Allison Pittman

Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol is second only to the nativity story itself when it comes to public consciousness. Just as Jesus Christ changed the world on the night of his birth, so Ebenezer Scrooge changes during a single night of supernatural visitations. In Keeping Christmas, novelist and Dickens enthusiast Allison Pittman offers 25 readings for advent, seamlessly bringing together the Word of God and the words of A Christmas Carol. This...

"1788: In a tiny French village, during the waning days of peace, cousins Renee and Laurette live a peaceful, relatively contented life as the shepherdesses under the guardianship of the respectable Emile Gagnon. When Renee is given the chance to work as a seamstress at the Palace at Versailles, their lives take two very different paths straight into the heart of the Revolution. Based on a character who appears in the classic, A Tale of Two Cities"--...

Germany, 1505. In the dark of night, Katharina von Bora says the bravest good-bye a six-year-old can muster and walks away as the heavy convent gate closes behind her. Though the cold walls offer no comfort, Katharina soon finds herself calling the convent her home. God, her father. This, her life. She takes her vows--a choice more practical than pious--but in time, a seed of discontent is planted by the smuggled writings of a rebellious excommunicated...

All Camilla Deardon knows of the Mormons camping nearby is the songs she hears floating on the breeze. Then she meets one of them-a young man named Nathan Fox. Never did she imagine he would be so handsome, so charming, especially after Mama and Papa's warnings to stay away. Though she knows she should obey her parents, Camilla can't refuse her heart. But even Nathan's promises cannot prepare her for what she will face in Utah.

2012 Christy Award finalist, Historical category. Camilla Fox is alive. The last thing she remembers is being lost in the snow after leaving her home to escape the Mormon faith she no longer calls her own. She's been taken in by the 5th Infantry Regiment of the US Army and given over to the personal care of Captain Charles Brandon. As she regains her strength, memories of her two children she had to leave behind come flooding back, threatening to...

Can a Legacy of Sadness be Broken at Menger Hotel? Hedda Krause, a young widow in search of a new rich husband, checked into the Menger Hotel in 1915 with a case full of jewels - and never checked out. In 2017, Dini Blackstone gives ghost walk tours in San Antonio. Her favorite is the tale of Hedda Krause who, in Dini's estimation, perpetrated the world's longest con, dying old and wealthy. Hedda adamantly claimed a ghost apparition lured her into...

After moving to Northfield with her family in 1984, Elyse Nebbit faces the challenge of finding her place in a new school, one dominated by social status and Friday night football. When Elyse's effortlessly beautiful older sister Jayne starts dating Charlie Bingley, the captain of the school football team, Elyse finds herself curious about Charlie's popular and brooding best friend, Billy Fitz. Elyse's body insecurities eventually complicate her relationship...

Inside the walls of the Burnside mansion, Cullen Burnside, a disillusioned and disfigured veteran, and his widowed mother, Betty Ruth, who daily slips a little further into dementia, lead a lonely exsistence until fun-loving flapper Lilly arrives.