Holiday Literary

Just weeks before Christmas, severe wintry weather damages the church hall hosting the Christmas Boutique - an annual sale of handcrafted gifts and baked goods that supports the county food pantry. Determined to save the fundraiser, Sylvia Bergstrom Compson offers to hold the event at Elm Creek Manor, her ancestral family estate and summertime home to Elm Creek Quilt Camp.

Evie and Thomas experience a very different war. Frustrated by life as a privileged young lady, Evie longs to play a greater part in the conflict - but how? - and as Thomas struggles with the unimaginable realities of war, he also faces personal battles back home, where War Office regulations on press reporting cause trouble at his father's newspaper business. Through their letters Evie and Thomas share their greatest hopes and fears - and grow ever fonder from afar. Can love flourish amid the horror of the First World War, or will fate intervene?

Snowed in with the man I thought I was over. And the secret I kept to protect us both is about to tear everything apart. Five years ago, Nicholas made it clear—no kids, no future, no second chances. So when I found out I was pregnant, I did what I thought was right. I let him go. I let everything go. Now we’re trapped together in a cozy Christmas lodge with nowhere to run, and the past isn’t staying buried. He doesn’t know what I gave up. What it cost me. But the truth has a way of breaking through the cracks. And when it does— Christmas won't be the only thing forever changed.

Perched in the far corner of a run-down New England mall, the Red Lobster hasn't been making its numbers, and headquarters has pulled the plug. But manager Manny DeLeon still needs to navigate a tricky last shift. With only four shopping days left until Christmas, Manny must convince his near-mutinous staff to hunker down and serve the final onslaught of hungry retirees, lunatics, and holiday office parties.

Beth Cardall has a secret. For 18 years, she has had no choice but to keep it to herself, but on Christmas Eve 2008, all that is about to change. For Beth, 1989 was a year marked by tragedy. She had lost any ability to trust, to hope, or to believe in herself. Then, on Christmas Day, as she rushed through a blizzard to the nearest 7-Eleven, Beth encountered Matthew, a strikingly handsome, mysterious stranger, who would single-handedly change the course of her life.

The New York Times best-selling author of The Christmas Box returns with a holiday novel of hope, love, and redemption: "That's what I wanted to share with you, my dear listeners, this Christmas - a holiday tale to warm your season, your homes, and your hearts."

In 1860 the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow family celebrated Christmas at Craigie House, their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The publication of Longfellow's classic Revolutionary War poem, "Paul Revere's Ride", was less than a month hence, and the country's grave political unrest weighed heavily on his mind. Yet with his beloved wife, Fanny, and their five adored children at his side, the delights of the season prevailed.

¿Qué puede llegar a ocurrirles a los vecinos de un barrio cualquiera en estos tiempos difíciles? ¿Cómo resisten, en pleno ojo del huracán, parejas y personas solas, padres e hijos, jóvenes y ancianos, los embates de una crisis que «amenazó con volverlo todo del revés y aún no lo ha conseguido»? Los besos en el pan cuenta, de manera sutil y conmovedora, cómo transcurre la vida de una familia que vuelve de vacaciones decidida a que su rutina no cambie.

Marvellously atmospheric tale of strangers summoned to a grand but neglected villa on the Italian coast. Each of them has been named in a will, but nobody knows their benefactress.... Four very different people are named in a will. Delia, an opera singer robbed of her voice by illness; George, an idealistic scientist who cannot face what his skills have created; Marjorie, desperately poor and unable to dislodge her writer’s block; and Lucius, ostensibly in control but whose personal life is in chaos.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker Prize-winning masterpiece became an international bestseller on publication, was adapted into an award-winning film and has since come to be regarded as a modern classic.

AJ has a real boyfriend now, and he's really coming to the cove to meet her friends and family. She's turned into a domestic goddess as she preps to host Christmas at a rental that will hold everyone for the holidays. But beneath the bulky sweaters, AJ has a secret she won't be able to keep hidden forever.

Thomas, a young German musician, is dying. Leo, a renowned Italian writer and Thomas's boyfriend, finds it impossible to mourn his loss and condemns himself to wandering the Earth, in the hope of finding the dividing line between the living and the dead. He travels through a Europe where past and present overlap, roads intersect, years merge and faces emerge - and tries in vain to bring into focus the blurred lines of their relationship.

Three women. A whole world of judgement. Tara, Cam and Stella are very different women. Yet in a society that sets the agenda, there’s something about being a woman that ties invisible bonds between us. When one extraordinary event rockets Tara to online infamy, their three worlds collide in ways they could never imagine – and they discover that one woman’s catastrophe might just be another’s inspiration. Through friendship and conflict, difference and likeness, they’ll learn to find their own voices.

The best things in life happen when you least expect them. Nat's husband has just said the six words no one wants to hear - 'I don't love you any more'. Caroline's estranged mother has to move into her house, turning her perfectly ordered world upside down. Living on the same street, these two women couldn't be more different. Until the beloved local community centre is threatened with closure. And when the only way to save it is to form a community choir - none of the Hope Street residents, least of all Nat and Caroline, expect the results....

As the witches roast chestnuts and melt lead to see their fate, a series of odd messengers land on their doorstep bearing invitations for a New Year's Eve masquerade hosted by a woman they've never met. Gossip, dreams and portents follow, leading the witches to question the woman's motives. Is she as benevolent as she seems or is she laying a trap? And so, as Gilded-Age New York prepares to ring in the new year, the witches don their finery and head for the ball, on the hunt for answers that might well be the end of them.

Unable at first to find a publisher for his evocative tale about a man named George Pratt who ponders suicide until he receives an opportunity to see what the world would be like without him, Stern ultimately published the story in a small pamphlet and sent it out as his 1943 Christmas card. One of those 200 cards found its way into the hands of Frank Capra, who shared it with Jimmy Stewart, and the film that resulted became the holiday tradition we cherish today.

An epic, escapist novel that will transport you away to an extraordinary time in history. Perfect for fans of Kate Morton and Victoria Hislop. Rome, 1950s. One fateful night, Hal Jacobs meets Stella, a beautiful society darling from New York. To Hal, flailing in the postwar darkness, she's a point of light. They're from different worlds but both trying and failing to carve out new lives. Stella vanishes all too quickly, until a curious invitation from an Italian Contessa reels her back into Hal's world.

At the most wonderful time of the year, two hearts discover that family is more than blood. When Kira Williams left the Christmas Cove Children’s Home for New York, she never dreamed she’d see her childhood best friend Xavier again. For that matter, she never dreamed she’d go back to Christmas Cove, the town where Christmas never sleeps… until Mrs. Davis asks for her help. After his adoption from the Christmas Cove Children’s Home at age eleven, Xavier Moore had everything he could ever want—family, love, security—everything except for the woman who had ruined him for all ...

Originally published in the 1876 Christmas edition of The Graphic, Christmas at Thompson Hall is a Victorian tale concerning the proper Mr. and Mrs. Brown and their journey from southern France to Thompson Hall to celebrate Christmas with their relatives - a trip that becomes a comedy of errors once Mr. Brown's throat condition, a malady that almost prevented the trip entirely, worsens.

Three days before Christmas, Matt Jensen is traveling the Denver and Pacific railway when an avalanche slams down onto the train, trapping it in desolate Trout Creek Pass. But it wasn’t an act of nature that caused the accident; it was a gang of outlaws attempting to rescue their leader, who is being taken to Red Cliff to be hanged. As Smoke Jensen and Duff MacCallister frantically try to make their way to the scene, Matt struggles to save the survivors, among them a young woman with a dark past, a merchant seaman turned rancher, and a senator with his very ill young daughter.