Connie Willis's "Newsletter"

Christmas is not always the easiest time of year for people. There's often the headache of travel through busy airports, the annoyance of trying to plan a meal that will accommodate everyone's schedules, and of course, the pressure to put your best foot forward in your annual Christmas card. All of that becomes much more complicated, however, when pod people begin to overtake your town, which is exactly the predicament the main character faces in Connie Willis's story "Newsletter." Recommended in this episode: Stephen King's Firestarter and the second season of White Lotus on HBO We will be back in two weeks when we re-run a classic Monster, She Wrote episode on a Christmas ghost story. The podcast will take a brief holiday hiatus later in December, but we will return in January for our fourth season, when we read Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi. Buy Toil and Trouble here or at your favorite local bookstore!