A Collection of Thanksgiving Novels to Enjoy Over the Holidays

Welcome aboard, train wreck.

I tend to be a seasonal reader. In summer, I read books that take place in warm places or by the ocean. I read Halloween and horror in October. Christmas, winter, and cold settings in Winter. You get the idea. I even read romance in February. So, why wouldn’t I read Thanksgiving set books in November.

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There is just something so comfy cozy about a book that has family and food in it. Even if it’s not a cozy mystery. Even if it’s just me being grateful that I’m not the main character in that story.

Thanksgiving Night by Richard Bausch

Overview

Will Butterfield can’t believe it. His 75-year-old mother, Holly, is drunk and threatening to jump off the roof. Again.

Holly and Fiona, another elderly relative, won’t stop tormenting Will and his wife Elizabeth with their bizarre (though often amusing) antics. Between Will’s worries about his bookstore, The Heart’s Ease, and Elizabeth’s troublesome high school students, dealing with the crazies has become just too much.

But then something unexpected happens — Henry Ward, a neighborhood handyman, meets the two old women, and he, his daughter Alison, and grandchildren are drawn into the Butterfields’ lives in surprising ways. Both a comedy and a love story — a first for Bausch — Thanksgiving Night is about the real meaning of family, and one particular clan that has many reasons to be thankful.

The Ghost at the Table by Suzanne Berne

Overview

Strikingly different since childhood and leading dissimilar lives now, sisters Frances and Cynthia have managed to remain “devoted”–as long as they stay on opposite coasts. When Frances arranges to host Thanksgiving at her idyllic New England farmhouse, she envisions a happy family reunion, one that will include the sisters’ long-estranged father. Cynthia, however, doesn’t understand how Frances can ignore the past their father’s presence revives, a past that includes suspicions about their mother’s death twenty-five years earlier.

As Thanksgiving Day arrives, with a houseful of guests looking forward to dinner, the sisters continue to struggle with different versions of a shared past, their conflict escalating to a dramatic, suspenseful climax.

Model Behavior by Jay McInerney

Overview

In his funniest, most successful novel since his classic Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney returns to the restless urban landscape of Manhattan where a city lover’s faith is being severely tested.

Connor McKnight’s chic ennui is fast flipping into high anxiety as he struggles to keep his life intact. He has temporarily shelved his Akira Kurosawa biography in pursuit of an interview with elusive young actor Chip Ralston which will secure Connor’s job at CiaoBella! magazine. Connor’s model girlfriend has left him, and his sister is wasting her compassion for world suffering in anorexic seclusion. Connor can’t even turn to his best friend, a brooding fiction writer who has balanced his sanity on the publication of a new story collection and the fate of his Irish terrier. So, on his own, Connor gropes his hilarious way not so much toward salvation as self-preservation, precariously steering clear of debauchery in its various forms–a martini glass, a gorgeous topless dancer, and even an e-mail stalker with “the acting bug.”

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler

Overview

In this, her fourteenth novel–and one of her most endearing–Anne Tyler tells the story of a lovable loser who’s trying to get his life in order.

Barnaby Gaitlin has been in trouble ever since adolescence. He had this habit of breaking into other people’s houses. It wasn’t the big loot he was after, like his teenage cohorts. It was just that he liked to read other people’s mail, pore over their family photo albums, and appropriate a few of their precious mementos.

But for eleven years now, he’s been working steadily for Rent-a-Back, renting his back to old folks and shut-ins who can’t move their own porch furniture or bring the Christmas tree down from the attic. At last, his life seems to be on an even keel.

Still, the Gaitlins (of “old” Baltimore) cannot forget the price they paid for buying off Barnaby’s former victims. And his ex-wife would just as soon he didn’t show up ever to visit their little girl, Opal. Even the nice, steady woman (his guardian angel?) who seems to have designs on him doesn’t fully trust him, it develops, when the chips are down, and it looks as though his world may fall apart again.

There is no one like Anne Tyler, with her sharp, funny, tender perceptions about how human beings navigate on a puzzling planet, and she keeps us enthralled from start to finish in this delicious new novel.

A Catered Thanksgiving (a Mystery With Recipes) by Crawford, Isis

Overview

In this seventh installment of Crawford’s delicious cozy series featuring catering sisters Bernie and Libby Simmons, a Thanksgiving dinner goes awry thanks to a killer who’s hiding a cornucopia of secrets.

The Thanksgiving Day Murder : A Christine Bennett Mystery by Lee Harris

Overview

More than a year ago, Natalie Gordon went to buy a balloon at the Thanksgiving Day parade and dissolved into thin air. The police and a private investigator still have no leads. So when Natalie’s despairing husband pleads with ex-nun Christine Bennett to help, she can’t say no. Not only are Natalie’s present whereabouts a mystery, but so is her past. Someone has stripped her personnel file in her old office, and even her husband knows little about her. Starting with a cardboard box of Natalie’s belongings–a few books, keys, some cosmetics–Christy searches for a life someone has tried very hard to erase and finds a cast of characters so chilling that murder seems not only inevitable, but likely to happen again.

The Telltale Turkey Caper by Georgette Livingston

Overview

Emma Morrison has always ordered a fresh Thanksgiving turkey from the local butcher, and this year is no exception. Imagine her chagrin when she is given a frozen turkey by mistake. Imagine her further chagrin when instead of giblets, the defrosted bird contains a diamond necklace. Someone has made a big mistake, and Jennifer Gray suspects quite rightly that the error will endanger the lives of everyone involved.

Turkey Day Murder by Leslie Meier

Overview

Tinker’s Cove, Maine, has a long history of Thanksgiving festivities, from visits with TomTom Turkey to the annual Warriors high school football game and Lucy Stone’s impressive pumpkin pie. But this year, someone has added murder to the menu, and Lucy intends to discover who left Metinnicut Indian activist Curt Nolan dead–with an ancient war club next to his head.The list of suspects isn’t exactly brief. Nolan had a habit of disagreeing with just about everybody he met. Between fixing dinner for twelve and keeping her four kids from tearing each other limb from limb, Lucy has a pretty full plate already. So what’s a little investigation? But if she’s not careful, she may find herself served up as a last-minute course, stone-cold dead with all the trimmings…

Thanksgiving by Janet Evanovich

Overview

When Megan Murphy discovered a floppy-eared rabbit gnawing on the hem of her skirt, she meant to give its careless owner a piece of her mind, but Dr. Patrick Hunter was too attractive to stay mad at for long. Soon the two are making Thanksgiving dinner for their families.

No Place Like Home by Fern Michaels

Overview

Join beloved bestselling author Fern Michaels in her first holiday novel, a spirited, touching tale of three dynamic siblings who will do anything to bring their grandmother home for Christmas.

The Cisco triplets are appalled by their widowed father’s behavior. He seems to care more about his gold-digging fiancée than he does about his own son and daughters. Even worse, Dad put their spunky grandmother — head of the family candy company — in a nursing home against her will. Setting out to spring Granny Cisco, college seniors Sara, Hannah, and Sam soon prove that trouble comes in threes. Apparently, so does love. . . . As the triplets get their grandmother the medical care that will make her independent again, all three find unexpected romance. If everything goes according to plan, there’s going to be quite a crowd at Granny’s house come Christmas — and more proof than ever that there’s no place like home for the holidays.

Includes a discussion with Fern Michaels and an excerpt from her new Cisco family novel, Family Blessings

Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Overview

Lady Emma Wells-Finch–the oh-so-proper headmistress of England’s St. Gertrude’s School for Girls–has come to Texas with just two weeks to ruin her reputation, the only way she can save herself from losing everything she holds dear. And when a gorgeous man who can’t afford another scandal meets this hardheaded woman who’s determined to cause one, anything can happen, even love.

Have I missed any? Please let me know.

Hopefully, this list gives you something to read while you plan Thanksgiving dinner or binge on your kid’s Halloween candy while they’re sleeping. Again, if you like what I post, please like, comment, share, and subscribe. Please consider donating to help keep this going. $1 and I’ll ask you what your favorite book is so we can talk about it. $5 and I’ll write a review of a book you suggest. $10 and I’ll write a blog suggested by you. If you read any of the books listed, please let me know what you thought of it. That’s all I’ve got for today, train wrecks. All aboard.

To help you get through your TBR, I’m including a printable bookmark. Just print it on cardstock. You can laminate it, it you like. Hope you enjoy.