HOLIDAY WIRE Every fall, Richard paul evans produces yet another holiday-themed novel, making it the equivalent of a Christmas store where you can buy a box of candy canes in July – in other words, while the rest of the Fills us with SPF, Evans has visions of sugared almonds dancing in his head. This year’s dispatch is “The Promise of Christmas,” a story of identical twins with opposite poles whose relationship is forever damaged by a return from vacation gone badly. Currently at No. 7 on the hardcover fiction list, the novel joins a host of other holiday bestsellers, including Rachel Campos-Duffy’s “All-American Christmas” and Sean Duffy (No. 5 on the list. hardcover non-fiction); “The Christmas Bookshop,” by Jenny Colgan (recently number 8 on the paperback list); and “The Christmas Pig” by JK Rowling, which has been number one on the list of hardcover children’s books for the past 7 weeks. Interestingly and somewhat puzzled, there are no books on Hanukkah or Kwanzaa on the bestseller list at the moment.

STEEL Danielle Steel lands on the hardcover fiction list with “Flying Angels,” a novel about six young flying nurses during World War II. “I loved doing the research for this book,” she writes on her website. His subjects work on special details for the military, joining rescue missions to transport wounded soldiers from the front line. Steel continues, “They were American, British and Australian women, with incredible camaraderie between them, as brave as the men they saved. … They accomplished their mission, without complaint, risking their daily lives, like men, giving themselves, and only recognized by the governments they served more than two decades later. Some Goodreads reviewers complain about historical inaccuracies and “filler and lint”, but these quibbles don’t seem to hamper sales.

PATCHWORK Ann Patchett’s latest book, “The Dutch House,” spent 32 weeks on the Hardcover Fiction List, 30 weeks on the Combined Print and Electronic Fiction List, seven weeks on the Paperback List and – perhaps thanks to the narration of Tom Hanks – 11 months on the audio list. Now Patchett is migrating to the non-fiction side with a collection of essays; “Those Precious Days” is now at # 7. This time the audiobook is narrated by the author herself, and a quick snippet says her voice compares honorably to Hanks’.