Buying a book as a last-minute gift? Here are some top picks

Christmas is mere days away, but if you still need some last minute gift ideas, a Calgary book store has some great ideas.

"The book that we can barely keep on the shelves right now is a novel called A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles," Judith Duthie of Owl's Nest Books told the Calgary Eyeopener on Wednesday.

"It's an unrepentant aristocrat sentenced to house arrest in a hotel and even as his physical world shrinks, his emotional world starts to blossom."

Cookbooks

"There is a new Whitewater Cooks cookbook that just came out last week," Duthie said.

"We are bringing them in by the dozens and they are going out in twos and threes, people buying multiples for the family."

Page-turner

"One that you just can't put down is called The Substitute by Nicole Lundrigan. It's just this wonderful, fantastic thriller. There one storyline with this PhD who is a substitute teacher but then there is also this character, told from the first person, and if I even tell what gender this person is, that's a bit of a spoiler."

"It's just this wonderful creepy character that you have to keep turning the page to figure out what's going on in that one."

Non-fiction

"Walter Isaacson has done a new biography. He did the Steve Jobs biography. He has now taken on Leonardo da Vinci. It's a brick, this one, because da Vinci had such a fascinating life, he did so many things like painting, sculpting, inventing, politics. There is just so much to delve into," she said.

Young adult

"The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline won the Governor General's Award for fiction for children and young adults. In this dystopian novel, humanity has lost the ability to dream and the only cure lies in the bone marrow of Aboriginal people, and unfortunately it means Aboriginal people have become hunted. It's just fascinating, a little dark, but really, really fascinating," Duthie said.

"John Green did a new one called Turtles All the Way Down. This deals with a young girl with intrusive thoughts, she can't stop thinking about the germs in her body. It is just an absolutely fascinating read. He does teenagers so very well."

Picture book for the kids

"We are really in love with I Met an Elk in Edson Once by Dave Kelly. Kid runs into an elk in underwear and they go on a fabulous tour of Alberta and all the wonderful places in Alberta that you can visit yourself."

• MORE ALBERTA NEWS |10 commonly used words that don't have easy English translations
• MORE ALBERTA NEWS |Calgary airport shares tips for flyers during busiest travel month of the year

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener