Ho-ho-ho, what’s inside Santa’s bag? A stack of warm Christmas novels, with nary a zombie in them.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside by Susan May Warren (Summerside, Sept.) brings four people to shelter from a blizzard in Frost, Minn., in the home of reluctant hostess Dottie Morgan, still grieving the loss of her son in World War II, right before Christmas, 1949.
Blame It on the Mistletoe by Joyce Magnin (Abingdon, Oct.) opens with a dog named Mickey Mantle and promises the wedding (finally) of Griselda Sparrow and restaurateur extraordinaire Zeb Sewickey and, of course, a Christmas pageant at Bright’s Pond.
A Christmas Journey Home: Miracle in a Manger by Kathi Macias (New Hope, Sept.). The journeys of two women, one of them pregnant, will intersect in an Arizona barn full of animals on Christmas.
Christmas Treasures by Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer (Berkley, Nov.), set in the fictional New England town of Cape Light, finds Reverend Ben pondering retirement as the 60-year-old pastor faces bypass surgery.
Naomi’s Gift by Amy Clipston (Zondervan, Sept.) bakes up a Christmas installment in the Kaufmann Amish bakery series, in which Naomi King seems set on an unmarried life until she meets widower Caleb Schmucker and his eight-year-old daughter Susie.
Remembering Christmas by Dan Walsh (Revell, Sept.) tries to make it a Christmas two-fer for the novelist (The Unfinished Gift) in this tale of a young man who reluctantly returns to his family home to help out when his stepfather has a stroke.
The Spirit of Christmas by Cecil Murphey and Marley Gibson (St. Martin’s, Oct.), like the authors’ previous Christmas Miracles, is another compilation of true and inspiring stories of the season; a foreword by Debbie Macomber is the gift bow on this.
Not everything for the season goes with hot chocolate and a fireplace or comes in the form of fiction. Mike Slaughter reminds readers Christmas Is Not Your Birthday (Abingdon, Aug.) in a prompt from the Ohio pastor to remember whose birthday it is and celebrate accordingly.
