Great Christmas Reads

If you're looking for a few last minute stocking-stuffers, or just a great Yuletide tome to curl up by the fire with this Christmas, here are a few suggestions.

Of course the first, and most obvious choice for this Dark and Stormy blog, has to be the perennial classic, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  With fantastic passages like the one below, this story manages to capture the spirit of Christmas (no pun intended), while also maintaining a suitably brooding and gothic atmosphere for those of us inclined towards moody gaslight romanticism.


Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house.  It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.  The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.  The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.  To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

My second recommendation, Mary Balogh's A Christmas Promise, is quite possibly the best Christmas regency romance of all time.  Full of angsty passion, jolly times at a snow-covered country estate and an ending so heartwarming it brings tears to your eyes, this book has become a holiday classic.   

If you're in the mood to download a more whimsical holiday treat, try out Sweet Inspiration by Penny Watson.  Christmas elves, Santa and one fabulous romance!  


Merry Christmas!