title: Christmas in Scandinavia
author: Sven H. Rossel
description: Christmas In Scandinavia ($25.00 until Dec. 31, 1996; $30.00 thereafter; Sept. 1996; 280 pp.; 0-8032-3907-6): This marvelous anthology collects 17 splendid tales by 19th- and 20th-century writers from the Scandinavian countries, Faroe Islands, and Finland. Nobel Prize winners Johannes V. Jensen and Selma Lagerlf are represented, he by the bitterly ironic ``Christmas Peace,'' she by the inexplicably neglected ``Legend of the Christmas Roses,'' a limpidly written allegory worthy of Hawthorne. Other exceptional pieces include Hans Christian Andersen's moving fairy tale ``The Fir Tree'' (the only story here at all likely to be familiar to US readers), a powerful criticism of anti-Semitism in ``Advent in the Thirties'' by Eyvind Johnson (another Nobel laureate), and especially the Faroese William Heinesen's ``Born of a Maid,'' an unforgettable retelling of the birth of Christ, set in the North Atlantic during a hurricane. An indispensable collection and one of the most delightful fictional surprises of the year. -- <i>Copyright 1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.</i>
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  ‘Well, well, Ms Moriarty, fancy meeting you here. Are you going to tell me where the hell I am?’ His voice dripped with
  ice.
  Luc could see Jesse’s slim throat work as she swallowed. The fact that she wasn’t as cool as she was obviously striving to
  appear did nothing for his temper levels. Weakly she supplied, ‘Greece. This is a privately owned Greek island, which I’m
  renting.’
  ‘That’s nice. And you felt compelled to bring me along to join you on your holiday?’ Jesse didn’t answer immediately, and Luc
  inserted caustically, ‘If I’d known how desperate you were for my company we could have come to some arrangement.’
  He could see her cheeks flush red, and she bit out, ‘It’s not … not like that. That’s not why you’re here.’
  ‘Well? Are you going to tell me what the hell I’m doing here?’
  ‘I …’ She gulped visibly, and then said more forc