. . It's the perfect time to curl up in front of a crackling fire with these wintry whodunits from the legendary Agatha Christie. But beware of deadly snowdrifts and dangerous gifts, poisoned meals and mysterious guests. This chilling compendium of short stories—some featuring beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple—is an essential omnibus for Christie fans and the perfect holiday gift for mystery lovers.INCLUDES THE STORIES:- Three Blind Mice- The Chocolate Box- A Christmas Tragedy- The Coming of Mr Quin- The Clergyman's Daughter/Red House- The Plymouth Express- Problem at Pollensa Bay- Sanctuary- The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge- The World's End- The Manhood of Edward Robinson- Christmas Adventure

    The snow is plentiful, the mood is full of holiday cheer, and she's earning extra cash working at the cozy local inn. But her perfect holiday plans crash to a halt when her boss's frustratingly cute nephew, Teddy Veracruz, becomes her coworker. When they accidentally switch phones one afternoon, they both realize they've been hiding things from each other. Will their secrets--and a dash of holiday spirit--bring them closer to love?Underlined is a line of totally addictive romance, thriller, and horror paperback original titles coming to you fast and furious each month. Enjoy everything you want to read the way you want to read it.

    There, three lovely holiday spirits magically visit him to teach him that every moment is precious and that he should never take his family for granted. But when he wakes up, will he just write it off as a dream? Originally published in the sizzling anthology Baby, It’s Cold Outside, this irresistible novella is the perfect holiday treat! And as special bonus material after the novella, Emma Chase has included a scene showing Drew’s marriage proposal to Kate!

    As a literary subject, Christmas has inspired everything from intimate domestic dramas to fanciful flights of the imagination, and the full range of its expression is represented in this wonderfully engaging anthology. Goblins frolic in the graveyard of an early Dickens tale and a love-struck ghost disrupts a country estate in Elizabeth Bowen’s “Green Holly.” The plight of the less fortunate haunts Chekhov’s “Vanka” and Willa Cather’s “The Burglar’s Christmas” but takes a boisterously comic turn in Damon Runyon’s “Dancing Dan’s Christmas” and in John Cheever’s “Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor.” From Vladimir Nabokov’s intensely moving story of a father’s grief in “Christmas” to Truman Capote’s hilarious yet heartbreaking “A Christmas Memory,” from Grace Paley’s Jewish girl starring in the Christmas pageant in “The Loudest Voice” to the dysfunctional family ski holiday in Richard Ford’s “Crèche”—each of the stories gathered here is imbued with Christmas spirit (of one kind or another), and all are richly and indelibly entertaining.TABLE OF CONTENTSCharles DickensThe Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton(from The Pickwick Papers)Nikolai GogolThe Night Before ChristmasArthur Conan DoyleThe Blue CarbuncleAnthony TrollopeChristmas at Thompson HallLeo TolstoyWhere Love is, God isAnton CheckhovVankaWilla CatherThe Burglar's ChristmasO. HenryA Chapparal Christmas GiftSaki (H.H. Munro)Reginald's Christmas RevelVladimir NabokovChristmasDamon RunyonDancing Dan's ChristmasEvelyn WaughBella Fleace Gave a PartyElizabeth BowenGreen HollyJohn CheeverChristmas is a Sad Season for the PoorTruman CapoteA Christmas MemoryJohn UpdikeThe Carol SingMuriel SparkChristmas FugueGrace PaleyThe Loudest VoiceAlice MunroThe Turkey SeasonRichard FordCreche

    Held captive by a blue-eyed stranger. To mark the twelve days of Christmas, he gives me a gift every day, each more horrible than the last. The twelfth day is getting closer. After that, there'll be no more Christmas cheer for me. No mince pies, no carols. No way out.But I have a secret. No-one has guessed it. Will you?

    Well, if so, Ruth and Richard are “the old masters” of the flirting game. Despite their strictly platonic relationship, there’s “something there,” as so many of their friends and families say. Neighbors and friends for ten years, neither seems willing to change the course of their relationship. Three doors down, at the end of the cul-de-sac, Mason Dickenson has watched his favorite neighbors with an interested eye, but he’s finally had it with the dance. So, with a pack of cards and a few tricks up his sleeve, he's determined to get them out of the "friend rut" and into romance. Thanks to Mason’s unique matchmaking scheme, Ruth and Richard concoct one of their own—a deeper, stronger, eternal love and relationship that nothing on earth can match.

    Christmas hasn't changed much in her sixteen years. But instead she returns to find that her best friend is dating her ex-boyfriend, her parents have separated, and her archnemesis got a job working at her grandmother's inn. And she certainly didn't expect to find the boy she may or may not have tricked into believing that Christmas was an idyllic holiday paradise on her grandmother's doorstep. It's up to Finley to make sure he gets the Christmas he was promised. This is Finley's Christmas. It's about home and family and friends and finding her place, and along the way she also finds the best Christmas present of all: love.

    Make plum puddings for bemused French villagers with Elizabeth David; go present shopping with Virginia Woolf or eat far too much with Agatha Christie. Celebrate Christmas at Chatsworth, in the workhouse or marooned in the ice with Shackleton ... For the last forty-five years, the arrival of John Julius Norwich's latest Christmas Cracker has become as essential a part of the Christmas experience as holly and mistletoe. In An English Christmas the legendary popular historian has finally gathered all the best writing about this strangest and most memorable time of year into one book and his brilliant eye for a story is evident on every page.Vividly evoking all the good things about the festive season, this unexpected anthology is just as entertaining about its darker aspects. Eight-year-old Princess Margaret's thank-you list jostles with moving letters home from the trenches. Sherlock Holmes solves his trickiest case. George Orwell writes about indigestion; Jane Austen about reluctant socialising and Thomas Hardy about the old folk belief that all animals kneel at midnight on 24 December. There are ghost stories, games and bizarre recipes. Diary-entries, recipes and letters sit alongside poems and short stories. An English Christmas could convert any Scrooge into an instant enthusiast.

    The basis for many film and opera adaptations, and still a story traditionally read aloud to children on Christmas Eve in Ukraine and Russia, The Night Before Christmas is the best holiday tale by the man whom Vladimir Nabokov called 'the greatest writer Russia has yet produced'.Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) was the son of a Ukrainian gentleman farmer. He attended a variety of boarding schools, where he proved an indifferent student but was admired for his theatrical abilities. In 1828 he moved to St. Petersburg and began to publish stories, and by the mid-1830s he had established himself in the literary world and been warmly praised by Pushkin. In 1836, his play The Inspector-General was attacked as immoral, and he left Russia, remaining abroad for most of the next dozen years. During that time he wrote two of his best-known stories, The Nose and The Overcoat and in 1842 he published the first section of his masterpiece Dead Souls. Gogol became increasingly religious as the years passed, and in 1847 he became the disciple of an Orthodox priest who influenced him to burn the second part of Dead Souls and then abandon writing altogether. After undertaking an extreme fast, he died at the age of forty-two.

    She loves the presents, the tree, the turkey, the tinsel, everything. Already the festive spirit is upon her, which is just as well as this Christmas things are starting to get out of hand.Her son Tom is out of work and bringing home a slew of unsuitable partners; pregnant daughter Chloe and her little boy have moved back in; Juliet's father, Frank, is getting over a heartbreak of his own and Rita, her eccentric mother, is behaving more erratically each day. And has the chaos got too much for Juliet's husband Rick?With the big day fast approaching, Juliet hopes that she can stop everything spiralling out of control, because the only thing she wants is her family all around her and her home to be filled

    (Apparently, it’s a good one.) Winning ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ was nice, but this Christmas, he has more important goals in mind... like finally winning over his best friend’s little sister, the super-smart and kinda-scary Abbie Farrell.When a blizzard leaves Will and Abbie alone at Grandma Farrell’s house (if bunking with 27 pets counts as ‘alone’), it’s the perfect opportunity to pull off a Christmas miracle. Convincing clever, frosty Abbie to give Will a chance will take more than mistletoe, but hiding his lifelong crush on her is no longer an option.

    . . . Sierra's family runs a Christmas tree farm in Oregon—it's a bucolic setting for a girl to grow up in, except that every year, they pack up and move to California to set up their Christmas tree lot for the season. So Sierra lives two lives: her life in Oregon and her life at Christmas. And leaving one always means missing the other.  Until this particular Christmas, when Sierra meets Caleb, and one life eclipses the other. By reputation, Caleb is not your perfect guy: years ago, he made an enormous mistake and has been paying for it ever since. But Sierra sees beyond Caleb's past and becomes determined to help him find forgiveness and, maybe, redemption. As disapproval, misconceptions, and suspicions swirl around them, Caleb and Sierra discover the one thing that transcends all else: true love.What Light is a love story that's moving and life-affirming and completely unforgettable.

    They tried to convince her to mend her ways.She didn't.And then she died.Now she's stuck working for the top-secret company Project Scrooge--as the latest Ghost of Christmas Past.Every year, they save another miserly grouch. Every year, Holly stays frozen at seventeen while her family and friends go on living without her. So far, Holly's afterlife has been miserable.But this year, everything is about to change. . . .

    There are many stories that tell of his life, but the delightful version relayed in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is by far the most charming and original of all. Only L. Frank Baum, the man who created the wonderful land of Oz, could have told Santa's tale in such rich and imaginative detail.

    Set in Chicago and Baltimore in 1944 with flashbacks to the 1920s, Jacob's Bell follows Jacob MacCallum on his arduous journey to redemption. At one time, Jacob had it all: wealth, a wonderful family and a position as one of the most respected businessmen in Chicago. Then he made some bad decisions and all that changed. For the past twenty years he lived in an alcohol-induced haze, riddled with guilt for the dreadful things he had done to his family and his role in the untimely death of his wife. Estranged from his children and penniless, he was in and out of jail, on the street and jumping freight trains for transportation. Realizing he needed a drastic change, Jacob embarked on a journey to find his children, seek their forgiveness, and restore his relationship with them. Befriended by a pastor at a Salvation Army mission, he struggled to transform his life. Yet finally he overcame his demons, but not without a fair number of setbacks. Jacob became a Salvation Army Bell Ringer at Christmastime. While ringing his bell on a street corner one snowy day, he met a young girl who, through a series of strange coincidences, led him back to his children and facilitated Jacob's forgiveness just in time for Christmas. Author John Snyder pens a story of love, hardship, and reconciliation that will leave readers filled with Christmas joy.