Nothing about Carr’s grim 1994 historical thriller The Alienist, a genre landmark about tracking a serial killer, suggests an unconditional love of animals. But the prickly 68-year-old American novelist, whose childhood cat provided comfort when his alcoholic father regularly beat him, rediscovered the incomparable solace of animals through his intense bond with Masha, the feisty Siberian forest cat he rescued from a shelter. This stunning memoir chronicling their 17-year relationship – Masha died in 2022, Carr in May – is his final book.

In this delightful insider account about a champion show dog and his handler, Tomlinson – a former reporter and Pulitzer Prize-finalist based in North Carolina – follows a Samoyed named Striker, as well as the breeders and high-strung owners at regional dog competitions leading up to the mammoth Westminster Dog Show. It’s a tour of doggo culture and the people who love them, and like Christopher Guest’s affectionate mockumentary, Best in Show, a love letter to eccentricities.

On a rural walk during a pandemic lockdown, the British political advisor and speechwriter came across an orphaned baby hare. This affecting memoir is about her experience rescuing and rearing the tiny animal, warming milk bottles and preparing it for freedom, and how it changed her. It’s a testament that appreciation for the natural world and its creatures can enrich our lives.

Who needs WebMD when you can wander into a mysterious Kyoto clinic in a time of need and be prescribed a kitty curative? This novel joins a vast and booming subgenre centred on the healing power of cats – Japanese and Korean titles alone are their own cottage industry – that includes Mai Mochizuki’s The Full Moon Coffee Shop and What You Are Looking For is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama. This one is seriously feel-good feline fiction.

James, younger brother to Pippa and Kate Middleton (now Catherine, the Princess of Wales), offers a candid memoir of living with clinical depression, and the powerful positive effects of dogs as therapy. Beyond being adored companions, he credits the unconditional love of his cocker spaniel Ella for giving him purpose and saving his life, and he wrote this book as a way of dealing with grief after she died in 2023.

Dogs are easy, sociable companion creatures. But cats? Getting inside their head is a fool’s errand, although that doesn’t stop us from trying. This French veterinary psychologist puts their inscrutable behaviour on the couch, so to speak, yielding insights into the possible motivations behind their perpetually aloof stance, or, at least, how to live more easily with the mysteries of human-feline connection.

A zoologist at Cambridge University tunes into the vocal communication in six animal species (such as wolves, chimps, dolphins, and parrots) and investigates the meaning behind howls, screeches and trills, for a thought-provoking read about understanding animals on their own terms.

The American naturalist and author of the beloved non-fiction book Soul of an Octopus shares insight into the world’s most familiar bird, in part through the flock of personalities in her own backyard, detailing their long memories, for instance, and capacity for spatial learning. Based on a chapter from her 2010 Birdology, What the Chicken Knows has just been published in a charming gift-book format for the holidays.

In this vivid and lyrical novel set in Depression-era New Brunswick, the Nova Scotia-based poet follows 15-year-old Pearly, a girl who was raised alongside an orphaned bear cub named Bruno, and considers him a sibling. When the local lumber camp boss sells Bruno to an animal trader, Pearly traverses the Canadian wilderness to rescue him.

The New York photographer, who gave us the Advanced Style blog, books and film that made fashion celebrities out of septua-, octo- and nonagenarians, once again focuses his lens on the senior set, this time for interviews about their relationships with their beloved animal companions.