Novels explore the holiday spirit

Christmas has arrived -- on the fiction shelf.
By RON BERTHEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Some people can't wait for Christmas to be over.
But for those who count down December days until they can finally open their presents and dig into that fruitcake, the recent arrival of several novels with Christmas settings might make the wait for the real Dec. 25 a little more bearable.
A Christmas miracle is about to unfold in the sleepy town of Lost River, Ala., the setting for Fannie Flagg's "A Redbird Christmas" (Random House). Terminally ill Oswald T. Campbell arrives in Lost River from Chicago to spend what he assumes will be his last Christmas. There he is entertained by a cast of local characters, including the grocer, whose cardinal, Jack, becomes the key to an event that changes the lives of Campbell and the townspeople.
He's a Wren
Not a cardinal, but a Wren is at the center of "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story" (Henry Holt) by Paul Auster, illustrated by Isol. In this short story, which first appeared in The New York Times on Christmas 1990, a writer in Brooklyn, N.Y., is asked by the Times to write a Christmas story. Stuck for an idea, he poses the problem to Auggie Wren, a clerk in his neighborhood cigar store. Over lunch, Auggie tells the writer -- and the reader -- a "true" Christmas tale about a shoplifter, a lost wallet, a blind woman, a store-bought Christmas dinner and a stolen camera.
A widowed Christmas tree farmer who "pines" for the joy of past Christmases meets a lonely widow in Luanne Rice's "Silver Bells" (Bantam). Every year since his teenage son disappeared, the farmer has brought his crop of trees from Nova Scotia to sell on a certain corner in New York. One year, he meets a neighborhood librarian whose husband died three Christmas Eves ago and who, like the farmer, longs for Christmases spent at home with family.
Home and family are on the mind also of Loretta Cisco, candy magnate and matriarch in Fern Michaels' "Family Blessings" (Atria). Just before Thanksgiving, a tornado destroys the house where Cisco has lived for 50 years. More bad news soon follows: Her triplet grandchildren, all newlyweds, are having marital problems. As neighbors try to help rebuild her house in time for Christmas, Cisco looks for a way to rebuild her family.
Family message
Families consist of more than just their surviving members: That's the message in "Zanna's Gift" (Forge). Scott Richards tells the story of the Pullman family, whose oldest child, Ernie, dies just before Christmas 1938. The death is especially difficult for Zanna, 4, who was close to her brother and who had made a special Christmas picture for Ernie that he never got to see. Zanna becomes a successful artist, and that picture becomes a way, in future family Christmas gatherings, to remember those who have died.
Galen Scobey, a widower with no time for love and no love for Christmas, changes his tune in "Light of Hope" (Forge) by Robert Vaughan. Scobey is sent to remote -- and appropriately named -- Point Hope, Alaska, to explore for oil. There he meets Ellie Springer, a teacher who had fled Dallas and memories of failed relationships. When they meet, sparks fly -- but they are sparks of contention at first. A romantic attraction inevitably develops, and Christmas brings them a second chance for happiness.
Emily Springer -- presumably not related to Ellie -- is part of a romantic comedy of errors in Debbie Macomber's "When Christmas Comes" (Mira). The wild (Christmas) goose chase begins when Emily, who lives in Leavenworth, Wash., swaps houses for the holidays with a stranger named Charles in Boston so she can visit her daughter and he can avoid Christmas altogether. When Emily arrives in Boston, she learns that her daughter has left for Florida; and when Charles arrives in Leavenworth, he finds a town dressed to the nines in holiday trappings.
A different era
Christmas celebrations span a century in Owen Parry's "Strike the Harp! (Morrow). A different era provides the setting for each of five short stories, from the late 19th-century tale of a police officer who wants to help the families of striking mine workers on Christmas Eve, to the 1960s tale about an affluent child who learns the real cost of the lavish presents he has received. Other tales are set during World War I, the Roaring '20s and the Great Depression.
Although Christmas brings joy to many, to others, the holiday can be murder -- especially in some Yuletide mysteries.
Anne Perry sets "A Christmas Visitor" (Ballantine) in the Lake District of England, where the Dreghorn family's Christmas reunion is marred by the death of a family member who slipped on the stream's stepping stones. For support, the victim's wife summons her godfather, Henry Rathbone, a distinguished inventor and mathematician who has appeared in Perry's series about Inspector William Monk. As Rathbone investigates the death, he begins to suspect it was murder.
There appears to be another lakeside murder in "Sugar Cookie Murder" (Kensington), Joanne Fluke's latest case for amateur sleuth Hannah Swensen, owner of the Cookie Jar bakery in Lake Eden, Minn. Martin Dubinski arrives at the town's annual Christmas buffet with his new wife, a Las Vegas showgirl whose presence miffs Dubinski's ex-wife. Hannah investigates when a missing antique Christmas cake knife turns up embedded in the chest of Mrs. Dubinski.
Crime solving
Another shop owner tries her hand at crime-solving in "Crewel Yule" (Berkley Prime Crime) by Monica Ferris. As Christmas approaches, Betsy Devonshire, proprietor of the Crewel World needlework shop, is attending a trade convention in Nashville when a fellow shop owner falls nine stories to her death. Betsy investigates the possibility of murder since the victim had plenty of enemies -- many of whom are attending the convention.
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is missing -- obviously the work of "The Christmas Thief" (Simon & amp; Schuster), a collaboration by mother-and-daughter duo Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark. Their respective series characters, amateur sleuth Alvirah Meehan and private eye Regan Reilly, are visiting Stowe, Vt., when the 80-foot blue spruce disappears the night before it is to be cut down and trucked to New York.
And there should be no cross words at Christmas, except those in "Wrapped Up in Crosswords" (Berkley Prime Crime) by Nero Blanc. In small-town Newcastle, Mass., crossword puzzle editor Belle Graham and private eye Rosco Polycrates are soon looking for Santas instead of shopping for gifts when they learn that a string of recent robberies might be the work of three escaped prisoners masquerading as the jolly old fat guy.
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