John Sheehan

In this heartwarming Christmas tale, the unthinkable happens: Santa falls ill just before the biggest night of the year! With no time to lose, Mrs Claus steps up and takes the reins. With a sleigh full of presents and a heart full of drive, Mrs Claus races across the world, determined to save Christmas. But as she delivers gifts, her caring nature causes her to stop and comfort crying children, slowly draining the Christmas magic.

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.

Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none, as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two cases she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn.