The Holly and the Ivy

This festive anthology of sweet historical romances overflows with Christmas cheer. The heartwarming title story from Eden sees nursemaid Roberta “Robbie” MacGregor and gardener Howard Simpkin falling in love while helping Robbie’s charge, Adam, an eight-year-old duke, work through his grief over his father’s death. Hatch’s Highland romp “Hiding Christmas” joins Scot Kirstine Jamieson with her late brother’s best friend, Englishman Isaac Parker, whom she’s always despised, when he poses as her husband while escorting her and her grandmother to England for Christmas. In LeCheminant’s standout “A Twist of Christmas,” love blooms between Lord Graham Bartlett, future Earl of Greystone, and Lady Elizabeth Spencer, a duke’s daughter, when they respectively swap identities with his brother and her lady’s companion to see what it’s like to live without the burden of their titles. Lovable misfit Alice Hunt agrees to perform charitable deeds in exchange for her rector Thomas Perry’s help finding a husband in Walker’s “A Season of Love.” All four stories deliver witty exchanges, personal growth, and holiday goodness in spades. Readers looking for wholesome Christmas reading will be pleased. (Oct.)