ON SALE DECEMBER 10, 2025!
Elle Bailey isn’t a Christmas hater—she’s a Christmas avoider.
For Elle, Christmas lost all meaning when her grandmother died, and a disagreement with her sister opened a giant rift between them. Despite all the Christmas dodging, Elle has kept one tradition: mailing a gift to her sister each year. When her latest archival assignment lands her in the town of Windermere Falls, Christmas is…everywhere, and Elle comes face-to-face with the realization that she might not be able to outrun it this year.
While in Windermere Falls, Elle finds a gift for her sister, but it’s accidentally mixed up with someone else’s present at the town gift-wrapping station. Elle then finds herself in possession of a recipe book. Being an archivist and knowing the importance of a family’s history, Elle makes it her mission to track down the recipe book’s owner by Christmas. She’s expecting to do it on her own, but the irresistible chef, Benedict (Bennie) Scott, at the inn where she’s staying, has a different plan and insists on helping Elle. Bennie, content with his work and life, starts to question if he has been settling—all thanks to Elle. As they work together to solve the accidental Christmas mystery, the recipe book is at the heart of unexpected surprises that challenge both Elle and Bennie’s thinking. Elle finds herself letting Bennie in and immersed in the very things she’s been avoiding: Christmas and connection. Is it possible that a charming town, a lost recipe book, and a handsome chef can teach someone that it’s never too late for love?
Tropes: Strangers to lovers, small town, found family, he falls first.
***Recipes of Christmas Past is a standalone novella and NOT a full-length novel. It’s a heartwarming romance, very much like a Hallmark movie, with no explicit scenes.***