December host: Suko’s Notebook
Synopsis: Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle–and people in general–has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence–creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world. Purchased with a Christmas gift card from my godson 🙂
♦
Synopsis: Two sisters whose lives seemed forever intertwined are torn apart when a magical little black dress gives each one a glimpse of an unavoidable future.
Antonia Ashton has worked hard to build a thriving career and a committed relationship, but she realizes her life has gone off-track. Forced to return home to Blue Hills when her mother, Evie, suffers a massive stroke, Toni finds the old Victorian where she grew up as crammed full of secrets as it is with clutter. Now she must put her mother’s house in order—and uncover long-buried truths about Evie and her aunt, Anna, who vanished fifty years earlier on the eve of her wedding. By shedding light on the past, Toni illuminates her own mistakes and learns the most unexpected things about love, magic, and a little black dress with the power to break hearts…and mend them. I bought it.
What was in your mailbox?
We had a wonderful Christmas celebration last week. My sister and her family hosted the annual family party on Christmas. I went to a Christmas concert with another sister where we heard beautiful music performed by a choir that included a dear friend. Christmas Eve was spent with my husband’s family. It was nice to see so many relatives and friends.
Welcome to my town, Harmony, Texas. I thought readers might like to start the new year with a book set in a small town called CHANCE OF A LIFETIME. Once in a while everything comes together in a story that makes it fun to write. I think you’ll love the visit where secrets whisper of old love affairs and kindness to others warms your heart.
Jodi currently serves as the Writer in Residence at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas.
Synopsis: 
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From the synopsis: 
Synopsis: Anna DeStefano presents a touching Christmas story about love, loss, and healing—and the joys of coming home.
My thanks to author Sophie Barnes for the gift of Five Golden Rings!
I won 
I spent yesterday, a rainy Saturday, with two of my sisters baking a boatload of Christmas cookies. We came prepared with our dough ready to be baked. Even with that timesaver we baked from 9am to 5pm. I have a newfound respect for professional bakers!! My neck and back were sore and by the time I arrived home I was ready to call it a day. But it was worth it because my baking is pretty much done. And I’d spent a fun day with my sisters. And Abby the wonder dog 🙂
cookies but found I was missing an ingredient so I went to my 
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, beer, wine, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page. More information at the 
A few months ago I read and reviewed Timeless Desire: An Outlander Love Story by Gwyn Cready. You can find the review 
(Publisher synopsis): What if you could live again and again, until you got it right?
(from the Publisher synopsis) Millions of people love Ina Garten because she writes recipes that make home cooks look great; family and friends shower them with praise and yet the dishes couldn’t be simpler to prepare using ingredients found in any grocery store. In Barefoot Contessa Foolproof, the Food Network star takes easy a step further, sharing her secrets for pulling off deeply satisfying meals that have that “wow!” factor we all crave.
We decorated the tree last week. Our younger daughter came over and helped and then we watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and had dinner. I used Instagram to take the picture. I think I have a lot to learn about that app.
Synopsis: (Publisher) 
Title: Spare Change
(From the review copy synopsis): Set in Bakerton, Pennsylvania – the company town that was the setting of Jennifer Haigh’s award-winning bestseller Baker Towers – News from Heaven explores how our roots, the families and places in which we are raised, shape the people we eventually become. Through a series of connected stories, Haigh brilliantly portrays this close-knit community, from its heyday during two world wars to its decline in the final years of the twentieth century. Exploring themes of restlessness, regret, redemption, and acceptance, she depicts men and women of different generations shaped by dreams and haunted by disappointments.
(Publisher synopsis): The New York Times bestselling author takes us back to Harmony, Texas, where big dreams are brewing—and anything and everything is possible…
We put up (assembled really – its been years since we bought a cut tree) the Christmas tree. It’s pre-lit and, judging from the photo, it looks its age and maybe like it needs a few new lights. Our daughter will come over Monday evening for dinner and to help with the ornaments (they’re in the red boxes). I still need to buy a wreath for the front door. That will be a wonderfully aromatic made-from-real-greens wreath.
Title: The Garden of Happy Endings
Publisher’s Summary: Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman reveals the astonishingly accurate predictions of Britain’s most famous prime minister and how his critics’ perceptions of them shaped his political career. Who could have foreseen the start of World War I twenty-five years before the assassination of a Serbian archduke plunged Europe into war? Who could have predicted the rise of al-Qaeda nearly eight decades before anyone had heard of Osama bin Laden? Winston Churchill did. Now for the first time, bestselling author James C. Humes reveals these and other shocking predictions made by this legendary figure. Churchill didn’t need a crystal ball to tell the future. Using his skills as a historian, he studied patterns of the past to make his eerily accurate forecasts, including the rise of European fascism, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the exact day of his own death as he entered his final years. In fascinating detail, Humes’ astonishing biography documents the spot-on prophecies Churchill foretold and the political consequences he endured for sharing them.
Goodreads Synopsis: Deirdre Griffin has a great life; it’s just not her own. She’s the around-the-clock personal assistant to her charismatic, high-maintenance, New Age guru brother, Tag. As the family wallflower, her only worth seems to be as gatekeeper to Tag at his New England seaside compound. Then Deirdre’s sometime boyfriend informs her that he is marrying another woman, who just happens to be having the baby he told Deirdre he never wanted. While drowning her sorrows in Tag’s expensive vodka, Deirdre decides to use his massive online following to get herself voted on as a last-minute Dancing with the Stars replacement. It’ll get her back in shape, mentally and physically. It might even get her a life of her own. Deirdre’s fifteen minutes of fame have begun.
Bookfan 