Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, bibliophiles! Can you believe it… December is rapidly coming to an end and Christmas is just a week away. While I try to juggle work, shopping, reading, doing a bit of writing (I couldn’t stay away), house hunting, and I suppose some sleep, I wanted to bring you guys some of my favorite seasonal reads. This list has some magical tales to tell while you curl up with by a fire and lose yourself in some feel-good emotions. If you or anyone on your list is an avid reader and are still in need of a gift this season, keep on scrolling and add these to your shopping while there’s still time!
A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd
Yes, the classic tale of Ralphie and his Red Ryder BB Gun was first a book (fun fact: You’ll spot the author in the department store scene, he says, “the line ENDS here, it begins there *pointing*. Jean is also the voice of the father in Carousel of Progress at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom). Shepherd’s writing style is just as quirky as his movie narration, and it’s just an enjoyable, comical page-turner.
A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana—the book that inspired the equally classic Yuletide film.
The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family’s typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.
This edition of A Christmas Story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Here is young Ralphie Parker’s shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine; his mother and father’s pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp; the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie’s duel in the show with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill; and, most crucially, Ralphie’s unstoppable campaign to get Santa—or anyone else—to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Who cares that the whole adult world is telling him, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid”?
The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story, previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories, coalesce in a magical fashion to become an irresistible piece of Americana, quite the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart and tickle the funny bone.
Once Upon a Christmas by Christina George
Beware: this book is part of a series so make sure you check out the other installments so you don’t miss anything!
Is it ever too late for happily ever after…?
Callahan is one of the hottest guys to move into Harper’s Corner in a long time, partly because he’s also a complete mystery.
He keeps to himself and leads a quiet life, rumors swirl around that he used to be in the military…but no one knows where he came from, or what brought him to their small town.
When Stevie’s parents have a health crisis, she’s forced to take leave from her very New York existence: including a high-powered job at a big publishing house and explosive sex life with her wealthy, handsome and appropriately pretentious boyfriend, to step in and ensure the preservation of the family’s longstanding bookstore.
With the first order of business being to fire Callahan, the unqualified shop assistant her dad hired.
Though as many women from Harper’s Corner can tell you, things change when you come back home.
So firing this attractive, brooding, secretive man turns out to be much harder than she originally planned…
And when his past comes back to challenge him, he can’t keep hiding from what happened.
I invite you to tuck into another Harper’s Corner story about finding love when you least expect it…once upon a time in a bookstore…
A Nanny for Christmas by Christina George
This is a Harper’s Corner series novella that I read as a standalone but I still suggest checking out the whole series! These books feel like reading a Hallmark movie and give you all the fuzzy feelings.
Willa O’Rourke knows the true story, the story that doesn’t sell magazines.
In less than 8 hours Willa went from being a behind-the-scenes nanny for one of the hottest A-list celebrity couples, to having her picture splashed all over every magazine in the country.
Caught in the arms of her sexy employer, Johnny Blaze.
No one cares that Johnny hit on her, and she repeatedly told him no.
The world thinks Willa O’Rourke is more interesting as the slutty, home-wrecking, opportunistic nanny. She even has a hashtag trending on Twitter. #dirtynanny
Humiliated and desperate to get away from the harsh eyes of Hollywood, she decides to take a short break from her suddenly not so glamorous life and head home for the holidays.
But a quiet Christmas to recoup before heading back to LA wasn’t in the cards.
She immediately runs into Jack, her seriously hot, fireman ex-boyfriend.
Despite Willa’s attempts to keep a low profile, she and Jack are thrown together for a Christmas charity project — making her wonder if she’s meant for a simpler life in Harper’s Corner after all.
All Wrapped Up for the Holidays by Various Authors
This is a collection of six short stories from a handful of contemporary romance/fiction authors that will put you in a holly jolly mood for sure.
Six standalone holiday short stories!
The Merry Mistake by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward
Note to self: Ask Santa for glasses this year. When I accidentally mistook a gorgeous man resting outside my building for a homeless person in need of lunch, we got into it. I’d only been trying to do a good deed around the holidays, but he called me righteous. I called him something far worse. If only I didn’t have to see him again. But fate had other plans.
Finding Perfect by Colleen Hoover
A short story that brings back several of Colleen’s most beloved characters. Told from the point of view of Daniel from Finding Cinderella, readers will finally get the story they’ve been begging for more of. For the best reading experience, make sure you’ve read all three books that come together to make up this heartwarming and fun holiday short story; Finding Cinderella, Hopeless and All Your Perfects.
A Rock Chick Christmas by Kristen Ashley
What’s Christmas with the Starks like? Get a peek into the Rock Chick world and how Luke copes with Ava going Christmas gaga and just what he will, and won’t, do for his girls during the holidays.
Just Say When by Jill Shalvis
When the one you want …
Is the one you can’t seem to have…
Can love conquer all?
The Pact by Elle Kennedy
Thanks to my hectic schedule as a pro hockey player, my girl and I are spending more time apart than together. Luckily, I have a solution—a romantic New Year’s Eve getaway in the mountains, just me and Grace and plenty of sexytimes. Except this blizzard has other ideas…
The Package by K. Bromberg
Christmas week can’t get any worse for Jules Jilliland. Dumped by her boyfriend, rear-ended on the freeway, and fired from her job, she finds herself stuck in an elevator with a handsome stranger. When their packages are accidentally swapped, will it end up being a misfortunate accident that suddenly brightens her holidays?
We Met in December by Rosie Curtis
I just finished this one the other day and it gave me all the Love Actually vibes!
Following a year in the life of a twenty-something British woman who falls hard for her London flat mate, this clever, fun, and unforgettable romantic comedy is the perfect feel-good holiday read.
Two people. One house. A year that changes everything.
Twenty-nine-year-old Jess is following her dream and moving to London. It’s December, and she’s taking a room in a crumbling, but grand, Notting Hill house-share with four virtual strangers. On her first night, Jess meets Alex, the guy sharing her floor, at a Christmas dinner hosted by her landlord. They don’t kiss, but as far as Jess is concerned the connection is clear. She starts planning how they will knock down the wall between them to spend more time together.
But when Jess returns from a two-week Christmas holiday, she finds Alex has started dating someone else—beautiful Emma, who lives on the floor above them. Now Jess faces a year of bumping into (hell, sharing a bathroom with) the man of her dreams…and the woman of his.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
I can’t really have a list of feel-good holiday stories and NOT put this book on my list. I love giving this one a re-read every year to help put things in perspective as a new year approaches. There is a FANTASTIC Audible version narrated by Tim Curry that I can’t recommend enough. I’ll link the version I listen to here. Also, if you haven’t yet seen The Man Who Invented Christmas, you should add that movie to your Christmas queue. It’s a wonderful story about Dickens’ process of writing, illustrating, and publishing his ghost story in the span of just six weeks.
‘If I had my way, every idiot who goes around with Merry Christmas on his lips, would be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. Merry Christmas? Bah humbug!’
To bitter, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas is just another day. But all that changes when the ghost of his long-dead business partner appears, warning Scrooge to change his ways before it’s too late.
One Day in December by Josie Silver
London at Christmas… and lots of angsty love and missed opportunities. Need I say more?
Two people. Ten chances. One unforgettable love story.
Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn’t exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there’s a moment of pure magic… and then her bus drives away.
Certain they’re fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn’t find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they “reunite” at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It’s Jack, the man from the bus. It would be.
What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness.
The Christmas Sisters by Sarah Morgan
Yes, this story is about sisters and family, but it also has a holiday romances galore and it’s just enchanting!
In the snowy Highlands of Scotland, Suzanne McBride is dreaming of the perfect cozy Christmas. Her three adopted daughters are coming home for the holidays and she can’t wait to see them. But tensions are running high…
Workaholic Hannah knows she can’t avoid spending the holidays with her family two years in a row. But it’s not the weight of their expectations that’s panicking her—it’s the life-changing secret she’s hiding. Stay-at-home mom Beth is having a personal crisis. All she wants for Christmas is time to decide if she’s ready to return to work—seeing everyone was supposed to help her stress levels, not increase them! Posy isn’t sure she’s living her best life, but with her parents depending on her, making a change seems risky. But not as risky as falling for gorgeous new neighbor Luke…
As Suzanne’s dreams of the perfect McBride Christmas unravel, she must rely on the magic of the season to bring her daughters together. But will this new togetherness teach the sisters that their close-knit bond is strong enough to withstand anything—including a family Christmas?
The Trouble with Mistletoe by Jill Shalvis
Beware: This is book two in the Heartbreaker Bay series (which also has other Christmas stories sprinkled throughout its series, so check them all out!).. there’s also a super adorable movie over on Passionflix which you should totally check out and sign up for if you haven’t already.
If she has her way …
Willa Davis is wrangling puppies when Keane Winters stalks into her pet shop with frustration in his chocolate-brown eyes and a pink bedazzled cat carrier in his hand. He needs a kitty sitter, stat. But the last thing Willa needs is to rescue a guy who doesn’t even remember her …
He’ll get nothing but coal in his stocking.
Saddled with his great-aunt’s Feline from Hell, Keane is desperate to leave her in someone else’s capable hands. But in spite of the fact that he’s sure he’s never seen the drop-dead-gorgeous pet shop owner before, she seems to be mad at him …
Unless he tempers “naughty” with a special kind of nice …
Willa can’t deny that Keane’s changed since high school: he’s less arrogant, for one thing—but can she trust him not to break her heart again? It’s time to throw a coin in the fountain, make a Christmas wish—and let the mistletoe do its work …
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
This might be me cheating a little, but this book kicks off at Christmas time and has given me holiday vibes since I was a kid and read the book/watched the movie when I was small. Plus, the latest version of the movie comes out on Christmas Day so why not?
Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.
It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with “woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Womenbrought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the “girl’s book” her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss
“The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.”
Dr. Seuss’s small-hearted Grinch ranks right up there with Scrooge when it comes to the crankiest, scowling holiday grumps of all time. For 53 years, the Grinch has lived in a cave on the side of a mountain, looming above the Whos in Whoville. The noisy holiday preparations and infernal singing of the happy little citizens below annoy him to no end. The Grinch decides this frivolous merriment must stop. His “wonderful, awful” idea is to don a Santa outfit, strap heavy antlers on his poor, quivering dog Max, construct a makeshift sleigh, head down to Whoville, and strip the chafingly cheerful Whos of their Yuletide glee once and for all.
Looking quite out of place and very disturbing in his makeshift Santa get-up, the Grinch slithers down chimneys with empty bags and stealing the Whos’ presents, their food, even the logs from their humble Who-fires. He takes the ramshackle sleigh to Mt. Crumpit to dump it and waits to hear the sobs of the Whos when they wake up and discover the trappings of Christmas have disappeared. Imagine the Whos’ dismay when they discover the evil-doings of Grinch in his anti-Santa guise. But what is that sound? It’s not sobbing, but singing! Children simultaneously adore and fear this triumphant, twisted Seussian testimonial to the undaunted cheerfulness of the Whos, the transcendent nature of joy, and of course, the growth potential of a heart that’s two sizes too small.
This holiday classic is perfect for reading aloud to your favorite little Whos.
A Wedding in December by Sarah Morgan
This is my current read for my book club, so stay tuned for a full review, but, so far so good!
From the USA Today bestselling author of The Christmas Sisters comes this funny, charming and heartwarming all new original Christmas novel. This is Sarah Morgan at her festive best!
In the snowy perfection of Aspen, the White family gathers for youngest daughter Rosie’s whirlwind Christmas wedding. First to arrive are the bride’s parents, Maggie and Nick. Their daughter’s marriage is a milestone they are determined to celebrate wholeheartedly, but they are hiding a huge secret of their own: they are on the brink of divorce. After living apart for the last six months, the last thing they need is to be trapped together in an irresistibly romantic winter wonderland.
Rosie’s older sister, Katie, is also dreading the wedding. Worried that impulsive, sweet-hearted Rosie is making a mistake, Katie is determined to save her sister from herself! If only the irritatingly good-looking best man, Jordan, would stop interfering with her plans…
Bride-to-be Rosie loves her fiancé but is having serious second thoughts. Except everyone has arrived—how can she tell them she’s not sure? As the big day gets closer, and emotions run even higher, this is one White family Christmas none of them will ever forget!
I hope you enjoy your holiday season with all of its trimmings and that these books (and others like them) put you in the Christmas spirit and remind you of joy, love, hope, and charity. Until next time, happy reading, happy holidays, and happy new year (I’ll be back before then)!
