Reviewed by Nancy Brachey

It is midsummer, hot and humid as always, but I have gone to the cool of Scotland.

Rosamunde Pilcher took me there, as she always does with lines like this:

�The trees fell away, and all about them were duney hillocks and stunted pines, and ahead could be seen a straight and silvery line that was the sea. Far away, across the water, a lighthouse blinked, a pinprick in the darkness. Then ahead, the glow of street lights, and houses with windows lighted behind drawn curtains.�

Pilcher, the hugely successful author of �The Shell Seekers,� �September �and �Coming Home,� has a new novel that both delights and disappoints.

--Delights for it ability to transport you to a place, to put you there, right in the house where five people � a lonely teenager, three adults in the wake of broken relationships and a bereaved man � come together at Christmas. And Pilcher truly makes you know and care about these people.

--Disappoints for not being quite the great story of Pilcher�s first three major novels, each of which I have read (as well as her many short novels) many times.Her characters are real and their situations believeable, although people fall in love real fast and often get dug out of financial holes by instant windfalls.

The plot of Winter Solstice � five people resolving their relationship problems after they gather in a large house at Christmas--seems thin for such a long book. But Pilcher knows her many fans love lots of character development and scene-setting, and there is plenty of both.

So, �Winter Solstice� is a good novel, if not a great one, like �The Shell Seekers.� Nor does it have the scope and sweep of �Coming Home,� a 10-year saga of a young woman�s coming of age during World War II. Nor does it possess the family dramas and conflict of �September.�

But this author�s good is good enough for hours of pleasurable reading, even if a true Pilcherite like me can predict the ending long before the final chapters.

The five major characters are:

Oscar, white-haired, retired teacher and substitute church organist and (this is early in the book, so I am not giving much away) bereaved in the saddest, saddest of ways.

Elfrida, sixtyish, retired actress, getting over the death of her long-time lover and newly arrived in a cozy Hampshire village, where she is embraced by Oscar�s family.

Carrie, 30, just back in London from a long stay in Europe�s Alps, and still suffering the breakup wijth her lover, who, forced to choose, opts for wife and children instead of her.

Lucy, 14, left behind for Christmas by both grandmother and mother, who have other things to do. Fortunately, Lucy�s sweet aunt, Carrie, takes the lonely teen away for the holidays.

Sam, 39, a businessman who has just split with his wife in New York and is tapped to resurrect a woolen mill (and its languishing employees)in the north of Scotland, where in December the days are dim and short.

And so here we (and that includes me) all are, in the Estate House , Oscar�s family home in Creagan, Scotland, for Christmas. It�s a holiday that most of the group seem initially content to ignore, especially Oscar and Sam.

I thought Sam�s arrival was pure Pilcher. He knocks on the door of Estate House, thinking he might buy it, is invited in, and, once the roads are covered with snow, is invited to stay until after Christmas. Almost immediately, romance (but not lust�this is Rosamunde Pilcher, not Danielle Steel) is in the air.

None of these five, even Oscar and Elfrida, know each other that well, but there is a wonderful joining of spirits as each senses the needs of the others and works to help all have a happy (considering everyone�s circumstances, joyous might be a stretch) holiday.

Even so, amazingly to me, there are no personality conflicts in this new extended family, no stresses of the season, even while planning a party, shopping for presents for the fresh arrivals and settling their various futures. Estate House is a conflict-free zone, and everybody is so very nice.

That is, except for Lucy�s mother, who manages from distant Florida to bring unhappy tears for Christmas, a bit of drama that adds punch and sets up the story�s ending.

In an interview years ago, Pilcher assessed the outcome of her novels as not always happy, but usually hopeful.

�Winter Solstice� leaves us with a very hopeful ending.