Christmas at Fairacre（ISBN=9780618918102）

　　Have a happy Christmas in the English countryside with a volume of three heartwarming holiday tales from Miss Read. As frost sparkles on cottage roofs and smoke rises from chimneys, the English village of Fairacre is a perfect vision of Christmas joy -- but even in this cozy community, celebrations of the season do not always go as expected. In this enchanting holiday collection, Miss Read shares three of her most beloved and memorable Christmas tales. In Village Christmas, the Emery family is preparing to celebrate their first Christmas in Fairacre, having moved from London just three months before, and to welcome the birth of their fourth child. When the unexpected happens on Christmas morning, their new neighbors, the elderly Waters sisters, are fortunately nearby to lend a hand. The Christmas Mouse takes us to the nearby village of Caxley. Mrs. Berry has just finished her Christmas Eve preparations when a winter storm brings two visitors seeking refuge to her hospitable home. Their chance encounter will make this an unforgettable Christmas for them all. In No Holly for Miss Quinn, a family emergency disrupts Miss Quinn's plans for a quiet and fuss-free holiday. She agrees to look after her brother's three young children while their mother is ill and soon finds herself swept away by holiday traditions, the infectious enthusiasm of the children, and the surprising arrival of someone from her past. For uplifting reading, no one rivals Miss Read. Her delightful Christmas tales brim with good cheer and the spirit of Christmas itself.

　　A Carleton Hobbs Award Winner, Carole Boyd has worked extensively in radio drama and features, and is famously known as Lynda Snell in The Archers. In 1998 she won an APA Audio Award for The Land Girls and a British Talkie Award for The God of Small Things. In 2001 she won an SWPA Silver Award for Middlemarch. Carol has read numerous Miss Read titles for Orion Audiobooks. Miss Read, or in real life Dora Saint, was born 17 April 1913. A teacher by profession, she started writing after the Second World War for Punch and other journals and as a scriptwriter for the BBC. She is the author of many immensely popular books, including two autobiographical works, but it is for her novels of English rural life for which she is best known. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955 and Miss Read continued to write about the fictitious villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green until her retirement in 1996. She lives in Berkshire, and in the 1998 New Year Honours list was awarded an MBE for her services to literature.