Visions of Sugar Plums

It is five days before Christmas and nothing about the season is going well for fugitive apprehension agent Stephanie Plum. There is no tree in her apartment, no presents bought, no twinkle lights anywhere, and the malls are a crush of shoppers. Then she walks into her kitchen and finds a strange man standing in it.

The man is Diesel, and he is unlike anyone Stephanie has met. He offers to help her track down her latest skip, a toy maker named Sandy Claws who jumped bail right before Christmas, though he is clearly pursuing an agenda of his own. Along the way there are elves to deal with, a Christmas surprise from Stephanie's sister Valerie, a niece who has stopped believing in Santa, and a new man in Grandma Mazur's life.

A holiday novella that sits between the numbered Stephanie Plum novels, first published in 2002, and the book that introduces Diesel.