'Tis the season to be jolly - and for Meg Langslow to round
up stray animals of all sorts as well as a killer. Duck the
Halls!
The brilliantly funny Donna Andrews delivers boughs of holly
and barrels of laughs with Meg's latest adventure in her
award-winning, New York Times bestselling series. A few
nights before Christmas, Meg is awakened when volunteer
fireman Michael is summoned to the New Life Baptist Church,
where someone has rigged a cage full of skunks in the choir
loft. The lengthy process of de-skunking the church requires
its annual pre-Christmas concert to relocate to Trinity
Episcopal, where Mother insists the show must go on, despite
the budget-related protests of Mr. Vess, an elderly vestryman.
Meanwhile, when Meg helps her grandfather take the skunks to
the zoo, they discover that his boa has been stolen - only
to turn up later during the concert, slithering out from the
ribbon-bedecked evergreens. The next morning is Sunday, and
the congregation of St. Byblig's, the local Catholic church,
arrive to find it completely filled with several hundred ducks.
It's clear that some serious holiday pranksters are on the
loose, and Meg is determined to find them. But before she
can, a fire breaks out at Trinity, and Mr. Vess is
discovered dead. Who would have murdered such a harmless -
if slightly cranky - old man? Who has the time during the
busy holiday season to herd all of these animals into the
town's churches?
And will Meg ever be able to finish all of her shopping,
wrapping, cooking, caroling, and decorating in time for
Christmas Eve? A Yuletide treasure for the ages, Duck the
Halls is guaranteed to put the "ho ho hos" into readers'
holidays.