A Lot Like Christmas
Stories
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4.4 • 14 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
This new, expanded edition of Miracle and Other Christmas Stories features twelve brilliantly reimagined holiday tales, five of which are collected here for the first time.
Christmas comes but once a year, yet the stories in this dazzling collection are fun to read anytime. They put a speculative spin on the holiday, giving fans of acclaimed author Connie Willis a welcome gift and a dozen reasons to be of good cheer.
Brimming with Willis’s trademark insights and imagination, these heartwarming tales are full of humor, absurdity, human foibles, tragedy, joy, and hope. They both embrace and send up many of the best Christmas traditions, including the holiday newsletter, Secret Santas, office parties, holiday pageants, and Christmas dinners (both elaborate and spare). There are Rockettes, the best and worst Christmas movies, modern-day Magi, Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come—and the triumph of generosity over greed. Like all the timeless classics we return to year after year, these stories affirm our faith in love, magic, and the wonder of the season.
Praise for A Lot Like Christmas
“A perfect stocking stuffer for Christmas—celebrating fans of [Connie] Willis’s humorous SF.”—Publishers Weekly
“A collection of Christmas stories with just the right blend of sugar and spice . . . sweet and sharp, whimsical and heartfelt, funny and warm . . . Fans of Willis’s gently comic speculative fiction will love this collection, and it will also appeal to readers looking to get into the holiday spirit.”—Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
SFWA Grand Master Willis (Crosstalk) offers up a hearty helping of Christmas cheer with sprinklings of mystery and magic in this reprint collection, drawn from over 30 years of work. She begins by describing her love for all things Christmas and her thoughts on what constitutes a proper Christmas story. The stories all have a similar tone of romantic comedy mixed with speculative fiction. Many also weave in Willis's holiday-entertainment preferences, so "Miracle" features the original Miracle on 34th Street (which she prefers to It's a Wonderful Life) as well as the Spirit of Christmas Present (one of many references to her beloved Dickens). "All Seated on the Ground" imagines a first contact with aliens in which carols are the keys to communication. The Holy Family appear via time travel or dimensional warping to be initially unwelcome again in "Inn," and modern-day magi travel from the East in "Epiphany." There's unexplained snowfall in "Just like the Ones We Used to Know" and a Christmas murder that riffs on Conan Doyle, Christie, and Poe in "Cat's Paw." There are androids and Rockettes, Christmas decorations, newsletters, and much more folderol with happy endings all around. This is a perfect stocking stuffer for Christmas-celebrating fans of Willis's humorous SF.
Customer Reviews
Wow!
Nothing saccharine here—an author with a vibrant sense of humor and the ridiculous who really loves Christmas, writing quirky stories set around this holiday, all of them excellent. There’s a list of Christmas movies, and of TV shows to watch throughout December.
I may just have to reread it each year, and I hope she’ll have another such collection soon!