REVIEWS BY AMY SCRIBNER

Popular authors offer season's readings
The frantic days leading up to Christmas are enough to make one wonder whether the holiday is more about shopping and stress than faith and family. But this batch of inspiring and hope-filled fiction—from some perennial favorites as well as a few newcomers—might help ease you into the right frame of mind to celebrate a relaxing and joyful season.

Rest ye merry, women
To get yourself into the holiday spirit, start with an irreverent, yet wise take on facing Christmas when the kids are grown and life isn't exactly what you expected. Hot Flash Holidays is the second installment in Nancy Thayer's Hot Flash Club series, and it finds the five middle-aged friends in the club staring down yet another holiday season. Shirley has gambled the hard-earned savings from her business on her much younger man's unpublished novel, and the others aren't so sure it is going to pay off. Marilyn finds what could be the love of her life—but he's in Scotland, and she's committed to caring for her aging mother right here in suburban Boston. The others face their own conundrums familiar to modern women of a certain age. Although the five main characters are fabulously funny and real, Marilyn's mother, Ruth, steals the story with her malapropisms and wisdom. Thayer's writing is smart and full of surprises. The same could be said for the ladies of the Hot Flash Club.

Hot Flash Holidays
By Nancy Thayer
Ballantine, $16.95
320 pages
ISBN 0345485513

While we're on the subject of chick lit for the mature woman, Joan Medlicott is back with A Covington Christmas. The latest in her enduring series about widows Amelia, Grace and Hannah finds the trio transformed into wedding planners when it is discovered that the long-ago wedding vows of several local couples are null and void. What begins as a mortifying discovery eventually yields some unlikely friendships and unites the three ladies of Covington more than ever as they work to set things straight by planning a ceremony for the affected couples. Just try to keep a dry eye as some of Covington's most enduring couples walk down the aisle again. A Covington Christmas is a pure charmer, a rich Southern tale about love and loyalty. It's a beautiful reminder that some things just get better with age.

A Covington Christmas
By Joan Medlicott
Pocket, $15.95
256 pages
ISBN 0743499212

Christmas on location
Just in time for the holidays, a treasure of a short novel by Pete Hamill is being reissued. The Gift was first published in 1973, and the story of a father and son struggling to find common ground is just as poignant in 2005. Pete is on leave from the Navy during the Korean War, and he returns to New York City "for Christmas with its promise of steam and warmth, a girl's brown hair, the smell of pine, and snow." But when he returns, he finds parents who are getting older, and a childhood girlfriend who has moved on. Hamill's love for New York City is well-documented in his novels, and The Gift evokes a vibrant 1950s city, with The Four Acres playing on the bar jukebox and the movie houses bustling. Hamill offers a glimpse at the pivotal moment in one young man's life, one bleary night in a bar called Rattigan's, when he realizes the depth of his father's real but imperfect love for him. Hamill's spare writing and unflinching dialogue perfectly capture an era marked by loss and uncertainty.

The Gift
By Pete Hamill
Little, Brown, $16.95
160 pages
ISBN 0316011894

Surely one of the more untraditional collections of short stories published in recent memory, A Kudzu Christmas, is a beguiling set of 12 supremely spooky Southern mysteries. In the unsettling "Swimming Without Annette," writer Alix Strauss creates a story of vigilantism readers won't soon forget. After her lover is killed in the alley outside a local diner, Karen stakes out the place. While she waits and watches and eats countless tuna melts, Karen reminisces about Christmases past, including the one when her lover gives her a glass star. Suffice it to say that beautiful star becomes a weapon by the end of the story. In "Yes, Ginny," by Suzanne Hudson, a young girl whose good-for-nothing stepfather does little but drink and berate is given a little holiday wish of her own when he suddenly disappears on Christmas morning. Chilly and surreal, A Kudzu Christmas offers a grown-up reprieve from all things Santa.

A Kudzu Christmas
By Jim Gilbert
River City, $19.95
248 pages
ISBN 1579660649

Healing holidays
Author Jennifer Chiaverini has earned quite a following with her folksy Elm Creek Quilt series. In her latest, The Christmas Quilt, Elm Creek grande dame Sylvia Bergstrom Compton reveals more of her own personal history and the history of Elm Creek Manor, her family's historic home that she has converted into a quilting retreat. Sylvia's assistant, Sarah McClure, uncovers an unfinished quilt in the manor's attic, an unwelcome reminder of the stubbornness, misunderstandings and world events that shredded Sylvia's family so many years ago. Yet as Sarah persists in piecing the quilt together, Sylvia begins to open up about her painful past. Particularly poignant are her recollections of the rift with her late sister, Claudia, which was never mended. This is a story of hope, courage and forgiveness that is just right for the season.

The Christmas Quilt
By Jennifer Chiaverini
Simon & Schuster, $18.95
240 pages
ISBN 074328657X

After their own son died in a Christmas Eve car accident, Patricia and Mark Addison couldn't bring themselves to acknowledge the holiday. Years later, they're barely on speaking terms, passing each other like ghosts in the hallway of their own home. When Patricia, a social worker, is assigned to the case of a five-year-old whose mother has died a few days before Christmas, she at first shies away from a case that too closely parallels her own grief. But she doesn't have the heart to place young Emily in a foster home so close to the holidays, so Patricia brings her home for what she intends to be just a few days. What happens next is close to a holiday miracle. In author Donna Van Liere's capable hands, The Christmas Hope is a magical story of second chances that will stay with readers long after the ornaments have been put away.

The Christmas Hope
By Donna Van Liere
St. Martin's, $14.95
224 pages
ISBN 0312334508

Karen Kingsbury continues her immensely popular Red Glove series with Hannah's Hope. Teenager Hannah Roberts is shocked to discover that the powerful politician she's always called Dad is not her biological father. She convinces her mother to help her search for her real father, a military pilot who they discover was presumed killed in Baghdad. But Hannah refuses to accept this news, and writes a letter that garners national attention and just might lead her to her roots. Fast-paced and infused with grace, Kingsbury's latest is another affecting tale. Best of all, the series is a call to service—Kingsbury concludes each book with an inspiring letter that encourages readers to get involved with community improvement projects with themes tied to the book. Now that's holiday spirit.

Hannah's Hope
By Karen Kingsbury
Warner Faith, $13.99
162 pages
ISBN 0446532363

Amy Scribner is celebrating the holidays with her family in Olympia, Washington.