A Mrs. Miracle Christmas

 Still reading my Christmas book stash, as you can tell by A Mrs. Miracle Christmas (#1,031) by Debbie Macomber.  I must admit, her Dashing Through the Snow (See my post of 12/13/2021.) is much more to my taste.  I would classify A Mrs. Miracle Christmas as a Christian fiction work because of its heavy emphasis on faith and Scriptures.

Here, Mrs. Miracle (and her friends Shirley, Goodness and Mercy) appear again in the story of a young couple struggling with infertility and caring for a beloved grandmother whom they are slowing losing to dementia.  After having a foster baby reclaimed by a birth parent only a few days before his adoption was to be finalized, Laurel and Zach have decided they cannot endure any more heartbreak.  They will never become parents.  Laurel is lost in her despair, but Zach still maintains a spark of hope, and that is where Mrs. Miracle comes in.  On the surface, she is sent by the Caring Angels agency to provide companionship to Helen, so that Laurel and Zach are free to go to their jobs without worrying about Helen home alone and isolated.  But when Helen shows amazing improvement, and claims Mrs. Miracle is an angel, well, what should the couple do?  There's a miracle in it for everyone.

An Island Christmas

Nantucket is the charming island of An Island Christmas (#1,030) by Nancy Thayer.  One of this year's Hallmark Channel's Christmas movies, A Nantucket Christmas, was based on one of her previous books.  I did watch it, and was terribly disappointed that the movie was filmed in the Pacific Northwest instead of Nantucket.  Nantucket with mountains?  I don't think so!

Nevertheless, I did enjoy An Island Christmas.  The course of true love never does run smooth as Felicia Gordon and her outdoor-loving fiance Archie Galloway, return to Nantucket for a Christmas wedding to please her parents.  Jilly has never quite approved of Archie and the couple's adventurous lifestyle.  She's sure Felicia would be better off with her childhood best friend Steve, who has just bought the house next door...

Things play out as they're meant to, and the pleasure is in reading how it all works out for the best.  A cozy Christmas read.

The Rose Code

Kate Quinn has planted an Easter Egg in her latest novel about Bletchley Park, the clandestine British think tank which broke the German Enigma codes, The Rose Code (#1,029).  Maybe I should say she planted a Faberge egg, since it's related to the royal family!

A socialite, a shop girl and a timid crossword puzzle whiz, all with secrets of their own, walk into a cryptanalyst unit...

The story jumps between two timelines: the unlikely friendship of three women based on their recruitment to work at Bletchley Park during World War II, and the period just before Princess Elizabeth's wedding to Prince Philip.  Codes that Osla, Mab and Beth struggled to break, and which eventually broke apart their friendship, are still at play years later with deadly consequences.  The Rose Code is the work of a traitor at Bletchley who is still in a position of influence. Beth, Mab and Osla must overcome their differences to work together to break this seemingly unbreakable code before they lose everything.

It's an engrossing read, based largely on composites of real people, and how in their own ways, they strove to aid the war effort.  If travel is ever possible again in our future, I'll add the restored Bletchley Park to my bucket list to visit.  If not, The Rose Code will give you a fair idea of how it must have functioned and how valuable their contributions were.

Rogue Protocol

 Rogue Protocol (#1,028) is the third entry in Martha Wells' The Murderbot Diaries.  It's just as entertaining as the previous two novellas, and just as full of danger and ethical choices our AI SecUnit never thought it would have to make before it disabled the internal governor which compelled it to obey orders from humans without questions or thoughts.

Our Murderbot is still trying to track down the reasons behind the attacks on the survey crew in the first book, All Systems Red, and solve the mystery of why it apparently massacred a group of humans on a remote station. (See my posts of 9/16/2021 & 11/16/2021.) Was that an implanted suggestion, or did it really happen?  Again, Murderbot is side-tracked by the humans on the transport unit it has stowed away on to reach its final destination.  Despite itself and its best efforts, Murderbot comes to the rescue (Just barely!) once more.

I can't wait to find out what happens next to Murderbot, one of my favorite snarky characters!

The Santa Suit

Yup, I'm still on my pre-Christmas holiday reading binge with Mary Kay Andrews' The Santa Suit (#1,027).  This one came recommended by my librarian, as I've never read any of Ms. Andrews' books before.  It was a lovely story, indeed, of second chances and the true meaning of the Christmas spirit.

Ivy Perkins is divorced and bitter when she decides to buy a country farmhouse in the mountains of North Carolina sight unseen.  It's not exactly as pictured, and much to her surprise, chock-a-block full of the former owners' furniture and mementos.  Fortunately, her real estate agent is on hand to help Ivy with some of the basic repairs to the property.  Ezra Wheeler goes out of his way to help his newest client.  It doesn't hurt that he's mighty easy on the eyes to boot, even though Ivy has sworn off romance for good!

While sorting through the closet in her new bedroom, Ivy finds a beautifully tailored red velvet Santa Claus suit with all the accessories, including a touching note from long ago little girl tucked in an inner pocket.  When Ivy learns from her new friends in town that the house was formerly owned by Santa Bob and Mrs. Santa Betty Rae Rose who brightened the entire community with their Christmas spirit and behind-the-scenes charities, Ivy decides to try to find out what ever happened to the little girl whose note so touched Santa Bob all those years ago.

You might need a kleenex or two for this touching tale!

Dashing Through the Snow

I do love reading Christmas books this time of year, and Debbie Macomber is one of my favorite authors.  (My husband still regrets the many emails he receives each year encouraging him to read Debbie Macomber's latest books after buying me one for Christmas a few years ago!)  I found Dashing Through the Snow (#1,026) on display at my library and thoroughly enjoyed it.

When Ashley Davison and Dash Sutherland are forced to share a car to drive from San Francisco to Seattle, they have no idea that the FBI are on their tail, or that this trip will change both of their lives.  And of course there's a dog involved!  An abandoned puppy to be precise.  It's all a merry mélange of mistaken identities, can't miss deadlines and snow.  

The cover of the book, which came out in 2015, says that Dashing Through the Snow was soon to be a Hallmark Movie.  I've been watching out for it to see if it comes up on the list this season because the book was a hoot, and I'd like to see what they did with it in the movie version.  Something else to look forward to!

The Dictionary of Lost Words

 I think that Pip Williams' novel The Dictionary of Lost Words (#1,025) about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) could have done with some judicious pruning.  Quite a lot of pruning, actually.  Her premise is that the words of women and the common folk were largely ignored when compiling this massive work.  Fair point, since it was guided by a group of white, well-educated academics, headed by James Murray.

Williams' protagonist here is Esme Nicols.  She is the daughter of one of Murray's work team in the Scriptorium, a corrugated tin shed in Murray's garden where most of the work was conducted.  Esme is only five when the book begins, but she starts out by not returning a slip with a word destined for the dictionary which has fallen under the table where she sits.  The word written on this putative slip was "bondmaid".  It never did make it into the original published version, and so Esme's career as an untrustworthy adjunct to this historical work begins.  She begins to collect and hoard words from other sources, many vulgar, but all in usage so common that they never achieve the status of academic notice.  

Personally, I did not care for the character of Esme at all.  She was whiny and dependent on others, especially a servant of the Murrays, Lizzie Lester, to prop her up emotionally, and basically wait on her hand and foot.  The only time she seems to take any initiative is when she manages to get herself pregnant.  Of course, she gives up the child which allows her to be angst-full for the rest of this seemingly interminable book.  I can't believe this book was nominated for a Goodreads Best Historical Fiction Book for 2021!

If you want to read a truly interesting book about the OED, I'd recommend the non-fiction The Madman and the Professor by Simon Winchester.  It won't take nearly as long to read, either!