Nine tales of women and winter in pioneering times, bring such beautiful titles as 'Buckskin Bride' and 'A Pony Express Christmas'. Yes, it has to be A PIONEER CHRISTMAS COLLECTION. I loved every story.

'Defending Truth' by Shannon McNear shows young Truth Bledsoe out hunting to support her family while her father is away. In the North Carolina woods, she surprises a soldier who says the battle is over. But he's a Crown soldier, a Tory, and none of hers. He has fled the field, and Truth grudgingly shares food as a Christian should, but she can't bring herself either to tell on him or shelter him. She might just drop him out some more food, that's all. Over the next week Will tells her of his life and Truth explains that her father bought the farmland fairly from the Cherokee, but the Crown refuses to recognise their right to settle. Will has doubts as to where his loyalties lie, and has no wish to return to war. But how can he survive a Carolina winter?

'The Calling' by Kathleen Fuller focuses on an inn located in Unionville, Ohio, where a young man sincerely admires the Irish innkeeper's daughter, but to obey his parents he is going to have to take up his calling and become a circuit preacher in the western territories. Snow is falling heavily but the stage still runs to Cleveland, and the young preacher must be on it.

'A Silent Night' by Anna Urquhart shows that Lorna, a young mother widowed in 1830 in Michigan Territory is at the mercy of the weather - and of men who decide that she'll do as a wife. Determined to survive and with the encouragement of older Sissy, she tries to provide for her children alone. Christmas will be rather different this year.

As for the 'Pony Express Christmas', by Margaret Brownley, not only do we get a plucky girl adventuring to find her brother, but quotations from the 1860s, such as 'Left my infant on the trale, along with a peace of my hart," and 'Can't stay here. Can't go back. Gotta keep going.' At least our heroine finds it's too cold for snakes.

This collection brought me the scent of Christmas cooking and the tingle of snow. There's excitement, occasional violence and good fellowship. A PIONEER CHRISTMAS COLLECTION is writing of impressive quality by seven female authors and any reader would be glad to find this under the Christmas tree.