It's the 2020 Strong Sense of Place 'Get Merry' Christmas Goodies Post

Two days away from being ten, our heroine Madeleine is an ambitious, trash-talking, cigarette-smoking torch singer who’s trapped in the body of a precocious 9-year old. Her mother has died, and her father is so wrapped up in his own grief, he has nothing left for Madeleine. But her mom gave her a gift before she died: a box of index cards inscribed with life advice like Never show up to someone’s home empty-handed and How to make a fist.

The legacy of the love notes, along with her inherited ability to sing like an angel, gives Madeleine purpose. She ditches her elementary school classes at Saint Anthony of the Immaculate Heart, then sets out on a mission to find Philadelphia’s legendary jazz club, The Cat’s Pajamas, where she’s determined to make her singing debut. Friendship, love, cocktails, and destiny collide on Christmas Eve Eve. {more}

Madeleine prefers to spend this and every recess alone, singing scales under her breath, walking laps up and down the parking lot. Madeleine has no friends: Not because she contains a tender grace that fifth-graders detect and loathe. Not because she has a natural ability that points her starward, though she does. Madeleine has no friends because she is a jerk. — Marie-Helene Bertino

Our heroine Natalie Marx is a firecracker. Her personal hero is Anne Frank, and she shares the diarist’s stubbornness and innate sense of self and justice. Natalie is equal parts fight and vulnerability, two traits that we continue to see as the story follows her from her teenage years in 1962 to adulthood in the ’80s.

While the catalyst of the action is the gently-worded, oh-so-polite anti-Semitism of the 1960s, this story is really a love story. With light humor and a few moments of devastating heartbreak, it’s all about family, forgiveness, and the grace inherent in every kind of love. It begins in the summer, but a pivotal scene takes place on Christmas in snowy Vermont, and the story is infused with the spirit of the holiday season. {more}

It was not complicated, and, as my mother pointed out, not even personal: They had a hotel; they didn’t want Jews; we were Jews. — Elinor Lipman

You better watch out; you just might cry. Krampus is coming to town. Half-goat, half-demon, with scruffy dark hair, fangs, curled horns, and an uncomfortably long tongue, Krampus is armed with chains and a bundle of birch sticks, all the better to lash out at naughty children before dragging them down to the underworld. Krampus is the antihero of Christmas in Central European folklore. In this story collection, the furry monster inspires tales with ironic twists, affecting family dynamics, dire consequences, and offbeat Christmas spirit.

Elizabeth Twist’s story ‘Prodigious’ was inspired by a collection of vintage Krampus postcards. It’s the tale of an unusual toy story and a beleaguered employee forced to wear a stinky Krampus costume at the company Christmas party. Darkly funny with a diabolical twist at the end. Other stories feature a town with a Christmas amusement park, an extraordinary doll, a Santa who desperately needs therapy, and a retired cop who faces his dark past with a little help from Krampus. {more}

‘Krampus is not a man. Krampus is a beast. He is a beast with tangled black fur, horns like a goat, and a pointed tongue as long as my arm. He walks on two cloven feet. He carries a great basket on his back and a birch rod in his hand. Do you know what those are for?’

The children shook their heads, their eyes as large as dinner plates. ‘The birch rod is for whipping naughty children.’ — Lissa Sloan, ‘A Visit’

This is a New Year’s Eve tale, but the story of a cold-and-snowy, party-gone-wrong is always seasonally appropriate.

This suspenseful, delicious snarky novel features a group of nine thirty-something friends from Oxford travel. Every December 31, they travel to an exotic location to ring in the new year together. This time, they’re vacationing at an isolated hunting lodge in Scotland — and their celebration goes horribly, fabulously wrong.

The trip begins, as a thrilling adventure should, on a train from London to Scotland. There’s a decided party atmosphere on board as the old friends drink bubbly and get caught up on each others’ lives. But by the time they reach the snow-bound lodge of Loch Corrin, it’s painfully evident to all of them that something is off among their formerly tight-knit crew. As the year slowly winds down, tensions ratchet up until eventually, one of them is dead — and another one of them did it. {more}

New Year’s Eve. The loneliest night of the year, even if you’re with people. Even before my life fell apart. — Lucy Foley