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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780345502032
ISBN number: 0345502035
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 224
Printing Date: October 28, 2008
Publishing house: Ballantine Books
Release Date: October 28, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 1225
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Product Description:
When the season brings a chill, nothing warms the heart or elevates the spirits like a new novel by Anne Perry, whom the Chicago Sun-Times calls “the most adroit sleight-of-hand practitioner since Agatha Christe.” Perry’s gifts are on full display in A Christmas Grace–a hope-filled tale of forgiveness that is rich with mystery and intrigue.
With Christmas just around the corner, Thomas Pitt’s sister-in-law, Emily Radley, is suddenly called from London to be with her dying aunt. Leaving her husband and two children behind, Emily makes the long journey to an all-but-forgotten town in the county of Connemara, on the western coast of Ireland. She soon discovers that a tragic legacy haunts the once closeknit community.
Violent storms ravage the coast and keep alive painful memories of an unsolved murder and unsettling fears that a killer may still live among the residents of the lonely Irish town. Determined to lighten her aunt’s heart and help the troubled community, Emily sets out to unmask the culprit. When a lone shipwreck survivor washes up onshore, he brings with him not only the key to solving the terrible crime but the opportunity for the townspeople to make peace with the past–and with one another.
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Rated by buyers 
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I always look forward to the Perry Christmas novels, largely because they usually focus on minor characters from one of her two detective fiction series, and focus on the redemption of those characters. Perhaps that's why I was a little disappointed in this one, because it focused on a semi-major character, Emily from the Pitt series, who really didn't require redemption to begin with. Also, whereas in the other Perry Christmas stories the plot itself held together nicely, this one had several holes. Nonetheless, Perry is still an excellent writer and the plot here was still compelling. This is worth a read, but I hope she goes back to her minor character formula in the future Christmas novels.
Rated by buyers -
I have come to look forward to Anne Perry's little Christmas books. They are always a delight, and each one gives us a more intimate look at one of Ms. Perry's lesser characterizations from her extensive bibliography. This book focuses on Charlotte Pitt's sister, Emily Radway. I have always loved Emily in the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt books, and this book gives us a whole new look at the wonderfully fashionable Emily. She sets off to visit a sick, estranged aunt in the western part of Ireland, just before Christmas in 1895. She finds a dying village when she gets there, and promises to try to find out the answer to an old mystery which caused the death of a young shipwreck victim seven years ago. Ms. Perry gives us a wonderful description of Connemarra and the sea that rules the lives of the people that live there. Thank you again for a lovely little gift Ms. Perry.
Rated by buyers 
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As 1895 is winding down, Emily Radley, sister-in-law of Scotland Yard's Superintendent Thomas Pitt (star of Anne Perry's late Victorian police procedural series), hopes subsequent year will be better. She remains in London for the Christmas season with her husband and two children so she will be expected to attend parties although she is not in the spirit of the season even as she tries to hide her negativism from her family.
On the western coast of Ireland in Connemara, Father Tyndale sends a message to Emily informing her that her Aunt Susannah Ross is dying. Although Susannah was ostracized by the family for marrying outside their religion, Emily feels it is important to visit her relative to provide some comfort for both of them and besides escape the joy of Christmas; she leaves her family in London so they can enjoy the city. In Connemara, Emily is stunned to see the abject fear on every villager's face. She wonders why but no one will reveal the secret that haunts everyone, but vows to find out. Meanwhile a nasty storm causes a shipwreck leading to a daring rescue followed by an enigmatic murder that makes the outsider's amateur sleuthing so much more complicated.
The latest Christmas mystery (see A CHRISTMAS SECRET and A CHRISTMAS BEGINNING) is a terrific tale that merges a strong investigation with a sense of time and place while also containing religious elements that enhance the excellent story line. Emily is at her best feeling a bit depressed as the holidays arrive, but being a good mom and wife tries to hide her melancholy from her loved ones. Ireland enables her to do so and get involved in the mystery of a town haunted by something as it is on everyone's visage. A CHRISTMAS GRACE is a strong entry in a charming holiday series.
Harriet Klausner
Rated by buyers -
Thanks to Anne Perry for another delightful Holiday gift. Although I enjoyed her earlier Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels in particular, I had given up reading her more recent productions, feeling that they had become convoluted and topheavy. But the Christmas series has more the flavor of those simpler (and shorter!) volumes, carried to the other extreme plotwise with a single linear thread but with all the human insight that appeals so much in her work. For those who have not encountered Perry's Christmas books before, essentially each one is a short novel (a pleasant evening's read) which takes a secondary character from one of her series and throws him or her into a mystery on their own, which they solve with the usual Perrian tool of insight into motive and history.
In this one, Charlotte's sister Emily (now comfortably married to Jack Radley, to place it within the C. and T. Pitt series) is called to the bedside of her dying aunt Susannah, in far away Connemara, at Christmas time. The widowed Susannah had made a second marriage not just below her class, as Charlotte had, but outside her faith, and been estranged from the family (as far as I know, she was never referenced in the main series). After a long and difficult trip to what seems like the end of the earth, she finds a friendly enough reception but a small village on the verge of dissolution, suffering from some vague but deep fear. Shortly after arrival, there is a violent storm, a ship founders and the single survivor, who can only remember that he is called Daniel, ends up staying with Susannah and Emily. Memories are aroused of a similar wreck several years ago, also with one survivor, Connor Riordan, who survived only to be murdered. Susannah's true purpose in sending for Charlotte (Emily came only because Charlotte was sick), it turns out, was that she had heard of the sisters' sucess in 'detecting' and wanted this mystery that had been destroying the village solved, as a final thanks for their having made her welcome in their lives.
Emily, of course, probes and investigates and eventually comes to a conclusion after taking us on a tour of the mores and countryside of remote rural Ireland a century ago, told in the usual finely observed style that Perry fans will enjoy.
I would like to bring up a couple of problems, for me, with the book(s). First, one that is endemic to Perry's style: all too often, an mere possibility (no doubt one of many) metamorphoses into an assumption upon which an elaborate structure of supposition is built. In the major novels, as I recall, these scaffoldings sometimes collapse in the face of fact (as they would in real life) or at the least are entangled with many other threads, but here the simple structure and length lays bare the rather fragile foundations on which the resolution is based. Second, a specific: it is never explained (that I saw)just why the mysterious new castaway Daniel is taking the same path -- the probing, analytic, disturbing questions into people's lives and dreams -- as the dead Connor. Are we supposed to believe that the life of a sailour leads to such deep insight in young men? or the experience of shipwreck? or what?
Rated by buyers -
For a few years now, Anne Perry has been writing small books featuring the beloved characters from her Victorian series in a poignant adventure around the Christmas Season.
When I very first saw the title A Christmas Grace, I thought initially the story may feature little Grace, the maid and friend of Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, but this offering features Charlotte's sister Emily Radley.
Perry always shows us the customs of the time, where who you married, knew, or was family too was the defining point of your life. Charlotte married Thomas Pitt, a policeman, for love. Emily married a man in the gentry, above her social rank. The two women's lives were drastically different and Emily knew that Charlotte's life, though hard, was the happier, as she loved Thomas more than anything. When Emily's husband dies, she eventually remarries a man who becomes a member of Parliament, and they are still well off.
A letter comes to the Radley home a few days before Christmas from Thomas Pitt. He explains Charlotte's and Emily's aunt in Ireland is dying, and she asks initially for Charlotte to come to her, but Charlotte is ill and cannot make the arduous journey. Thomas asks Emily to go instead.
The girls have not seen their aunt Susannah since they were young. Susannah married an outsider, and a Catholic to boot, and her family, Emily and Charlotte's parents and grandparents practically disowned her.
Imagine a time when society dictated everything, manners, conduct, love, politics, etc.
Emily's husband talks her into making the great journey to the west coast of Ireland. She meets her Aunt Susannah as an adult and sees she at the age of 50 is indeed dying. Emily starts making friends with her aunt, and the village priest and villagers.
One night there is a horrific storm, and a there is a shipwreck. A lone survivor is rescued, and the whole town seems to react strangely. There was a similar situation years ago, and the survivor died mysteriously. Susannah, hearing of Charlotte helping Thomas Pitt from time to time, wants to unburden the mystery of the village before she dies and meets her husband on the Other Side.
Emily steps up to the plate and shows she is not the more shallow of the sisters. She does chores - well, she has to be shown how - but she works to help her aunt physically and help her spiritually.
It is a second chance for a village of people, and a peace for a lady who lost so much by marrying for love and having to leave her family and making her husband's village her family.
Learning about the Victorian culture has always been Perry's forte, and these small Christmas books zero in on a character and we see with clearer eyes a time of not so distant history.
Perry is an amazing writer with excellent series, and her latest Christmas offering to her readers is a grace.
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