Rude Stocking Fillers Under £15 (That Get Read Aloud at the Table)

A stocking filler has one job, and that job is getting passed round the table before the sprouts go cold. A square picture book called Santa's Sack does it for £12.99, which leaves change from fifteen quid for the satsuma.

Every book here is a 24 to 31 page square paperback under £15, and all of them sit in the Rude Stocking Fillers collection. Between them they have had 190 million views on social, a great many of those filmed in someone's kitchen on Christmas morning. The wider festive line-up, including the ones too rude for this page, lives on the rude Christmas books page.

The ones with Christmas on the cover

Santa's Sack. Santa's sack is full to the brim and he needs it emptied before morning, while Stupid Cupid the reindeer does his best to ruin the night. Someone at the table will assume it is for the kids and start reading, which is the whole point. It also has Santa on the front, which makes it the one book on this list you can leave under the tree unwrapped and let the confusion do the work.

Mums Christmas Wish. The mum in this story has a Christmas list that would make Santa blush, and none of it is skincare. Give it to the mum who says she doesn't mind what she gets and then minds a great deal.

The ones that go round the table

• My Beaver Hates Wood. Wood isn't everyone's cup of tea, and this beaver has firm views on the subject. The auntie who brings her girlfriend to Christmas dinner will want this one, and so will everyone reading over her shoulder.
• Fisting. A book about fist bumping. Stuart fist bumps everyone he meets and it has become a problem. Watch the room split into people who get it on the cover and people who get it on page six.
• The Little Bean. Funny, cheeky and, by accident, educational. One of my best sellers, and the one your nan reads aloud on camera before she has caught on.
• Will You Eat My Clam?. A seafood book on the surface. Good at volume, with a pause after the title.
• My Best Friends Are Balls. The book that started it all. It is about balls, and I have failed to write a better description than that. If someone at your table has seen one of my videos, this is the one they saw.

For the stocking that needs a non-book

The mugs, cups and jugs carry the same sense of humour, survive the dishwasher, and fit a stocking better than a paperback does. A mug also earns a question at every tea round in the office for a year, which is a long time for one joke to keep working. Put the mug in the stocking and the book under the tree, and Christmas morning takes care of itself.

Reading order for the table

Start with Santa's Sack, because it looks the most innocent and buys you a page or two of goodwill. Move on to The Little Bean once Nan has relaxed. Save Fisting for after the pudding, when the teenagers have gone upstairs and the adults have opened the second bottle. Will You Eat My Clam? goes last, on the grounds that nobody can follow it.

How to make it land

Wrap the book like a children's book, in the kind of paper that suggests a reindeer inside. Hand it to the loudest reader in the family, or to the quietest, depending on how far you want lunch to overrun. If the recipient has kids, the flat square shape slips onto the top shelf afterwards without a fuss.

Two books clear £25 and past £25 delivery is free, UK and worldwide. Standard orders leave in 2 to 3 business days, so put December orders in ahead of the last posting date rather than the night before.

I sell signed copies of every title here from this site and nowhere else, and you can order lots of my books as a personalised edition with the recipient's name printed through the story.