crime story of murders in the Osage Nation, the beginnings of the FBI, and how prejudice can affect the pursuit of justice.

Memoirs

Hardcover: Tis the season of memoirs and biographies! Britney Spears, Dave Grohl’s paperback, Tupac Shakur, Leslie Jones, Jada Pinkett Smith, Matthew Perry, Kerry Washington, John Stamos, Henry Winkler–phew!! But to help you narrow it down, Hilary Burton Morgan’s beautiful Grimoire Girl (signed copies still available!) and Barbara Streisand’s My Name is Barbara would be good places to start looking for crowd pleasers.

Paperback Stocking Stuffer: For a small paperback with a lot of heart, Alexi Pappas’s Bravey is a moving, hopeful memoir told in essays that everyone can find inspiration in.

run like a bravey

sleep like a baby

dream like a crazy

replace can’t with maybe

Fiction Books

Hardcover: There have been so many great literary fiction books out this year, but a Birch Tree and Foliage favorite is Shark Heart: A Love Story. This is a unique and artful debut from Emily Habeck with a touch of magical realism about a couple who are going through the process of one of them slowly turning into a great white shark. It truly is “a love story,” about love in many different facets. Heart-wrenching and magical, pick up Shark Heart for all your friends and grab one for yourself while you’re at it.

Paperback Stocking Stuffer: Now out in paperback, A Little Hope is a quiet, human story about small town life and how people come together for each other.

Mystery & Suspense Books

Hardcover: Stephen King listened to the people when they said they wanted more Holly Gibney, and here she is in her own novel, Holly, solving a missing person’s case and going up against formidable suspects that might be more than meets the eye.

Paperback Stocking Stuffer: There are a lot of books about mistaken identity out there, but how often does a book come along where a single mom and struggling novelist is mistaken for a contract killer? Mystery, real-life takes on motherhood, and hilarity ensues in the Finlay Donavan series. Start with Finlay Donavan Is Killing It, and get through the next two titles, Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead and Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun before Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice comes out in March 2024!

HONORABLE MENTION: For an Agatha Christie-esque holiday read, follow Roz Parker through Murder on the Christmas Express as she tries to solve mysterious murders on a snowbound train.

Science Fiction Books

Hardcover: Sometimes classified as hopepunk or solarpunk, Becky Chambers’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built shows a future where humans have lost their AI and robots and built a new kind of society. We follow a tea monk as they search for purpose in a peaceful future and meet a wild-built robot along the way. The dedication is “for anybody who could use a break.”

Paperback Stocking Stuffer: If you are shopping for someone who likes sci-fi adventures, spaceships, hacking, bionics, and character-driven stories with a lot of dry humor and snark, pick up the first in the Murderbot Diaries, All Systems Red and start them on a journey with their new favorite series. The seventh in the series, System Collapse has just been released!

Fantasy Books

Hardcover: Even people who don’t read a lot of fantasy will love Nettle and Bone. Funny, beautiful, heartwarming, and meaningful, this book is for anyone who would like a fairytale with powerful fairy godmothers, a 30-year-old protagonist who is finding herself, and a ragtag group of people (plus a very special chicken and dog) on an important quest.

Paperback Stocking Stuffer: For a cozy stocking stuffer to curl with up, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries just came out in paperback and is exactly what it sounds like: a grumpy professor doing field work studying faeries in the snowy north finds friendship and maybe even love along the way. Or, for a staple in the genre of cozy fantasy, the sequel to Legends and Lattes, Bookshops and Bonedust, has just come out. For anyone that loves Dungeons and Dragons but also comfy, low-stakes stories with charming characters and bookshops, of course.

Romance Books

What better setting for a meet-cute or a magical, romantic moment than the holidays? The biggest question is how to choose which title? In a Holidaze; A December to Remember; A Holly Jolly Ever After; Bright Lights, Big Christmas; A Merry Little Meet Cute… I know, I know, this blog is supposed to be helping to narrow down choices, but look at that list! There’s just no narrowing down. Good thing romance books are special because many of them release straight to paperback instead of hardcover first, so you can just stock up on a bunch of titles to make a book bundle or pass around to friends.

Coffee Table Books, Cookbooks, & Statement Pieces

Talk about a statement piece, look at Smithsonian America: The Atlas. This utterly unique piece done by the experts at the Smithsonian tracks American history from thousands of years ago to modern day in maps. This is a true coffee table book — visual and flip-through-able, and filled with information.

There’s no competing with soup this time of year, and the book Every Season is Soup Season is easy to follow, colorful and dynamic, and has a wide range of recipes to satisfy anyone’s cravings.

Classics

When in doubt, get a classic. Even if the giftee has read it already, these editions are so stunning, they’re just fun to collect and add to anyone’s at-home library.

Poetry and Short Stories

Hardcover: For the person in your life who wants to start the new year right with good habits and meditative time for themselves, pick up A Poem to Read Aloud Every Day.

Paperback Stocking Stuffer: This sweet, quiet anthology of poems The Wonder of Small Things: Poem of Peace and Renewal is accessible to any reader and will bring a touch of calm and hope to anyone’s life.

Holiday Specific & Gifts

If you’re in NOVA, it’s worth it to stop by Birch Tree just to enjoy the beautiful decorations and browse the holiday offerings—within the wide variety of puzzles and specialty books, there’s the perfect gift for someone who you don’t know very well or to take to a fun event like a gift exchange.

Plants

After you pick up books for all the readers in your life, you probably still have a few friends or family members on your list who might not want a book but also deserve a local Leesburg treasure. Plus, you’re already here, you don’t want to go to ANOTHER shop while you’re laden down with books.

That’s when you step down the hall to Foliage Plants and pick up a poinsettia, a cute pot, or both!

Books and plants are what we do best here at Birch Tree and Foliage, so we look forward to seeing you and helping you find the perfect book, plant, or gift for all the special people in your life this holiday season!

Contributor Laura Seabourne is a bookseller at Birch Tree Books and a lifelong book-lover. She particularly loves science fiction and fantasy, but really, how can a reader choose just two favorite genres? In her spare time, she enjoys reading books, thinking about books, teaching books, writing about books… and knitting, of course. CR: Legends and Lattes and Bird by Bird.