Recommended reads for December 2020: Print Material

Hang the stockings, deck the hall--and cook up a happy holiday! When it comes to Christmas, no one does it like Good Housekeeping. Brimming with more than 300 celebration-worthy recipes, sparkling decorating ideas, and suggestions for homemade (and home-baked) gifts, this sumptuous, mouthwatering collection will make the season extra merry.

After the fantastic Decorating Cupcakes, Cakes, & Cookies, baking queen Annie Rigg is back with more than 25 gorgeous and achievable ideas for cupcakes for the holiday season.

'The Gingerbread Architect' offers a quirky combination: from a baker and an architect, the only modern gingerbread book that employs the principles of great baking and great design.

Defines each day with the principle, its candle color, symbol, a descriptive story of poem, and a bunch of make-it-now crafts...Recipes, too, are easy to imitate, from banana bread as a gift to rice and black-eyed peas eaten on New Year's Day for good luck.

Explores the ways American Jews have reshaped Hanukkah traditions across the country In New Orleans, Hanukkah means decorating your door with a menorah made of hominy grits. Latkes in Texas are seasoned with cilantro and cayenne pepper. Children in Cincinnati sing Hanukkah songs and eat oranges and ice cream. While each tradition springs from its own unique set of cultural references, what ties them together is that they all celebrate a holiday that is different in America than it is any place else.

"By some uncanny act of artistic appropriation, [Clinch] has, without imitating Dickens, entered into the phantasmagoric realm that is the great novelist's quintessential territory...Startling and creative...Remarkable... Masterly." --The New York Times Book Review From the acclaimed author of Finn comes a masterful reimagining of Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol with this darkly entertaining exploration of the relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley. "Marley was dead, to begin with," Charles Dickens tells us at the beginning of A Christmas Carol. But in Jon Clinch's ingenious novel, Jacob Marley, business partner to Ebenezer Scrooge, is very much alive: a rapacious and cunning boy who grows up to be a forger, a scoundrel, and the man who will be both the making and the undoing of Scrooge. They meet as youths in the gloomy confines of Professor Drabb's Academy for Boys, where Marley begins their twisted friendship by initiating the innocent Scrooge into the gentle art of extortion. Years later, in the dank heart of London, their shared ambition manifests itself in a fledgling shipping empire. Between Marley's genius for deception and Scrooge's brilliance with numbers, they amass a considerable fortune of dubious legality, all rooted in a pitiless commitment to the soon-to-be-outlawed slave trade. As Marley toys with the affections of Scrooge's sister, Fan, Scrooge falls under the spell of Fan's best friend, Belle Fairchild. Now, for the first time, Scrooge and Marley find themselves at cross-purposes. With their business interests inextricably bound together and instincts for secrecy and greed bred in their very bones, the two men engage in a shadowy war of deception, false identities, forged documents, theft, and cold-blooded murder. Marley and Scrooge are destined to clash in an unforgettable reckoning that will echo into the future and set the stage for Marley's ghostly return. Meticulously crafted and beguilingly told, Marley revisits and illuminates one of Charles Dickens's most cherished works to spellbinding effect.

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the High Sierras. But Smoke Jensen and his children, Louis and Denise, won't let a little snow stop them from heading to Reno for the holidays. There are two ways for them to get there: the long way, going around the Sierra Nevada Mountains, or the short way, going right through them. Smoke decides to take a gamble. They'll follow the trail that, decades earlier, brought the legendary Donner Party to a gruesome, tragic end. The Jensens share a stagecoach with a stranger who's planning to rob a bank. Smoke wants to stop him, as well as his notorious gang of outlaws. But he's outgunned and outnumbered. And when a blizzard traps them in the mountains, he's out of luck too. Like the Donner Party before them, the Jensens will be forced to do whatever it takes to survive. This time, they're hoping history doesn't repeat itself. But sometimes, the ghosts of the past just won't stay buried."--Publisher's description.

Erin is one smart cookie, but can she keep the holiday spirit--and herself--alive till Christmas? In Jewel Bay, all is merry and bright. At Murphy's Mercantile, AKA the Merc, manager Erin Murphy is ringing in the holiday season with food, drink, and a new friend: Merrily Thornton. A local girl gone wrong, Merrily has turned her life around. But her parents have publicly shunned her, and they nurse a bitterness that chills Erin. When Merrily goes missing and her boss discovers he's been robbed, fingers point to Merrily--until she's found dead, a string of lights around her neck. The clues and danger snowball from there. Can Erin nab the killer--and keep herself in one piece--in time for a special Christmas Eve? Includes delicious recipes!

Laced with humor, rich historical detail from Charles Dickens' life, and clever winks to his work, Samantha Silva's Mr. Dickens and His Carol is an irresistible new take on a cherished classic.

Ransom Canyon welcomes you back for a Christmas that has everything you're looking for: romance, family and a whole lot of Texas.

A bad deal for Mrs. Frugalicious   When Maddie Michaels, AKA Mrs. Frugalicious, is invited to take a local news crew with her on a Black Friday shopping expedition, she's excited to show viewers at home how to score the season's best savings. Despite a negative comment from Contrary Claire-- the sole naysayer in her growing Frugarmy--Maddie is hopeful her first TV appearance will be a bargain-savvy success. But Black Friday eve takes a bleak turn when a shopper is crushed beneath a pallet of toasters. After learning that the victim could be Contrary Claire, it becomes clear that Claire has made more than one enemy. Maddie finds herself dealing once again with a murder investigation. Will she catch the killer before someone else is slashed like a sale price? Includes couponing tips! Praise: "A fun and savvy mystery."--Booklist

Discounts are no longer the exception, they're the norm. But is that bargain really a bargain? Paying full price is so passe. A quarter of the population will only open their wallets if something is on sale. Everyone wants a deal, a steal, a hookup with a discount or a way to cut costs. People don't only want a deep discount, they expect it and won't settle for anything less. They're lucky, then, that almost half of everything sold in America is listed at some kind of promotional price. It's a seismic shift that has made shoppers more savvy than ever, generating phenomena like extreme couponing, flash sales, and Groupon. So there's never been a better time to be a buyer, right? Perhaps. Sellers have developed their own tricks to protect profit margins amid such mark-down mania ones that include secret sales, shifting prices, and shredding perfectly good clothes. In this playful, deeply researched book, journalist Mark Ellwood takes a trip into this new landscape.

From the author of Love, Nina - a hilarious ode to the joys and insanities of the most wonderful time of the year Every family has its Christmas traditions and memories, and Nina Stibbe's is no exception. From her kitchen-phobic mother's annual obsession with roasting the perfect turkey (an elusive dream to this day) to the quest for a perfect teacher gift (memorable for all the wrong reasons); from the tragic Christmas tree ("is it meant to look like that?") to the acceptable formula for thank-you letters (must include Health Inquiry and Interesting Comment), Nina Stibbe captures all that is magical and maddening about the holidays.

Where did the best-loved traditions that make Christmas America's favourite holiday originate? With vintage illustrations by artists such as Thomas Nast, Everett Shinn, Al Hirschfeld, Arthur Rackham and others, Inventing Christmas explains how most of America's traditions evolved over the 25-year period from 1822 (when Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from St Nicholas was published) to 1848. Jock Elliott, who has been collecting Christmas ephemera for over 50 years, shows how Santa, the Christmas tree, gift-giving and Scrooge all came to signify Christmas.