Bed and Breakfast — Lois Battle

IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME in Beaufort, South Carolina. After Josie Tatternall -- a military widow turned B & B proprietor -- witnesses her best friend's narrow brush with death, she decides that life is too short to let old grievances stand in the way of family togetherness. This year, she resolves, her three grown daughters -- the girls she raised so carefully yet with such mixed results -- will come home for the holidays. With her uncanny ear for Southern sensibility and her sharp-eyed wit, Lois Battle delivers a pitch-perfect Upstairs, Downstairs comedy, complete with a beautiful portrait of a family in all its touching, flawed glory and a love story that surprises like sunshine after the rain.