The Smart Pop gift guide: books and more

December always sneaks up on me: suddenly, I'm inundated with Black Friday sales emails, and I realize I have a full list of Hanukah and Christmas gifts to shop for and not a lot of time to do it in.

In case you're in the same boat: here's our top 5 best gift bets from our last 12 months of new releases. We've also added a few related non-book gift options to round out each suggestion—just in case you really like the person (or your Secret Santa lower limit is higher than a list price of...