After numerous No. 1 New York Times best-selling doggie delights, Cameron returns with A Dog's Perfect Christmas, featuring a peppy puppy easing a family's tough holiday problems (300,000-copy first printing). In Colgan's Christmas at the Island Hotel, set on an island between Scotland and Norway, new hoteliers Flora MacKenzie and brother Fintan get ready to open for the holidays while island-girl Isla loves her posh new waitress job and kitchen assistant Konstantin, secretly a duke's son sent to learn about hard work, starts liking the environs (100,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). The standard bearer for Christmas fiction, Evans keeps on glittering with The Noel Letters (200,000-copy first printing). In Macomber's Jingle All the Way, work-obsessed Everly Lancaster escapes the holidays for a tour of the Amazon river basin with handsome guide naturalist Asher Adams but suddenly feels she should go home for a snow-flecked Chicago Christmas. In Mallery's Happily This Christmas, single mom Wynn Beauchene helps cute neighbor cop Garrick ready his home for his visiting daughter, and the rest is romance. Novak's A California Christmas offers a new "Silver Springs" story to match the shine of the holidays (400,000-copy mass market and 10,000 hardcover first printing). In Roberts's One Charmed Christmas, emotionally burdened Catherine Pine escapes the holidays by taking a European river cruise, where not one but two suitors--a doctor and a chocolatier--await (75,000-copy first printing). Finally, In Donna VanLiere's The Christmas Table, John Creighton builds a table for his wife in 1972 and a pregnant Lauren Mabrey finds its decades later at a garage sale, with fabulous recipes stuffed in a drawer (150,000-copy first printing).

Bestseller Macomber (A Walk Along the Beach) delivers a sweet Christmas story about a driven female executive and the easygoing naturalist who sweeps her off her feet. Chicagoan Everly Lancaster, the co-founder of a thriving real estate company, is a notorious workaholic. When her business partner, Jack Campbell, insists she take an extended Christmas vacation, Everly's game--until she realizes that her vengeful assistant booked her on a bare-bones Amazon River expedition, rather than the luxurious cruise she was expecting. Enter charismatic guide Asher Adams, who is determined to see all his passengers fall in love with the wild beauty of the rainforest. To Everly's surprise, he succeeds--and manages to win her heart along the way. But, once they're off the boat, can Everly's big-city lifestyle mesh with Asher's vagabond ways? Macomber ably portrays a variety of relationships--from the fraught back-and-forth of bickering siblings and parents to emerging romantic love--while spinning a solid and believable plot. This light romance will leave readers feeling merry and bright. Agent: Theresa Park, Park & Fine Literary. (Oct.)