Laid off from her department store job, Carmen has perilously little cash and few options. The prospect of spending Christmas with her perfect sister Sofia does not appeal. Frankly, Sofia doesn’t exactly want her prickly sister Carmen there either. But Sofia has yet another baby on the way, a mother desperate to see her daughters get along, and a client who needs help revitalizing his shabby old bookshop. So Carmen moves in and takes the job. Thrown rather suddenly into the inner workings of Mr. McCredie’s ancient bookshop on the picturesque streets of historic Edinburgh, Carmen is intrigued despite herself. The store is dusty and disorganized but undeniably charming. Can she breathe some new life into it in time for Christmas shopping?

The world of magick and the world of man have long been estranged from one another. But some can walk between the two, including Breen Siobhan Kelly. She has just returned to Talamh with her friend, Marco, who is dazzled and disoriented by this realm --- a place filled with dragons, faeries and mermaids. He is welcomed kindly by her people, and by Keegan, leader of the Fey. Keegan has trained Breen as a warrior, and his yearning for her has grown along with his admiration of her strength and skills. But one member of Breen’s bloodline is not there to embrace her. Her grandfather, the outcast god Odran, plots to destroy Talamh --- and now all must unite to defeat his dark forces.

Fresh off her wolverine study in Montana, wildlife biologist Alex Carter lands a job studying a threatened population of polar bears in the Canadian Arctic. Embedded with a small team of Arctic researchers, she tracks the majestic bears by air, following them over vast, snowy terrain, spending days leaning precariously out of a helicopter with a tranquilizer gun, until she can get down on the ice to examine them up close. But as her study progresses, and she gathers data on the health of individual bears, things start to go awry. Her helicopter pilot quits unexpectedly, equipment goes missing, and a late-night intruder breaks into her lab and steals the samples she’s collected. Someone doesn’t want her to complete her study, but Alex is not easily deterred.

When a star dies, a new one must be born. The Sun God chooses the village of Endwever to provide a mortal womb. The birthing of a star is always fatal for the mother, and Ceris Wenden sacrifices herself to secure her family’s honor. But after her star child is born, Ceris does what no other star mother has: she survives. When Ceris returns to Endwever, it’s not nine months later --- it’s 700 years later. Inexplicably displaced in time, Ceris is determined to seek out her descendants. Being a woman traveling alone brings its own challenges, until Ceris encounters a mysterious --- and desperate --- godling. Ristriel is the only being who can guide Ceris safely to her destination. Now, as Ceris traverses realms both mortal and beyond, her journey truly begins.

Twenty-seven years ago, Sheriff Bree Taggert’s father killed her mother, then himself. Now Bree and her younger brother, Adam, find human bones on the grounds of their abandoned family farm. The remains are those of a man and a woman, both murdered in the same horrible way. When the investigation determines the murders occurred 30 years ago, Bree’s dead father becomes a suspect, forcing Bree to revisit the brutal night she has spent most of her life trying to forget. The only other suspect is an unlikely squatter on the Taggert farm who claims to know secrets about Bree’s past. When he mysteriously disappears and Bree’s niece is kidnapped, the cold case heats up. Bree has stoked the rage of a murderer who will do anything to keep his identity --- and motives --- a secret.

Christmas has come early to the town of Paterson, New Jersey, in the form of a snowstorm that dumps two feet of snow on the ground. Lawyer Andy Carpenter likes snow, but it can cause problems for the walks he takes his dogs on every day. When Andy’s golden retriever, Tara, goes to play in the snow and instead discovers a body, Andy ends up on the phone with the local newspaper editor. The murder victim is Mayor Alex Oliva, who had an infamous relationship with the newspaper. Last year a young reporter published an exposé, and Oliva had him fired for libel. Now, the young reporter --- and prime suspect --- is in need of a lawyer. Andy agrees to take the case, though it’s not looking good this holiday season.

Leda Foley is a devoted friend, struggling travel agent and inconsistent psychic. Impulsively rebooking Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt’s flight, she has no idea that her life is about to change in ways she never could have foretold. When his original plane blows up on the runway, Grady begins to suspect that Leda’s special abilities could help him with a cold case he just can’t crack. Despite her scattershot premonitions, she agrees to join the investigation for a secret reason: her fiancé’s murder remains unsolved. Leda performs klairvoyant karaoke at her favorite bar, singing whatever song comes to mind when she holds people’s personal effects. Now joined by a ragtag group of bar patrons and pals, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer --- and learn how the two cases that haunt them have more in common than they ever suspected.

Bernie is in the holiday spirit and refers a potential client to Victor Klovsky, a fellow private eye. But when Victor doesn’t show up at his mom’s to light the Hanukkah candles, she hires Chet and Bernie to find him. They soon discover that Victor’s client has also vanished. The trail leads to the ruins of a mission called Nuestra Señora de los Saguaros, dating back to the earliest Spanish explorers. Some very dangerous people are interested in the old mission. Does some dusty archive hold the secret of a previously unknown art treasure, possibly buried for centuries? What does the Flight into Egypt --- when Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus fled Herod --- have to do with saguaros, the Sonoran desert cactus?

Ten-year-old Grace is in search of a subject for her fifth-grade history project when she learns that her four times-great grandfather once stabbed his lover to death. His grisly act was memorialized in a murder ballad, her aunt tells her, so it must be true. But the lessons of that revelation --- to be careful of men, and desire --- are not just Grace’s to learn. Her family’s tangled past is part of a dark legacy in which the lives of generations of women are affected by the violence immortalized in folksongs like “Knoxville Girl” and “Pretty Polly,” reminding them always to know their place --- or risk the wages of sin.

Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt loves Christmas. For a decade she’s hidden her career as a Christmas romance novelist from her Jewish family. Her talent has made her a bestseller even as her chronic illness has always kept the kind of love she writes about out of reach. But when her diversity-conscious publisher insists she write a Hanukkah romance, her well of inspiration suddenly runs dry. Desperate not to lose her contract, Rachel is determined to find her muse at the Matzah Ball, a Jewish music celebration on the last night of Hanukkah, even if it means working with her summer camp archenemy: Jacob Greenberg. But as they spend more time together, Rachel finds herself drawn to Hanukkah --- and Jacob --- in a way she never expected.