Sugar and Spice

Great book to put you in the mood for the upcoming holiday season. My favorite story is by Fern Michaels and she is the reason I bought the book in the first place. I love how she writes! I read an excerpt from "The Christmas Stocking", in one of her 'Sisterhood' books which are my very favorite along with her Texas, Vegas, and Kentucky series'.

This Christmas-themed anthology comes from four well-known authors and offers some light reading for the romance lover.

Take one snow-covered Christmas season --- full, as always, of expectation and promise. Add one young woman and one young man thrown together by fate or circumstance. What is the result? Four interesting, very different romantic novellas by authors Fern Michaels, Beverly Barton, Joanne Fluke and Shirley Jump. In "The Christmas Stocking" by Fern Michaels, Amy Baran takes a leave of absence from her public relations firm in Philadelphia and returns home to Virginia to rescue her mother's holiday fund-raising project. The project --- selling Christmas trees in order to raise money to build a new senior citizens center --- has spun way out of control. Successful West Coast architect Gus Moss returns to the very same town to breathe some much-needed life back into his father's failing Christmas tree farm, Moss Farms. His father isn't interested in maintaining the business, but as part owner Gus wants to restore it to its former function. Both Amy and Gus deal with issues from their respective childhoods when they return home. From the moment they meet, they are at cross purposes, and their attraction to each other creates some complications and distractions as they forge ahead to rescue their parents. In "The Ghost of Christmas Past" by Beverly Barton, young widow Katie Hadley is fleeing her family's upcoming Christmas celebrations and memories of happier holidays with her late husband Darrell. When the car she's driving runs off the ice-covered mountain road near Gatlinburg, Tennessee, she finds herself totally dependent on the kindness of Mack MacKinnon, the brooding, handsome loner who rescues her. Mack drives Katie to his remote cabin in the woods where they are trapped for several days because of a severe winter storm. Katie and Mack are very uncomfortable in each other's company. At first Mack is taciturn and doesn't care to make small talk, while Katie wants to fill the time chatting and getting acquainted. She is trying, unsuccessfully, to put the past behind her; he also wants to shut out his past --- the war and his physical and emotional wounds. The atmosphere in the rustic cabin is tension-charged. Joanne Fluke's "The Twelve Desserts of Christmas" will have the reader torn between wanting to turn the pages and getting down the canisters of flour and sugar to make some of the delicious-sounding recipes that Hannah is baking for the students and their teachers. The setting is Minnesota, a boarding school during Christmas break. For various reasons, six children are unable to leave the campus, which means that two chaperones will be needed. Teachers Julie Jansen and Matt Sherwood, in the beginning stages of a romance, readily accept the assignment to look after the students, assuming they'll have time to be alone once the kids are settled down for the night. But the girls and boys have made a rather peculiar bet that neither side intends to lose. The boys create flimsy excuses that drag Matt away from Julie and interrupt any alone time

Free recipes, free ornament and 4 great Christmas stories. What gets better than that? This is my first Shirley Jump book.....wow! So real and so fresh. I loved it, and can't wait for her next one. She has a way of putting you in the room with her characters. While I liked the other three stories, Jump's work is definitely the stand-out.

This book has it all and the Christmas stories got me in the mood for the holidays. I love the ornament inside. It is something pretty to hang up and makes the book a great gift. I've never gotten a book with something like that before. Shirley Jump's story, "Twelve Days", about a sexy Secret Santa office exchange was my favorite. It reminded me of when I used to work in an office. I could relate to Natalie, who sometimes gets tongue-tied around Jake, the guy she's interested in. She is passionate about a charity she volunteers for too, making it a little deeper story than some romances. The story even gave me some fun, clever ideas to try on my sweetie. The book doubles as a Christmas cookbook. I'm still reading through, but Joanne Fluke's story "Twelve Desserts of Christmas," with a dozen recipes included, has almost tempted me to fire up the stove. Almost . There's even an index so you don't have to keep searching through the story when you're ready to cook. The Multiple-Choice Bar Cookies look interesting and the fudge cupcakes sound irresistable. The instructions are very detailed, which always helps! With a lot of bang for the buck, this book is a great way to cruise into the season, before the whole holiday hustle really heats up.