The Noel Letters

May 1, 2020

After numerous No. 1 New York Times best-selling doggie delights, Cameron returns with A Dog's Perfect Christmas, featuring a peppy puppy easing a family's tough holiday problems (300,000-copy first printing). In Colgan's Christmas at the Island Hotel, set on an island between Scotland and Norway, new hoteliers Flora MacKenzie and brother Fintan get ready to open for the holidays while island-girl Isla loves her posh new waitress job and kitchen assistant Konstantin, secretly a duke's son sent to learn about hard work, starts liking the environs (100,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). The standard bearer for Christmas fiction, Evans keeps on glittering with The Noel Letters (200,000-copy first printing). In Macomber's Jingle All the Way, work-obsessed Everly Lancaster escapes the holidays for a tour of the Amazon river basin with handsome guide naturalist Asher Adams but suddenly feels she should go home for a snow-flecked Chicago Christmas. In Mallery's Happily This Christmas, single mom Wynn Beauchene helps cute neighbor cop Garrick ready his home for his visiting daughter, and the rest is romance. Novak's A California Christmas offers a new "Silver Springs" story to match the shine of the holidays (400,000-copy mass market and 10,000 hardcover first printing). In Roberts's One Charmed Christmas, emotionally burdened Catherine Pine escapes the holidays by taking a European river cruise, where not one but two suitors--a doctor and a chocolatier--await (75,000-copy first printing). Finally, In Donna VanLiere's The Christmas Table, John Creighton builds a table for his wife in 1972 and a pregnant Lauren Mabrey finds its decades later at a garage sale, with fabulous recipes stuffed in a drawer (150,000-copy first printing).

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September 15, 2020
The latest addition to the author's Noel Collection is chock-full of holiday spirit. Noel Book is a New York City book editor who's named after her birthday. She flies to Salt Lake City to visit her estranged father, Robert Book, before he dies of cancer and stay with him until his passing. Sadly, he dies hours before her arrival. "He tried to hold on for you," her father's friend says. "His last words were 'Tell Noel I'm sorry.' " She desperately wants to return to New York, but then she's fired from her job while still in Utah. Meanwhile, she inherits Dad's beloved bookstore and $1 million of life insurance along with his house and everything in it, "including all his personal belongings, which includes his automobile, his Lladr� and rare book collection." Now "he'd created roots to keep me here. Roots or chains?" She is an angry woman who thinks God (if such there be) hates her. She'd rejected her father's love after her mother's death in a car accident years earlier, and in "the last two months I'd lost my marriage, my apartment, my father, and now my job." Next, she breaks off a budding romantic relationship and alienates Dad's devoted friends. "You spread pain everywhere you go," she's told. In a word, she's being a jerk. Luckily, Dad's love was unconditional. He'd had a thriving business, a life surrounded by the books he loved, and friends who loved him deeply. In his final days, he wants his daughter to be happy. Throughout the story, she receives a series of wisdom-filled anonymous letters, handwritten in feminine script and signed "Tabula Rasa." Who could be sending them? The reader will guess, but Noel guesses wrong. There's a Dickensian arc that will make readers break out the eggnog and Christmas cookies. It evokes Tiny Tim's exhortation: "God bless us, every one." This enjoyable Yuletide tale deserves a place under many a Christmas tree.

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October 1, 2020
After losing her marriage, apartment, and job in New York, the last place Noel Books wants to land is back in Utah managing her late, estranged father's estate. When she takes ownership of the family bookshop, Noel dives into the world she escaped years ago and discovers her father may not have been the man she remembers. Then a series of anonymous letters addressed to Noel start arriving. Their mysterious encouragement about her inner worth, hope in darkness, and how much she is loved forces her to revisit her own stories from the past and reconcile them with the truth of her father's legacy. Evans returns to his holiday-themed Noel Collection, following Noel Street (2019) with a fourth standalone novel. The Noel Letters is a cozy yet poignant portrait of personal awakening amidst the complexity of grief in estrangement. Evans' seasoned finesse with his characters' emotional growth makes Noel a relatable protagonist whose struggles with self-worth and unexpected change feel familiar and validating. A lovely read that beautifully contrasts the mistruths of memory and the redemptive power of new beginnings.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)