NPR has pro­duced a spe­cial Hanukkah pro­gram every year since 1990, read­ing aloud or voice-act­ing short sto­ries based on the Hanukkah sea­son. In this vol­ume and accom­pa­ny­ing CD, these sto­ries are gath­ered in one pack­age: Twelve short sto­ries are print­ed and four record­ed on the CD. The sto­ries, some com­mis­sioned specif­i­cal­ly for the pro­gram, are var­ied in struc­ture, tone, and adher­ence to tra­di­tion. Har­lan Ellison’s ​“Go Toward the Lights,” a sci­ence-fic­tion tale, puts forth a nov­el expla­na­tion for the mir­a­cle of the long-last­ing oil; Dani Shapiro’s ​“Oil and Water” shows some more mod­ern mir­a­cles of Hanukkah; Mark Hel­prin rec­ol­lects his dis­like of Hanukkah as a child, and his rea­sons for it, and then remem­bers mak­ing his peace with the hol­i­day. These sto­ries are not aimed at chil­dren and are not, for the most part, suit­able for them. While some pieces are fair­ly tra­di­tion­al, oth­ers are like­ly to per­turb more reli­gious read­ers — Ariel Dorfman’s ​“A Can­dle for Ker­ala,” one of the record­ed sto­ries, cel­e­brates Hanukkah as the sea­son in which a char­ac­ter finds his non-Jew­ish, ​‘not plan­ning to con­vert’, Indi­an love, and Max Apple’s ​“Stab­bing an Ele­phant” shows a rab­bi threat­ened with expul­sion from his pul­pit if he does not pro­claim the famous sto­ry of Eleazar killing a Greek ele­phant false. His deci­sion to bow to such pres­sure may dis­ap­point some read­ers. The four record­ed sto­ries are per­formed extreme­ly well, with strong char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and excel­lent expres­sion. Some of the bet­ter known authors in this vol­ume, such as Kinky Fried­man and Leslea New­man, con­tribute sto­ries that fall very clear­ly into their usu­al territory.