Excerpt from The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"She ordered it," I said. "I saw the bartender chilling some."

"What are you doing skulking behind the furniture?" she asked. "I thought you were going to help me tonight."

"Who's skulking? I'm right here. I'm just saying, you don't always have to blame her."

"As usual. Her lawyer. Saint Elena."

She measured her breath through her nose, counting, or turtle breathing, as she called it when she was doing her yoga or tai chi or Pilates or soul stretching or whatever the hell was the regimen du jour. "Okay," she said in a bright new tone. "Let's get a smile on your face. It's a party. You'll be meeting people."

"I am smiling."

"Relax," she said. She put her hand on her hip. "Try to look a little like your father, not so morose. We're all friends here, Aidan." I couldn't remember Old Donovan grinning like a politician when he'd greeted the guests the year before.

"I'm not him," I said.

"No," she said softly. "But fake it, then." She looked out the windows to the backyard and sighed. "Please."

I wanted to. For her.

Candles flickered along the windowsills and on end tables. Logs crackled and sparked in the hearth. The ivory walls and furniture picked up an orange glow in the firelight. When she turned back to me, I gave her what she wanted.

"Merry Christmas," I said.

"See? That's better. That's who everybody wants to see."

"Let's party, then," I said.

She smiled triumphantly.

When the doorbell rang, Mother smoothed her evening dress around her waistline and blinked rapidly. It was time.

One of the hired staff adjusted his bow tie and opened the front door. My hands were in my pockets, and it occurred to me that I should pull them out. But it was only Cindy, one of Mother's closest friends, and Mother glided into the foyer as if she were back on stage at City Center and twenty years hadn't passed. They made their way to the bar immediately. Once they had their drinks, Cindy held hers high. "To another one of Gwen's incredible holiday parties," she said. "Jack and his Belgian slut be damned."

Although they'd both grown up in the city, they hadn't known each other until they were both enthroned in the high social courts of Connecticut. Cindy was even more petite than Mother, but she had an open-mouthed smile that stretched over her entire face. I occasionally saw Cindy's family at Most Precious Blood, and her son, James, was two years behind me at Country Day Academy. That was the only way to keep track of Mother's friends: to keep them penned in their various social circles. When the circles overlapped enough, I could begin to remember the faces, the necessary biographies, too, like the statistics on the back of a baseball card. Instead of ERA or RBI, the categories were Personal Wealth, Philanthropic Interests, or Number of Donovan Parties Attended—which in Cindy's case was "all."

Before long, the doorbell rang again. I answered, said hello, and began my drift from one quick greeting to the next. I blinked as often as I could to stop my eyes from feeling like two eggs frying on my face. The guests just flashed their neon smiles back at me and kept walking. "Hello," I said as another person arrived. "Hello." I directed guests, smiled grossly, and slowly tuned right out, slipping back into a dull void where I found myself thinking about that paperback edition of Frankenstein upstairs on the seat of my armchair—the creature waking, peering up from the table with his jaundiced eyes.

The party filled quickly, and moving from one spot to another often required bumping people as you passed them. Guests slugged down their drinks so as not to spill them. They pitched toward me, speaking in their won-derful voices. "Top marks," I'd scream back. "Oh, Yale, definitely Yale." To really pull off the part, I almost affected one of those weird accents some Americans adopt, where they sound vaguely British but they're really from the Upper East Side. Instead, I just careened from room to room, strategizing how to disappear amid the sweaty and aggressive laughter.

Excerpted from The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely. Copyright © 2014 by Brendan Kiely. Excerpted by permission of Margaret K. McElderry Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.