Christmas Revels

Book excerpt: Celebrate! I love writing Christmas stories because they include three of my favorite things—tradition, lots of emotion, and a guaranteed happy ending. That’s why I’m delighted to reissue this holiday collection which includes four of my classic historical novellas, plus my only contemporary novella. What all these tales have in common is two people discovering life’s greatest gift, love, at the happiest time of the year. Enjoy! —Mary Jo Putney Sunshine for Christmas follows a lonely young aristocrat to Italy for the holidays, where he finds something even more precious than sunshine. (The hero, Lord Randolph Lennox, was a secondary character in my RITA winning novel, The Rake.) The Christmas Cuckoo features level-headed young Meg who goes to the local coaching inn and comes home with the wrong Jack Howard. And like a true cuckoo in the nest, Jack doesn't want to leave! The Christmas Tart is the tale of Nicole, a young Frenchwoman down on her luck in London, whose stark choice for survival gives her--and her kitten!—a new chance for happiness. The Black Beast of Belleterre is a Beauty and the Beast Victorian tale of a beautiful young artist and the husband who believes he cannot be loved. Of course he's wrong! In A Holiday Fling, a British actress and a Hollywood cameraman team up to film a Christmas show for a good cause. Anything that happens between them will be a strictly temporary holiday fling—or might it be more?