Christmas in a Jugular Vein

Author David Benjamin, who's always been fascinated by Christmas, has been writing slightly offbeat yuletide tales since he was sixteen.

Christmas in a Jugular Vein

compiles 38 of Benjamin's wildly variant and slightly transgressive holiday tales and poems. Among the contents of this sometimes startling, often humorous and occasionally poignant anthology:

• Eight dramas set in Bethlehem on or around 25 December 0000 AD, with all the familiar players and a few surprises.

• An email from the Parkers, who've been imprisoned through Christmas in their "smart home" by an electronic system called THING.

• Parodies and take-offs after the style of Dickens (of course), Clement Moore, Lewis Carroll ("Santawocky") and Robert Service.

• The further adventures of Murray Lefkowitz, the drunk Santa kicked out of the Macy's Thanksgiving parade by Maureen O'Hara in Miracle on 34th Street

• Scrooge's fourth ghost and the fourth King of the Orient.

• The holiday depredations of George the cat.

• And hey, what's Christmas without a zombie or two--or lots of 'em?

--David Benjamin