Christmas 2012: short stories - Telegraph Unless you get to hide in a monastery over the season, your opportunities to relax with a long historical novel or a weighty account of European history are probably going to be limited - that's why a short-story collection is the ideal Christmas reading. Twenty minutes alone in the kitchen between the spuds going in and the parsnips needing parboiling, or a half-hour in the pub waiting for your workmates to arrive: any opportunity like that and a good short story will transport you far away from all the enforced joviality. There have been some wonderful collections from big names, many of whom are not necessarily associated with the form. Alice Munro is an expert, of course. Her new collection, Dear Life (Chatto & Windus, £18.99), is Munro at her brilliant best and includes some tantalisingly autobiographical pieces. But novelists such as Emma Donoghue, Jon MacGregor and Victoria Hislop, more often associated with novels, have also turned their hand to brevity. Donoghue's crafted tales in Astray (Picador, £14.99) range four centuries. McGregor's perfectly poised and incisive stories of domesticity are set in the Fens in This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You (Bloomsbury, £14.99) and Hislop's The Last Dance and Other Stories (Headline Review, £12.99) will provide a much-needed glimpse of Greek sun. As ever, though, short-story collections have proved brilliant vehicles for the announcement of new talent, and in a year when no less than half the Man Booker Prize shortlist came from small presses, publishers are alive to the idea that less commercial books often prove to be a long-term investment. Bloomsbury boldly announced 2012 to be the year of the short story and brought out a series of debut collections including I Am an Executioner (£14.99) by Rajesh Parameswaran and Diving Belles (£14.99) by Lucy Wood, who featured in our short-story special issue at the beginning of this year. Faber & Faber brought out This Is How You Lose Her (£12.99) by Junot Diaz and Drifting House (£12.99) by Krys Lee, who was also shortlisted for this year's BBC International Short Story Prize. Heinemann published This Will Be Difficult to Explain (£16.99) by Canadian newcomer Johanna Skibsrud. So many great novelists started with short stories, from Ian McEwan and Anne Enright to Lorrie Moore and A L Kennedy. If you don't fancy experimenting with newcomers, there are life-work collections available too: Alasdair Gray has Every Short Story 1951-2012 (Canongate, £30) and Terry Pratchett A Blink of the Screen: Collected Short Fiction (Transworld, £20). If you're buying someone a present then a short-story collection is the equivalent of the box of chocolates, something to be lingered over before you make your choice, preferably while you're hunkered down on the sofa - it couldn't be more suited for this time of year.