Blue Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews

From the Publisher

Deck the halls with romance, intrigue, and great antiques!

It's the week before Christmas, and antiques dealer Weezie Foley is in a frenzy to garnish her shop for the Savannah historical district contest. She's ready to shoot herself with her glue gun by the time she's done, but the results are stunning. She's certainly one-upped the owners of the trendy boutique around the corner, but suddenly things start to go missing from her display, and there seems to be a mysterious midnight visitor to her shop.

Still, Weezie has high hopes—perhaps in the form of an engagement ring from her chef boyfriend, though Daniel, always moody at the holidays, seems more distant than usual. But throw in Weezie's decidedly odd family, a 1950s Christmas tree pin, and even a little help from the King himself (Elvis, that is), and maybe there will be a pocketful of miracles for Weezie this Christmas Eve.

Publishers Weekly

Weezie Foley has high hopes for Christmas this year. She's working herself into a frenzy decorating her antique shop to win the Savannah historic district decorating contest; she's searching for the perfect present for her chef boyfriend, Daniel; she planning Christmas dinner for the first time for her and Daniel's families. Add a mysterious visitor to the shop and a missing Christmas tree pin and it's almost more than Weezie can handle. Andrews's delightful characters come to life thanks to Keating's reading, which offers just the right mixture of Southern twang and upbeat lilt. She nicely captures the humor that runs through the novel and the variety of characters that populate Weezie's life. The male voices tend to come across as hoarse instead of masculine, but this doesn't detract from the overall enjoyment of a delightful Christmas tale full of memorable characters. This audio is the perfect gift this holiday season. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Andrews brings back characters from her best-selling Savannah novels (Savannah Breeze; Savannah Blues) for some holiday fun. Antiques dealer Weezie is fervently working to get her shop ready for the holidays, but she is distracted by a series of mysterious break-ins at her home, truck, and shop. Oddly enough, the only things missing are quirky display pieces and trays of party food. Meanwhile, Weezie's boyfriend, Daniel, hates Christmas, and his sour attitude is ruining any chance of a good time. And who is the mysterious bag lady who's decided to sleep in Weezie's display window? Readers who haven't read the other Savannah books will find themselves wanting more of Andrews's fresh, funny style. For all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/06.] Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Savannah antiques maven Eloise "Weezie" Foley returns to solve a Christmas mystery. Facing stiff competition from her "nearest and queerest" neighbors (rival shopkeepers Manny and Cookie), Maisie's Daisy proprietress Weezie pulls out all the stops to win Savannah's annual Christmas-decoration contest. She faces an early upset, though, when her fruit-festooned store windows are ruined, with all the edibles gone missing. Could it be the work of hungry birds? Or sabotage? Inspiration strikes again after she discovers a blue vintage Christmas-tree pin at an auction and uses it to create a '50s-themed kitsch extravaganza that wins her first prize-and perhaps some unwanted attention. Strange things start to happen soon after. Her beloved mutt Jethro runs away, only to be returned safely by an anonymous Good Samaritan who leaves the dog in Weezie's truck. Food (and nothing else) for a holiday party is stolen from her house, and a strange homeless woman is discovered sleeping in her "Blue Christmas" store window. Meanwhile, her grumpy chef boyfriend Daniel refuses to get into the holiday spirit, spending all his time toiling at his successful restaurant, Guale. Weezie suspects it is not work that is keeping him from enjoying himself, but rather bad memories of his childhood abandonment by his mother. Eager to spread some cheer and play peacemaker, she invites Daniel's remaining family to her house for Christmas Eve, where, not surprisingly, chaos ensues. Jethro gobbles (and vomits back up) a hot bowl of fresh crab dip, Daniel's vegan sister-in-law brings tofurky and two guests end up in the emergency room. The rest of this fluffy follow-up to Savannah Breeze (2006) is swiftly tied up asprofessional adversaries make nice, mysterious strangers are revealed to be long-lost loved ones and a way-overdue wedding proposal is enthusiastically accepted. Appealing character-driven holiday fair, with the slightest of plots.

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

Blue Christmas

HarperCollins

Chapter One

BeBe Loudermilk stopped dead in her tracks and gazed around the first floor of my antiques shop, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

She gestured toward the half-empty crates of apples, oranges, and kumquats scattered around my worktable, at the halved pineapples and the pomegranates spilling out of grocery sacks, and at the freshly fallen drifts of popcorn littering the floor.

"What the hell?" she said dramatically. There are very few statements BeBe makes that are not laden with drama.

"Are you now turning to fruit vending as a sideline?" She shook her head sadly. "And I thought you were doing so well with the antiques."

"Christmas decorations," I said, pressing the popcorn strings onto the surface of the topiary tree, which I'd already covered with what seemed like a whole orchard full of tiny green crab apples and kumquats. "For the historic district decorating contest."

"Ohhh," she said, drawing it out.

With one tentative fingertip, she tapped the tree I'd completed, knocking off a kumquat, which rolled onto the floor, joining half a dozen other pieces of fallen fruit.

"Cute," she said dismissively.

"Cute? Is that all you can say? Cute? I've spent threewhole days with this project. I've blown a good three hundred dollars on fresh fruit and nuts and Styrofoam forms, and strung what feels like ten miles of popcorn and cranberries. And just look at my hands!"

I held them out for her to see. There were needle pricks on my fingertips, hot-glue burns on my palms, and multiple bandages from self-inflicted skewerings.

"Criminal," BeBe said. "But why?"

"Because," I said, "I am, by God, going to win the commercial division decorating contest this year, even if I have to cover the entire surface of this building with every piece of fresh fruit in Savannah."

"Again ... why would you bother? I mean, what's in it for you?"

"Pride," I said. "Last year I really thought I had it sewn up. Remember, I did that whole deal with the gilded palmetto fronds and magnolia leaf swags? And I had all the dried okra pods and pinecones? And I didn't even make honorable mention? They gave first place to that stupid boutique on Whitaker. Can you believe they won with those lame-o kudzu vines and hokey bird's nests and stuffed cardinals? I mean, stuffed birds! It was absolutely Hitchcockian!"

"A tragic oversight, I'm sure," BeBe said, looking around the shop. "Remind me again why it was so crucial that I come over here today?"

"You promised to watch the shop," I said. "There's an auction at Trader Bob's, over in Hardeeville, that starts at noon. This close to Christmas, I can't afford to close up while I go on a buying trip. I was also hoping you might help me put up all the decorations before I leave in an hour."

She sighed. "All right. What are we doing?"

I gestured toward the pair of topiary trees. "Help me drag these outside. They're going in those big cast-iron urns by the front doors. Then we've got to tack up the over-door plaque with the pineapples and lemons and limes, and swag the grapevines around the show windows. I've got two kinds of grapes-green and red, and we'll hot-glue those once the vines are in place. Then the only thing left is the window display. But I'll set that up once I get back from Hardeeville."

With a maximum amount of huffing and puffing, and some very un-Christmas-like swearing when BeBe broke an acrylic nail, we managed to get the decorations in place.

"There," I said, standing out on the sidewalk, gazing at our masterpiece. "Take that, Babalu!"

"Babalu who?"

"Babalu them," I said, pointing across Troup Square.

"My nearest and queerest competition."

"That's not very nice," she said. "I thought you loved gay men."

"You don't know Manny and Cookie," I told her. Manny Alvarez and Cookie Parker had opened their shop on Harris Street the previous spring. Manny was a retired landscape designer from Delray Beach, Florida, and Cookie? Well, Cookie claimed he'd been a Broadway chorus boy in the road show of Les Misérables, but he was fifty if he was a day, going bald, and weighed close to three hundred pounds.

"I tried to be nice and welcoming. I took flowers over there on their opening day, invited them to dinner, but since the minute they opened, they've been trying to put me out of business," I told BeBe. "They've tried to snake some of my best pickers. They called up the city and complained about my customers parking in loading zones; they even went to the gift mart and came back with the exact same line of aromatherapy candles and bath salts I carry, and now they sell them for two bucks cheaper."

"The nerve!" BeBe said. She craned her neck to look across the square at their shop. "Looks like they're working on their Christmas decorations too. Must be half a dozen men swarming around over there. Wow, look. They've got like a phone company truck with one of those cherry-picker buckets hanging lights along the front of the building."

"I'm sure whatever they do will be gaudy as hell," I said, flouncing back into the shop with BeBe following close behind. "Remember what they did for Halloween? The whole façade of the building was a red devil, with the shop's windows lit up with yellow lights as the devil's eyes."

"Hmm," BeBe said noncommittally.

"They blinked off and on all night. I thought I was having a seizure the first time I looked over there and saw it. It damn near drove me nuts," I said. "And it was so over the top."

"Not Savannah at all," BeBe agreed. "But flashy. You gotta give 'em that."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Blue Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews Copyright © 2005 by Mary Kay Andrews. Excerpted by permission.
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