Kate Angell, Sandra Hill and Joy Nash Santa, Honey

"Ho, Humbug, Ho," by Kate Angell. In Holiday, Florida, Judge Hathaway sentenced Richmond Rogues baseball player Alex Boxer for speeding to perform forty hours community service as Santa at Wilmington Mall; the previous user of the costume recently died. Instead of celebrating the World Series win with his teammates in Miami he is stuck with kids drooling and wishing. Of course he wants to hit a walk off homer with local torturer Holly.

"Naughty or Nice" by Sandra Hill. Jessica Jones is so desperate she enters the Piggly Jiggly Supermarket wearing a Santa suit and carrying a gun as she plans a "stick-out". The Christmas Curse continues when her scheme fails and she takes the Brad Pitt in a Santa suit look alike Luke Carter as her hostage. He knows he could escape with ease, but tags along only to fall in love with the fruitcake that he ends up protecting.

"Christmas Unplugged" by Joy Nash. In New York, wannabe actress Emma catches her boyfriend tonguing another woman. To escape the city and her hurt, she persuades her sister, the "Minesweeper" expert to leave town on the vacation with her that she was supposed to take with cheating Todd. The siblings go to the Dutch Lodge in the Adirondacks. The sisters meet the owner's nephews with Emma and Jake, and Casey and Matt attracted respectively to one another

These are three warm Christmas romances starring wonderful protagonists; although the Sandra Hill tale is a reprint from the 1996 anthology The Night Before Christmas.

Harriet Klausner