diff --git a/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/base.py b/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/base.py
index e9252c7609..854f8bef94 100644
--- a/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/base.py
+++ b/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/base.py
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@ import calibre
 from calibre import LoggingInterface
 from calibre.translations.dynamic import translate
 from calibre.startup import get_lang
+from calibre.ebooks.chardet import xml_to_unicode
 from calibre.ebooks.oeb.entitydefs import ENTITYDEFS
 from calibre.ebooks.metadata.epub import CoverRenderer
 from calibre.ptempfile import TemporaryDirectory
@@ -87,6 +88,7 @@ ENTITY_RE = re.compile(r'&([a-zA-Z_:][a-zA-Z0-9.-_:]+);')
 COLLAPSE_RE = re.compile(r'[ \t\r\n\v]+')
 QNAME_RE = re.compile(r'^[{][^{}]+[}][^{}]+$')
 PREFIXNAME_RE = re.compile(r'^[^:]+[:][^:]+')
+XMLDECL_RE = re.compile(r'^\s*<[?]xml.*?[?]>')
 
 def element(parent, *args, **kwargs):
     if parent is not None:
@@ -447,9 +449,10 @@ class Manifest(object):
                 % (self.id, self.href, self.media_type)
 
         def _force_xhtml(self, data):
-            # Possibly decode in user-specified encoding
-            if self.oeb.encoding is not None:
-                data = data.decode(self.oeb.encoding, 'replace')
+            # Convert to Unicode and normalize line endings
+            data = self.oeb.decode(data)
+            data = XMLDECL_RE.sub('', data)
+            data = data.replace('\r\n', '\n').replace('\r', '\n')
             # Handle broken XHTML w/ SVG (ugh)
             if 'svg:' in data and SVG_NS not in data:
                 data = data.replace(
@@ -1381,6 +1384,20 @@ class OEBBook(object):
         lang = lang.split('-', 1)[0].lower()
         return translate(lang, text)
     
+    def decode(self, data):
+        if isinstance(data, unicode):
+            return data
+        encodings = ['utf-8', 'utf-16']
+        if self.encoding is not None:
+            encodings.append(self.encoding)
+        for encoding in encodings:
+            try:
+                return data.decode(encoding)
+            except UnicodeDecodeError:
+                pass
+        data, _ = xml_to_unicode(data)
+        return data
+    
     def to_opf1(self):
         package = etree.Element('package',
             attrib={'unique-identifier': self.uid.id})
diff --git a/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/stylizer.py b/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/stylizer.py
index 03a1fade10..ae42e063b7 100644
--- a/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/stylizer.py
+++ b/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/stylizer.py
@@ -109,6 +109,7 @@ class Stylizer(object):
     STYLESHEETS = {}
     
     def __init__(self, tree, path, oeb, profile=PROFILES['PRS505']):
+        self.oeb = oeb
         self.profile = profile
         self.logger = oeb.logger
         item = oeb.manifest.hrefs[path]
@@ -117,7 +118,7 @@ class Stylizer(object):
         stylesheets = [HTML_CSS_STYLESHEET]
         head = xpath(tree, '/h:html/h:head')[0]
         parser = cssutils.CSSParser()
-        parser.setFetcher(lambda path: ('utf-8', oeb.container.read(path)))
+        parser.setFetcher(self._fetch_css_file)
         for elem in head:
             if elem.tag == XHTML('style') and elem.text \
                and elem.get('type', CSS_MIME) in OEB_STYLES:
@@ -138,8 +139,7 @@ class Stylizer(object):
                 if path in self.STYLESHEETS:
                     stylesheet = self.STYLESHEETS[path]
                 else:
-                    data = XHTML_CSS_NAMESPACE
-                    data += oeb.manifest.hrefs[path].data
+                    data = self._fetch_css_file(path)[1]
                     stylesheet = parser.parseString(data, href=path)
                     stylesheet.namespaces['h'] = XHTML_NS
                     self.STYLESHEETS[path] = stylesheet
@@ -167,6 +167,15 @@ class Stylizer(object):
         for elem in xpath(tree, '//h:*[@style]'):
             self.style(elem)._apply_style_attr()
     
+    def _fetch_css_file(self, path):
+        hrefs = self.oeb.manifest.hrefs
+        if path not in hrefs:
+            return (None, None)
+        data = hrefs[path].data
+        data = self.oeb.decode(data)
+        data = XHTML_CSS_NAMESPACE + data
+        return (None, data)
+    
     def flatten_rule(self, rule, href, index):
         results = []
         if isinstance(rule, CSSStyleRule):