The Regency Christmas IX

Five popular romance authors celebrate the Christmas holidays Regency style in an anthology of heartwarming tales, including "The Solid Silver Chess Set" by Sandra Heath, Carla Kelly's "No Room at the Inn," Edith Layton's "The Amiable Miser," "A Partridge in a Pear Tree" by Amanda McCabe, and Barbara Metzger's "A Home for Hannah." Original.

Romance anthologies allow readers to sample writers new to them, or writers they've lost track of, and this holiday batch is particularly lively and varied. A Regency Christmas is a sugarplum treat for fans of the classic Regency. In Edith Layton's delightfully witty "An Amiable Miser," a spinsterish bookstore clerk discovers her own present in the shape of the nobleman who helps her search for the owner of a treasure left in a book. Barbara Metzger uses an abandoned young girl to bring together an impoverished nobleman and an unconventional gentlewoman in her charmingly sweet "A Home for Hannah." A competition based on a popular Christmas carol has some unexpected romantic results in Amanda McCabe's polished "A Partridge in a Pear Tree." An elf prompts a formerly engaged couple stranded together in a snowstorm to rethink their relationship in Sandra Heath's magical "The Solid Silver Chess Set." And a lady suffering a reversal of fortune is dreading the holidays until she meets a man who shows her the true meaning of Christmas and romance in Carla Kelly 's poignant, superbly written "No Room at the Inn." John Charles
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