Christmas on Candy Cane Lane

Candy Cane Lane, a street in the town of Icicle Falls, takes Christmas decorating very seriously. Tilda Morrison, the town cop, has just moved into her first house and expects a quiet holiday. Then she learns that the neighbors, led by Maddy Donaldson, whose displays inspired the whole street's extravaganza, expect her to keep up.

The season turns harder when someone starts destroying Maddy's candy canes. As the cop on the block, Tilda is the obvious person to find out who. She is also sorting out her love life, fixing up a fixer-upper and dreading the family's arrival for Christmas dinner.

The story follows three women. Alongside Tilda and Maddy is Ivy Bohn, a newly single mother who has little patience for the holiday and describes it as bah, humbug. She still wants to give her kids a perfect Christmas, even with irritating ex-husbands, family disasters and kitchen catastrophes working against her.

This is a small-town Christmas novel with an ensemble cast and a light, warm, comic tone. A mild mystery about the vandalism runs through the domestic trouble, and the holiday setting stays at the center throughout.