Eighteen short stories, none really boring and none really captivating. Fairly good reading for winter nights, in that somewhat old-fashioned, unhurried pace of storytelling.The Christian overtones are maybe sometimes too conspicuous: reading a third take on a ‘modern version’ of the same New Testament story can feel a bit monotonous, even if the theme is appropriate for the collection’s title. Appropriately too for an 'end of the year' tales, several are told in a ‘calendar’ format, describing a single year with a paragraph for each month. ( )