WISHIN' AND HOPIN'

By Wally Lamb (Harper, 273 pages, $19.99)

Do you turn up your nose at Christmas novels? Take it from a dyed-in-the-wool snob: Wally Lamb has the talent to turn "Wishin' and Hopin'" into a book that will make a believer out of you. In his fourth novel, Lamb takes readers back to the mid-1960s, when LBJ was in the White House, every 10-year-old owned a whoopie cushion, and the cake from an Easy-Bake Oven actually tasted like cake. Faithful Lamb readers will find this less edgy than his usual fare. Still, his plot twists come as shockers, albeit shockers that rank high on the cozy meter. His protagonist -- the lovable fifth-grader Felix Funicello -- wins himself fans when he brings about his teacher's nervous breakdown with one BB aimed heavenwards. When his weapon awakened a slumbering bat, "Sister began screaming about the devil. I was momentarily taken aback by this. I'd known that Bela Lugosi, Grandpa Munster, and other vampires could transform themselves into bats, but I'd not been aware that the Prince of Darkness could perform that particular parlor trick, too." Even if the book feels formulaic at times, Lamb's rich panoply of details -- a Pillsbury Bake-Off for Mom, orange juice can curlers for the sisters -- render this novel first-rate escapism just begging for a comforter and a cup of tea.

ANDREA HOAG, FREELANCE REVIEWER

UNDER THE COVERS AND BETWEEN THE SHEETS

By C. Alan Joyce and Sarah Janssen (Readers Digest Books, 174 pages, $14.95)

With its back stories of the genesis of great novels, snippets of gossipy info about writers and the occasional pithy quote, this book (subtitle: "The Inside Story Behind Classic Characters, Authors, Unforgettable Phrases and Unexpected Endings") is a lot of fun and could be useful conversation fodder for holiday parties. You can scandalize (Danielle Steel has been married five times, twice to felons), amuse (Kerouac wrote "On the Road" on one 119-foot scroll of paper, and a friend's cocker spaniel ate the last few lines) and impress (Dostoyevsky's second wife, Anna, kept a private, encrypted diary, the code to which wasn't cracked until long after her death). The authors' tone is almost unrelentingly perky ("Which big-time best-selling authors have been known to rock out almost as much as they write down?") and the book is laced with puns (one chapter is called "Shot out of the canon"), so unless you like that kind of flippancy you might find yourself occasionally gritting your teeth.

LAURIE HERTZEL BOOKS EDITOR