Mr. Miracle: A Christmas Novel

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Related Subjects
Meet the Author
Read an Excerpt

Overview

Beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber celebrates the most wonderful time of the year in this heartwarming Christmas novel of romance, hope, and the comforts of home—coming soon as a Hallmark Channel original movie!

Harry Mills is a guardian angel on a mission: help twenty-four-year-old Addie Folsom get her life back on track—and, if the right moment strikes, help her find love. Posing as a teacher at a local college in Tacoma, Washington, Harry is up to the task, but not even he can predict the surprises that lay in store.

After trying to make it on her own, Addie has returned home to Tacoma for the holidays, but this time she plans to stay for good, enrolling in the local community college to earn her degree. What she doesn’t plan to do is run into Erich Simmons.

Addie and her next-door neighbor, Erich, are like night and day. Growing up, he was popular and outgoing while she was rebellious and headstrong, and he never missed an opportunity to tease her. Now she intends to avoid him entirely, yet when they’re suddenly forced to spend Christmas together, Addie braces for trouble.

Perhaps it’s the spirit of the season or the magic of mistletoe, but Addie and Erich soon find they have more in common than they thought—and that two people who seem so wrong for each other may actually be just right. With a little prompting from a certain angelic teacher, the two are in for a holiday miracle they’ll never forget.

Read More Show Less

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Harry Mills is a novice guardian angel dispatched on a mission impossible. The ever self-doubting Harry has been assigned to help 24-year-old Addie Folsom get her life back in order. That won't be easy now that Addie has been thrown back into the company of her childhood next-door nemesis Erich Simmons. As Erich copes with two broken wrists, and Addie copes with Erich, our poor guardian angel trainee must concoct a minor miracle to set things right. (P.S. Debbie Macomber's Christmas Novel will double your holiday cheer when it appears this fall as a Hallmark Channel original movie world premiere.)

Library Journal

10/15/2014
Macomber returns to her Christmas angel stories after a break with last year's Starry Night. Unlike his fellow angels and good friends, Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy, Harry Mills can mingle with humans without their knowing that he is an angel. Harry's first earthly mission from God requires him to assume the role of professor at a community college in the Pacific Northwest, where he'll help Addie Folsom realize she's smarter than she thinks and can succeed at school despite her dyslexia. Harry is also supposed to encourage Addie's relationship with Erich Simmons. Excited about his assignment and the chance to visit Earth, Harry is surprised at how difficult it is to experience human emotions and nudge Addie and Erich in the right direction. But what would Christmas be without a few miracles? VERDICT Given that a Hallmark TV movie version (and pilot for potential series) starring Rob Morrow will air shortly after the book is published and that best-selling author Macomber has legions of fans, this gentle, inspiring romance will be a sought-after read. [See Prepub Alert, 4/6/14.]

Read More Show Less

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780804194563
Publisher: Diversified Publishing
Publication date: 10/7/2014
Edition description: Large Print
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 103723
Product dimensions: 9.10 (w) x 6.10 (h) x 0.80 (d)

Meet the Author

Debbie Macomber, the author of Love Letters, Blossom Street Brides, Starry Night, Rose Harbor in Bloom, The Inn at Rose Harbor, Starting Now, Angels at the Table, A Turn in the Road, 1105 Yakima Street, Hannah’s List, and Twenty Wishes, is a leading voice in women’s fiction. Nine of her novels have hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, with three debuting at #1 on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly lists. In 2009 and 2010, Mrs. Miracle and Call Me Mrs. Miracle were Hallmark Channel’s top-watched movies for the year. In 2013, Hallmark Channel produced the original series Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove. Debbie Macomber has more than 170 million copies of her books in print worldwide.

Biography

Publishing did not come easy to self-described "creative speller" Debbie Macomber. When Macomber decided to follow her dreams of becoming a bestselling novelist, she had a lot of obstacles in her path. For starters, Macomber is dyslexic. On top of this, she had only a high school degree, four young children at home, and absolutely no connections in the publishing world. If there's one thing you can say about Debbie Macomber, however, it is that she does not give up. She rented a typewriter and started writing, determined to break into the world of romance fiction.

The years went on and the rejection letters piled up. Her family was living on a shoestring budget, and Debbie was beginning to think that her dreams of being a novelist might never be fulfilled. She began writing for magazines to earn some extra money, and she eventually saved up enough to attend a romance writer's conference with three hundred other aspiring novelists. The organizers of the conference picked ten manuscripts to review in a group critique session. Debbie was thrilled to learn that her manuscript would be one of the novels discussed.

Her excitement quickly faded when an editor from Harlequin tore her manuscript to pieces in front of the crowded room, evoking peals of laughter from the assembled writers. Afterwards, Macomber approached the editor and asked her what she could do to improve her novel. "Throw it away," the editor suggested.

Many writers would have given up right then and there, but not Macomber. The deeply religious Macomber took a lesson from Job and gathered strength from adversity. She returned home and mailed one last manuscript to Silhouette, a publisher of romance novels. "It cost $10 to mail it off," Macomber told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2000. "My husband was out of work at this time, in Alaska, trying to find a job. The children and I were living on his $250-a-week unemployment, and I can't tell you what $10 was to us at that time."

It turned out to be the best $10 Macomber ever spent. In 1984, Silhouette published her novel, Heartsong. (Incidentally, although Heartsong was Macomber's first sale, she actually published another book, Starlight, before Heartsong went to print.) Heartsong went on to become the first romance novel to ever be reviewed in Publishers Weekly, and Macomber was finally on her way.

Today, Macomber is one of the most widely read authors in America. A regular on the New York Times bestseller charts, she is best known for her Cedar Cove novels, a heartwarming story sequence set in a small town in Washington state, and for her Knitting Books series, featuring a group of women who patronize a Seattle yarn store. In addition, her backlist of early romances, including several contemporary Westerns, has been reissued with great success.

Macomber has made a successful transition from conventional romance to the somewhat more flexible genre known as "women's fiction." "I was at a point in my life where I found it difficult to identify with a 25-year-old heroine," Macomber said in an interview with ContemporaryRomanceWriters.com. "I found that I wanted to write more about the friendships women share with each other." To judge from her avid, ever-increasing fan base, Debbie's readers heartily approve.

Good To Know

Some outtakes from our interview with Macomber:

"I'm dyslexic, although they didn't have a word for it when I was in grade school. The teachers said I had 'word blindness.' I've always been a creative speller and never achieved good grades in school. I graduated from high school but didn't have the opportunity to attend college, so I did what young women my age did at the time -- I married. I was a teenager, and Wayne and I (now married nearly 37 years) had four children in five years."

"I'm a yarnaholic. That means I have more yarn stashed away than any one person could possibly use in three or four lifetimes. There's something inspiring about yarn that makes me feel I could never have enough. Often I'll go into my yarn room (yes, room!) and just hold skeins of yarn and dream about projects. It's a comforting thing to do."

"My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers -- it's what my children call my ‘dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain, Earnest Hemingway, Jack London, Harriett Beecher Stowe, Pearl Buck, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, to name a few."

"I'm morning person, and rip into the day with a half-mile swim (FYI: a half mile is a whole lot farther in the water than it is on land) at the local pool before I head into the office, arriving before eight. It takes me until nine or ten to read through all of the guest book entries from my web site and the mail before I go upstairs to the turret where I do my writing. Yes, I write in a turret -- is that romantic, or what? I started blogging last September and really enjoy sharing bits and pieces of my life with my readers. Once I'm home for the day, I cook dinner, trying out new recipes. Along with cooking, I also enjoy eating, especially when the meal is accompanied by a glass of good wine. Wayne and I take particular pleasure in sampling eastern Washington State wines (since we were both born and raised in that part of the state).

Read More Show Less

1. Hometown:
  
  Port Orchard, Washington
1. Date of Birth:
  
  Fri Oct 22 00:00:00 EST 1948
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Yakima, Washington
1. Education:
  
  Graduated from high school in 1966; attended community college
2. Website:
  
  http://www.debbiemacomber.com

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. Six years out of high school, Addie Folsom had envisioned returning home loaded and driving a fancy car. Instead, she was limping back in a twenty-year-old Honda with close to three hundred thousand miles and her tail between her legs.

So much for the great promise of moving to Montana and walking into a get-rich-quick opportunity. She’d left Washington State with such high hopes . . . and ended up living in a leaky trailer and waiting tables in a run-down diner. It took all six of those years for Addie to admit she’d made a very big mistake. Pride, she’d learned, offered little comfort.

Oh, she’d returned home for visits at least a couple times a year. When asked pointed questions about her work in the silver mine, she’d made sure her answers were vague.

Then, last summer, her chiropractor father had died unexpectedly of a heart attack.

Addie had adored her dad as a child, but the moment she’d hit her teen years, their relationship had deteriorated. She hadn’t repaired things before he’d passed away so suddenly. In retrospect, she suspected she and her father were too much alike. Both were stubborn and headstrong, unwilling to admit when they were wrong or make the effort to build bridges.

They’d argued far too often, her mother stepping in, seeking to make peace between her husband and her daughter. How sorry Addie was for the strife between them, now that her father was gone.

For now, she was home for good. Addie parked in front of the single-story house where she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life. She loved that it had a front porch, which so many of the more modern homes didn’t. Normally, the Christmas lights would already be up. Her father had always seen to that the Friday after Thanksgiving. This year, however, the two arborvitae that bordered each side of the porch seemed stark and bare without the decorative lights.

Her mother must have been watching from the living-room window, because the minute Addie climbed out of the car, the front door flew open and Sharon Folsom rushed out with her arms open wide. “Addie, Addie, you’re home.”

Addie paused halfway up the walkway and hugged her mother close.

Sharon Folsom brought her hands up to Addie’s face and smoothed back her dark brown hair. Her mother’s chocolate-brown eyes, a reflection of her own, held her gaze with an intensity of longing.

Addie found she couldn’t speak. It felt so good to be home, to really be home.

Her mother hugged her even tighter this time. “You said you were coming back, and I’d hoped . . .” She left the rest unsaid.

“I’m not returning to Montana this time, Mom.”

“Oh Addie, really? I couldn’t be happier. So you decided you are definitely back to stay?” She wrapped her arm around Addie’s waist and led her up the porch steps. “It’s so wonderful to have you home, especially at this time of year . . . it’s the first one that’s so difficult, you know.”

The first Christmas without Dad.

“I talked to your uncle Roy,” her mother said.

“Yes?” Addie tried hard not to show how anxious she was to hear what her mother had found out.

“He’s pleased to know you’re interested in health care. Your dad would have been so happy; that was what he always wanted for you. Roy said once you get your high school diploma, he’ll do everything within his power to get you the schooling you need. He’s even willing to hire you part-time while you’re in school and to work around your class schedule.”

Addie hardly knew what to say. This was an opportunity she had never expected. More than she could ever hope would happen. Now it was up to her not to blow it.

“Aren’t you excited?”

Again, her throat tightened and she answered with a sharp nod. She knew that no matter what she hoped to accomplish, she’d need her high school diploma. One class credit was all she needed. Why she’d dropped out when she was so close to graduation was beyond her. How stupid and shortsighted she’d been. Her one missing credit was in literature, so she’d found a class she could take at the local community college.

B-o-r-i-n-g!

As a high school sophomore, Addie had been assigned to read Moby-Dick. Because of her dyslexia, she was a slow, thoughtful reader, often using her finger on the page to help her keep track of the words. Then to be handed that doorstop and work her way through it page by excruciating page had been pure torture. Following Moby-Dick, she’d been completely turned off to reading in general . . . although lately, after her television had stopped working, she’d gotten a couple books at the library and enjoyed them immensely. Finding pleasure in reading had given her hope that maybe . . . just maybe she could return to school.

“I already signed up for a literature class. It starts this week, which I understand is a bit unusual; apparently, it was delayed until a teacher could be replaced.” Addie had thought she’d need to wait until mid-February, when the second semester began. This class was perfectly timed for her.

“You enrolled already?” How pleased her mother sounded, and her face brightened with the news.

They were inside the house now, and after removing her coat, Addie tucked her fingertips in the back pockets of her jeans. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, she looked around and breathed in the welcome she found in the familiar setting. Her mother had placed a few festive things around the house to help celebrate the season. The Advent wreath rested in the center of the kitchen table. The first purple candle had been lit.

When she was growing up, it’d been a big deal to see who got to light the candle every night at dinner, Addie or her brother. Generally, Jerry was given the honor. Oh, how her brother had loved lording it over her. He lived in Oklahoma now, was married, and worked as a physical therapist for a center that trained Olympic athletes. He’d always been athletic himself, just like his best friend, Erich Simmons, who lived next door. The two had been inseparable; any mental image of her brother also conjured up his constant sidekick and the way she’d humiliated herself over Erich.

At one time Addie had thought Erich Simmons was the cutest boy in the universe. He was a star athlete, class valedictorian, and the homecoming king. Addie hadn’t thought of him in a long time and didn’t know why he’d popped into her head now. As a teen, she’d idolized Erich and hadn’t bothered to hide the way she felt. He, unfortunately, found her hero worship highly amusing. Oh, there’d been the usual antics when they were kids. Her brother and Erich had wanted nothing to do with her, despite all her efforts to follow them around. It wasn’t until she was fourteen and fifteen that she’d viewed Erich in a different light and sent him valentines and baked him cookies. It embarrassed her no end to remember what a fool she’d made of herself over him, especially since he treated her like a jerk.

“Addie?” Her mother broke into her thoughts. “You look a million miles away.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“Bring in your suitcases. I’ve got your old room all ready for you.”

It felt wonderful to be home.

Addie unloaded her car, which, sadly, took only a few minutes. Everything she’d managed to accumulate in six years was contained in two suitcases and a couple boxes. When she finished unpacking, she headed directly for the garage.

Her mother found her there ten minutes later. “Addie, my goodness, what are you doing here?” she asked. “I’ve been looking all over the house for you. Are you hungry? Would you like me to fix you something to eat?”

“In a little while.”

“What are you doing?”

Addie stood in the middle of the garage, surrounded by several clear plastic boxes she’d brought down from the shelves. Her father had been a whiz at organization, a trait she’d inherited. “I’m looking for the outdoor Christmas lights.”

Read More Show Less

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4

( 9 )

1 Star

(0)

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble

Overview

Pick Up In Store

Available on NOOK devices and apps

NOOK Devices

Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK

NOOK HD/HD+ Tablet

NOOK

NOOK Color

NOOK Tablet

Tablet/Phone

NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet

NOOK for iOS

NOOK for Android

NOOK Kids for iPad

PC/Mac

NOOK for Windows 8

NOOK for PC

NOOK for Mac

NOOK for Web

All Available Formats & Editions

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Library Journal

Product Details

Meet the Author

Biography

Good To Know

Read an Excerpt

Customer Reviews

5 Star

4 Star

3 Star

2 Star

1 Star

Mr. Miracle: A Christmas Novel

Overview

Pick Up In Store

Available on NOOK devices and apps NOOK Devices Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK NOOK HD/HD+ Tablet NOOK NOOK Color NOOK Tablet Tablet/Phone NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet NOOK for iOS NOOK for Android NOOK Kids for iPad PC/Mac NOOK for Windows 8 NOOK for PC NOOK for Mac NOOK for Web

All Available Formats & Editions

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Library Journal

Product Details

Related Subjects

Meet the Author

Biography

Good To Know

Read an Excerpt

Customer Reviews

5 Star

4 Star

3 Star

2 Star

1 Star

Debbie Macomber is my favorite author. For me, the appeal of a D

Mr. Miracle is another extraordinary book from Debbie Macomber.

I like to read Debbie's Christmas stories. This is a change up f

Received the book in the mail this morning and just finished it.

I was disappointed in this book. It did not flow together as a s

Read from October 06 to 07, 2014 Book Info Kindle Edition,

A light, entertaining Christmas story. Debbie Macomber once aga

I thought Mr. Miracle was good. Though it is a little slow at t

Harry is a very new to earth angel and is on trial, will he get

Available on NOOK devices and apps

NOOK Devices

Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK

NOOK HD/HD+ Tablet

NOOK

NOOK Color

NOOK Tablet

Tablet/Phone

NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet

NOOK for iOS

NOOK for Android

NOOK Kids for iPad

PC/Mac

NOOK for Windows 8

NOOK for PC

NOOK for Mac

NOOK for Web