One for the Books: Christmas stories for your Christmas holiday

To get into the holiday spirit, I found a few stories set during the Christmas season.* Mostly, I was looking for heartwarming and cheerful, and mostly, I found it. Some of these are short and sweet, so I’ve included the number of pages in each.

"The Christmas Book Flood" by Roseanna M. White is set in Reykjavik, Iceland, in December 1944. Tatiana works at her uncle’s book publishing company. Her sister, in medical stress, asks Tatiana to keep her daughter, 7-year-old Elea, for a few weeks. For Tatiana, Elea “was, quite possibly, her favorite person in the world.” And there’s another person she especially likes: Anders, an author who works with her. He also is attracted to her, but the two are unaware of the other’s feelings. Anders thinks his family disapproves of him because he’s not a fisherman, as they are. But at the publishing house, “These were his people. Other lovers of books, of the written word. ... Here, he was understood. Appreciated.” After the city’s book publishers agree to put out one combined book catalog, so many orders flood in that everyone has to pitch in to fulfill orders in time for Christmas. (This is based on a true event.)