Murder on 34th Street by Edward I. Koch and Wendy Corsi Staub

The holidays are just around the corner, and New York’s Ramsey’s Department Store is suffering its worst season in years and its biggest rival, Weatherly’s superstore, has been scaring off customers for months. But now, somebody’s gone too far. Ramsey’s Santa-for-hire has been found shot through the heart. Ed Koch isn’t on the case when two more Santas are plugged in the chest. His investigation reveals the costumes are disguising a secret – and that every Santa has someone to fear. With the tabloids having a field day, Ramsey’s elves in an uproar, and every Santa in New York armed and skittish, Koch has little choice but to don the Christmas duds himself, take the throne at Ramsey’s winter wonderland, and set a devilishly clever trap for an equally clever killer. With humor, suspense, and a shot of holiday cheer, Ed Koch and Wendy Corsi Staub give a time-honored Christmas classic a deadly twist.

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different sisters as can be.  But when their beloved father falls ill, these two estranged sisters will find themselves together again, standing alongside their disapproving mother, Anya, who even now offers no comfort to her daughters.  On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise: Anya will tell her daughters a story.  The tale their mother tells them is unlike anything they’ve heard before – a captivating, mysterious love story that spans more than sixty years and moves from frozen, war-torn Leningrad to modern-day Alaska.  Nina’s obsession to uncover the truth will send them all on an unexpected journey into their mother’s past, where they will discover a secret so shocking, it shakes the foundation of their family and changes who they believe they are.  Winter Garden is an epic love story and an intimate portrait of women poised at the crossroads of their lives.  Evocative, lyrically written, and ultimately uplifting, it will haunt the reader long after the last page is turned.

The Trap by John Smelcer

Johnny Least- Weasel knows that his grandfather Albert is a stubborn old man who won’t stop checking his own traplines, even though other men his age stopped doing so years before.  But Albert Least-Weasel has been checking his traplines in the Alaskan wilderness, alone, for the past sixty years.  Nothing has ever gone wrong on the trail he knows so well.  When Albert doesn’t come back from checking his traps, and with the temperature steadily plummeting, Johnny must decide whether to trust his grandfather or his own instincts.  Written in alternating chapters that relate the parallel stories of teenage Johnny and his grandfather, this novel poignantly addresses the hardships of life in the far north, suggesting that the most dangerous traps need not be made of steel.