Christmas comes early to McCredie’s little Old Town bookshop in Edinburgh. It’s summer, but an American production company has decided that McCredie’s is the perfect location to film a very cheesy Christmas movie. Carmen Hogan, the bookshop’s manager, is amused and a bit horrified by the goings-on, but the money the studio is paying is too good to pass up. She uses the little windfall from filming to create new displays and fend off a buyout offer from an obnoxious millionaire who wants to turn McCredie’s into a souvenir shop selling kilts made in China and plastic Nessies. Still reeling slightly from a breakup, Carmen is not particularly looking forward to the holidays. But just as snow begins to fall and the lights of Christmas blink on, all sorts of lovely new possibilities present themselves.
Powerful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi has finally found the man she needs, but Tobias Wikström thinks she's the most selfish woman he has ever met for asking him to give up his life in Sweden and move to the US for her own comfort. Former model-turned-flight attendant Brittany-Rae von Lundin gave up her career and came with nothing into Jonny’s kingdom. Having had a child with him, her greatest fear for Maya includes being cut off from the resources to which she has become accustomed. After fleeing her home through a client to seek a new life in Sweden, Yasmiin finds love in the arms of Yagiz Çelik. But someone from her past forces her to become a caretaker before she’s ready. EVERYTHING IS NOT ENOUGH follows the loosely intertwined and messy lives of Kemi, Brittany and Yasmiin as they interrogate themes of place, prejudice and patriarchy in Europe.
Rosie Reynolds had come to lakeside Corgi Cove as a lost, lonely girl abandoned by her own mother, but there she discovered a true place to call home. She loves her Corgis, Bonnie and Clyde; loves the lakeside life; and loves her aunt and uncle most of all. But when she discovers that their struggling inn is about to be bought out by some big city chain, she hatches a plan: to win a contest naming theirs the best Christmas-themed inn in the USA. However, she didn’t count on Everett St Claire, who doesn't think it will be that difficult to convince one elderly couple to take the money to retire. With the holidays nearing and the deadline looming, Rosie and Everett are about to discover the magic of a Christmas at Corgi Cove.
A year after breaking up with her husband, Brenda Malloy has put her life back together. She has found purpose and healing as a volunteer with a dog rescue organization in Houston, Texas. The rescue partners with a program in Avalon, New York, a small, snowy town deep in the Catskills. Now Brenda is arranging the transport of rescued dogs from Houston to Avalon. Brenda’s friends worry about her driving a van 2,000 miles with 12 dogs in crates, but she shrugs off their concern. However, a blinding snowstorm, an escaped mutt, and a life-saving encounter with Adam Bellamy - a single dad and paramedic - means that Brenda has to stay in Avalon longer than she planned. As she drops off each precious pup at their new homes, some of the comfort and joy of the season begins to creep up on Brenda.
Rome is the protagonist, not the setting, of Jhumpa Lahiri's nine stories. In “The Boundary,” one family vacations in the Roman countryside, though we see their lives through the eyes of the caretaker’s daughter, who nurses a wound from her family’s immigrant past. In “P’s Parties,” a Roman couple, now empty nesters, finds comfort and community with foreigners at their friend’s yearly birthday gathering - until the husband crosses a line. And in “The Steps,” on a public staircase that connects two neighborhoods and the residents who climb up and down it, we see Italy’s capital in all of its social and cultural variegations, filled with the tensions of a changing city: visibility and invisibility, random acts of aggression, the challenge of straddling worlds and cultures, and the meaning of home.