Alice Taylor

Tess Strebel can’t recognize her own face. She can’t recognize her home. Her bedroom is unfamiliar. And she can’t remember the handsome stranger lying next to her in bed. A stranger who claims he’s her husband. Tess reads a letter in her own handwriting, composed during a rare lucid day, explaining her life as it now exists: She was in a terrible car accident one year ago. Every morning, she wakes up unable to remember most of the last decade. Including her own wedding. Tess has no choice but to accept her new life and hope her memory will return. After all, why should she doubt the letter she wrote to herself? Or the kind man from the wedding photos on her dresser who seems to genuinely care about her well-being? And then Tess receives a text message on her phone. One that changes everything: "Don’t trust the man who calls himself your husband."

The first story is by Victoria Alexander is "Promises to Keep". Katherine is a lonely 70 year old who sees Santa at a department store. She is 70 years old and has many regrets in her life, including the loss of her soul mate in 1942. Suddenly she finds herself swept back to that very point in her life that she always wished to change. She gets a real second chance to make things right this time. But is it too late? Is he still there? Sandra Hill’s story is called "Naughty or Nice". It's a journey through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, following a young woman, Jessica, through her 'Christmas Curse'. Jessica is dressed as Santa and is about to commit a crime, when she takes a hostage who coicidentally looks just like Brad Pitt who is also dressed like Santa. The two find themselves experiencing 'love at first sight'. The third story, by Dara Joy, is called "Santa Reads Romance". A female romance writer, May, goes to Maine and rents a cabin in the middle of nowhere to work on her book in peace. A blizzard begins and a man dressed as Santa shows up at her door. (He is a publisher doing a favour for a friend, while trying to find a mystery author and his overdue manuscript.) May knocks him out, thinking he is dangerous. Then they are stuck together, because of the howling blizzard. The last story is by Nelle McFather. It's called "A Gift for Santa". This is a tale of a single mother who finds true love and happiness on Christmas from a stranger named Nick.

The Phelans have occupied the same home in the village of Kilmeen for generations, tending their land, surviving a feud with unscrupulous neighbors, forming part of the social backbone of their community. But as the farm is handed on to the younger generation in the early 1950s, their longtime home is threatened from within.

Tales of childhood in rural Ireland.

All he wanted now was to see her suffer. Nick McMasters had loved Dana years ago, but he hadn't been good enough for her then. She was the daughter of a wealthy Australian grazier, and he was poor in all but ambition. Now their positions were reversed. She had lost everything and he was a millionaire, returned to New South Wales determined to take everything life had once denied him. And that, whether she liked it or not, included Dana herself....

Eighteen stories conveying the delight that lies in every detail of the festive season for a young child.

David Mamet's work as a playwright, essayist, director, and screenwriter has earned him a reputation as one of the most adventurous creative figures of our day. Now he turns his hand to fiction for the first time with The Village, a novel written with the explosive force and ferocious insight for which all Mamet's work is renowned. The Village brings to life a remote New England community full of dark undercurrents and brooding silences. One after another, the inhabitants of the village reveal themselves to us even as they conceal themselves from each other. Alternating vivid dialogue with the most private thoughts, the author takes us deep inside their secret selves, unfolding in particular the unspoken forces that shape relationships between men and women. These are unforgettable figures: an old hunter whose knowledge of the place is bone deep; a newcomer who chops firewood as his marriage expires; a slinky young woman whose every step unsettles the local males; a store owner fretting his way toward bankruptcy. Through a year the novel traces their lives, unfolding not one but a multitude of stories, revealing the profound interior drama of every human consciousness and the extraordinarily complex interconnections that animate the spirit of a place. Precisely observed and beautifully written, The Village is a landmark work from one of our most important writers.