How Can Families Turn The Twelve Days Of Christmas Into A Read Aloud Ritual?

Christmas is the most magical time of the year, right? That may be true for most people but not Julia. Julia has never had an easy life, she has been homeless for as long as she can remember and now she is raising a three-year-old the same way. She wants more for them both but she has no way of changing things, besides she's soon going to have to leave the only place that she's ever called home to keep them both safe. If anyone finds out her secret her world will be blown apart and that's something that she can't allow to happen. Riley has had the best life imaginable. He has loving parents, grandparents and his best friend Joshua has been by his side since he was a young child. He also runs several successful businesses and has everything he wants in life except for one thing... love. He wants someone to love, to cherish but his past still has a tight grip on him and holds a secret that not even he knows about. What will happen when both worlds collide? Can Julia get the Christmas that she has always dreamed of for her and her little girl? Can Riley learn to forget his past so that he can move forward and when Juila's secret is revealed and blows both of their worlds apart, will it bring them together or tear them even further apart and destroy Julia's world, just like she has always feared it would?

Jace Steadman. My best friend’s father. Older. Controlled. Quiet in a way that makes my pulse stutter. A man who never looks twice at anyone… Except this time, he looked at me. One glance at my ruined makeup and shaking breath, and suddenly he felt too close. Too warm. Too dangerous. His voice was gentle when everyone else had been cruel. And when he sat beside me beneath the glow of the fire, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: Wanted. Not sweetly. Not politely. But with a quiet, restrained hunger that made my heart slam against my ribs. To distract me from the pain—and to stop himself from touching me—we made a game of it: Twelve days. Twelve dares. No rules… except the ones we couldn’t stop breaking. A whispered challenge in the dark became a dare. A dare became a touch that lingered too long. A touch became a pull neither of us knew how to resist. He shouldn’t crave me. I shouldn’t crave him back. But the more we tried to stay respectable, the more our restraint fell apart. The lodge turned into a minefield of temptation—Christmas lights, stolen glances, near-kisses that burned hotter than the fire. Jace wasn’t just a man I wanted. He became the man I couldn’t stop fighting—and falling—for. If anyone finds out, my life falls apart. His reputation shatters. Everything explodes. But desire doesn’t care about consequences. And this Christmas, I’m done being careful. Done being quiet. Done pretending I don’t want the man who looks at me like I’m the first real taste of life he’s had in years. Twelve days. Twelve dares. One forbidden man I can’t walk away from… even if he ruins me.

Can Christmas magic help her hear the music again? Melody Murphy shared her love of music with her father, but after tragically loosing him on Christmas Eve two years ago, she no longer has any interest in music or Christmas. She returns to her hometown of Charles Town, West Virginia, to help her mother save the family antique business, content to stay focused on her work. However, when a chance encounter with an adorable five-year-old leads her to befriend an attractive single dad, Melody begins to realize she's been putting her life on hold, something her father would've never wished for her. Will she learn to hear the song in the falling snow again? Reid has recently moved to Charles Town to start over after his wife walked out, leaving him alone to raise their son, Michael. When Michael decides he needs Melody Murphy in his life, Reid needs to find out what it is that has his son drawn to the young woman like a magnet. The closer he gets to Melody, the more he begins to believe he might get a second chance at love after all. This is a sweet contemporary romance with Christian themes, perfect for holiday reading.

As Christmas drew near, my little sister claimed she’d seen Santa Claus in the house. “He had four legs, real long, like dead branches. He crawled on the floor like a dog. His mouth was full of teeth, and I saw him with my own eyes, climbing out of the chimney. His bones were making this clicking, clacking sound.” The Santa she described was nothing like the legends. My parents and I thought it was just her imagination. Until I posted about it online. A user named “NocturneNotes” insisted my sister wasn’t lying, and that the thing was dangerous. Panicked, I asked him what we should do. He gave me three rules: “On Christmas Eve, from 11:30 PM to 2:00 AM, the entire family must ‘sleep’ by the Christmas tree.” “You can’t actually fall asleep, or you’ll die in your sleep.” “No matter what you hear or feel, you absolutely cannot open your eyes or stop pretending to be asleep. Once it hits 2:00 AM, it will leave on its own.”

My wife booked plane tickets for the whole family to travel over the Thanksgiving holiday. On the way to the airport, I suddenly noticed that everyone had a number floating above their head. The number above my wife's head was 60 years. Above my parents' heads and mine, it showed only six hours. As I wondered what the numbers meant, I looked through the car window and noticed the driver in the car beside us had only six seconds left. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... The moment the countdown reached zero, a speeding semi-truck slammed head-on into the car next to us. The car exploded into twisted metal, and debris flew everywhere right in front of my eyes. People around us screamed and cried for help, but I couldn't hear a thing. My whole body was trembling. Because six hours later, our flight was scheduled to take off.

What happens when your triplets bring you a husband for Christmas? Meet Stephanie, a workaholic detective widow and Peter, a forensic accountant who's also divorced. A single mother trying to love again and give her sons the best. And then a divorced spouse, a felony and a brutal ex. With this, they find common grounds slowly through the triplets, Tyler, Bryan and Perry. And at the last week to Christmas, they tie the knot but unfortunately their other halves from the past resurfaced turning the story line to a mind-blowing twist nobody saw coming. Get ready for a slow burn matchmaking romantic story where triplets play the game bringing two minds together.