CHRISTMAS TOMES Four tales set the holiday mood

“The Christmas Secret”SFlbby Donna VanLiere (St. Martin’s, 291 pages, $14.99)

The fourth book in VanLiere’s “Christmas Hope” series, “The Christmas Secret” is a charming tale filled with miracles and inspiration. As in previous installments, “Secret” follows a down-on-his-luck person in a dire situation. Struggling single mother Christine faces unemployment, eviction and a showdown with her deadbeat ex-husband. After a thief takes all the gifts she bought for her children, Christine starts receiving replacements — and cash — from a secret Santa.

The characters — including a wonderful old department store owner, his unappreciative adult grandson, a mean old “Bat Lady” neighbor and a been-there, done-that, lived-to-tell-the-story bakery owner — are developed enough to keep you interested. Most everyone is a little too wholesome to ring true, and the story is formulaic, but during the holidays, we can always use an excuse to think of people that way.

“A Christmas Blizzard” by Garrison Keillor (Viking, 180 pages, $21.95)

James Sparrow, a wealthy businessman who lives in a sprawling 12-room apartment overlooking Chicago, hates Christmas. He wishes the holiday would simply go away, and since it won’t, he hopes to flee to a private Hawaiian island and avoid the festivities. But his plans are postponed when his wife gets the flu, and he learns that a favorite uncle is dying.

Grudgingly, James goes home to Looseleaf, a small North Dakota town of which he has painful memories of cold winters and a colder father. But the worst part of going back: In Looseleaf James developed an obsessive need to stick his tongue on a pump handle, something that paralyzed him with fear even as an adult.

A bad Dakota blizzard blows through, and James is snowed in until the airport opens. While he’s there, a series of strange events — he has conversations with a wolf, for example — leads him on a sort of “Christmas Carol”-meets-“Vision Quest” journey. While “Blizzard” won’t be everyone’s cup of tea — or, rather, hot cocoa — Keillor’s story will make former Midwesterners with memories of snow fights and ice fishing and quirky Scandinavians feel right at home.

“Wishin’ and Hopin’: A Christmas Story”SFlbby Wally Lamb (Harper, 288 pages, $19.99)

Fifth-grader Felix Funicello has a new lay teacher at his strict Catholic school. Madame Frechette teaches class in French, wears tight sweaters and doesn’t seat students according to grade-point average.

Felix is the cousin of the famous Annette Funicello — Lamb’s story is set in 1964 — and for some reason, when he looks at her wearing a white two-piece swimsuit in a poster on his family’s bus station diner wall, he feels something that he doesn’t understand quite yet. But his best friend Lonny, who was held back a couple grades, and a fiesty new student from Russia, who may be a Communist, help him figure things out.

“Wishin’ and Hopin”’ culminates in a tableaux vivant organized by Madame Frechette, which predictably ends in disaster. But Lamb’s vividly detailed portrait of the 1960s and the inner workings of a Catholic schoolboy’s mind puts his first Christmas book on par with his previous three novels. Fans — and Lamb newbies — will love it.

“You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas” by Augusten Burroughs (St. Martin’s, 209 pages, $21.99)

Burroughs is the master of making tragedy funny, with memoirs of a dark childhood in “Running With Scissors” and alcoholism in “Dry.” “You Better Not Cry” is no exception. Burroughs follows his own strange relationship with Christmas from his early memories of Santa (who was the same person as Jesus) to holiday disasters in adulthood in his terribly funny, tragically honest style.

In one story, Burroughs wakes up in an unfamiliar house — and is horrified when he discovers Santa Claus lying next to him. In another, he kisses a plastic Santa/Jesus then bites his lips off. Such things rarely happen to normal people, but Burroughs has never claimed to be normal.

“A Wolf at the Table,” Burroughs’ last memoir, was much darker than his previous books, but here he’s back in fine form. You may not cry, but you’ll definitely laugh.

— Sara Frederick, Miami Herald