Maggie Walther feels like her world is imploding. Publicly humiliated after her husband, a local councilman, is arrested for bigamy and her subsequent divorce, she has isolated herself from the world. When her only friend insists that Maggie climb out of her hole and embrace the season to get her out of her funk, Maggie decides to put up a Christmas tree and heads off to buy one--albeit reluctantly. She is immediately taken by Andrew, the kind, handsome...

The Christmas season is supposed to be full of joy, but not for Mark Smart. Life had dealt him one blow after another until one snowy November night, when he finds a beautiful young woman who will change his life forever. Macy Wood has little memory of her birth parents, and memories she'd rather forget of her adopted home. A Christmas ornament inscribed with the word 'Noel' is the only clue to the little sister she only vaguely remembers.

Examines the theme, characters, plot, style and technique of more than 700 nineteenth- and twentieth-century works by prominent authors from around the world.