•  The Christmas Wedding. James Patterson and Richard DiLallo. Little, Brown. 288 pages. $25.99.

Gaby’s four children haven’t been back to the family farm since their dad died three years earlier, so she finds a sure-fire way to get them all home at once: Plan a Christmas Day wedding. She’ll be the bride, but the groom, well, that’s a surprise — even to him. All the kids know is that he is one of three old friends who helps Gaby feed breakfast to a group of homeless people each morning in her barn.

The ploy works, and the kids come home, each with a problem. Seth’s first novel has been rejected by publishers; Emily has quit her all-consuming, 80-hour-a-week legal job; Claire has finally left her smart-mouthed pot-head husband but brings along her smart-mouthed pot-head son; and Lizzie’s husband Mike is fighting cancer.

Gaby’s motherly advice is a little too sage, and for the most part, the family’s problems work out a little too cleanly, but mystery writer James Patterson and Richard DiLallo keep you guessing about the groom until the I-do’s are said. That and the love and charity Gaby and her potential grooms spread throughout the story are enough to make this a fun holiday read.

•  The Christmas Note. Donna Vanliere. St. Martin’s Press. 224 pages. $14.99

The sixth installment in Donna Vanliere’s Christmas Hope series finds Gretchen — the daughter of The Christmas Promise’s Miriam — trying to help her new next-door neighbor, Melissa, a grouchy, standoffish woman whose mother has just died. While cleaning out the old lady’s apartment, the women find a note informing Melissa of a brother and sister given up for adoption. Gretchen encourages Melissa to find her siblings, and the two form an unlikely friendship. What happens next is unexpected but more than a little too coincidental.

Themes of giving and the bonds of friendship and sisterhood between women are shared throughout Vanliere’s holiday novels, as are several characters, including attorney Robert Layton, who started the series in 2001’s The Christmas Shoes.

Though the stories are fairly formulaic — a person with a problem meets someone with a bigger problem, and with the help of cheery townspeople, everyone gets a happy ending — they are endearing, and fans and newcomers alike should be pleased.

•  A Plain & Fancy Christmas. Cynthia Keller. Ballantine. 323 pages. $16.

Another book with sisterhood as a theme, Cynthia Keller’s follow-up to An Amish Christmas starts with two women — one a high-powered New York publicist, the other an obedient Amish widow — discovering that they were accidentally switched at birth and sent home with the wrong families. Each woman decides to meet her other family, and in time, they sort of trade lives — the Amish Rachel moves into New Yorker Ellie’s apartment while Ellie moves to the farm. Rachel has a much harder time adjusting to life in the big city and its brash consumerism than Ellie does to the slower-paced rural life, though each quickly becomes close with her new family.

Keller again shows her admiration for the Amish way of living, away from iPads and Androids and distractions that take time away from faith and family. But A Plain & Fancy Christmas is much more a fish-out-of-water story than a true Christmas tale: The holiday is tied in as almost an afterthought, with a big gathering of both families at the end of the book. Though An Amish Christmas, about a family stuck in Amish country due to circumstances beyond their control, is the better story, its fans and others curious about the Amish lifestyle will enjoy this offering as well.

•  The Spirit of Christmas. Cecil Murphey and Marley Gibson. St. Martin’s. 190 pages. $14.99.

This collection contains 42 true holiday stories with strong religious overtones. Almost all deal with poverty and the Biblical saying that God provides for those in need.

While readers can identify with several of the stories in this tough economic climate, many are so similar that they’re forgotten soon after they’re read. A better edit would have included about half as many pieces. This book is best left for the deeply religious or people who need an extra dose of positivity to make it through the busy season.

Sara Frederick is a writer in Dallas.