The Sunday Salon and SNOWY Reads...

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's that day of the week we talk BOOKS! So grab a cup of Joe, find a comfy chair and relax! And what better a day to do that then a snowy day!

Yesterday in Connecticut, we finally had a nice layering of snow to make it feel like winter. It was one of those beautiful heavy snows that make the evergreens look so pretty as the snow paints itself along their branches.  And what better books to read then SNOW books! Here are some snowy books to enjoy while either dealing with the snow or if you're in some beautiful warm and sunny part of the world, thinking about what that white stuff is all about! Here is a cozy mystery, a bit of magical fiction, and an anthology hot enough to melt any snow on the roof...

Snow Way Out (A Snow Globe Shop Mystery Book 1) by Christine Husom… Curio shop manager Camryn Brooks thought she’d seen every kind of snow globe—until she saw one depicting a crime scene… Ever since she was a child, Cami has loved the sparkling beauty of snow globes, and now, she sells them.  In fact, they’re so popular, Cami and her friend—coffee shop owner Alice “Pinky” Nelson—are hosting a snow globe making class. After the flurry of activity has ended and everyone has gone off with their own handmade snow globes, Cami spots a new globe left behind on a shelf, featuring an odd tableau—a man sleeping on a park bench. On her way home, she drifts through the town park and is shaken to come upon the scene from the globe—a man sitting on a bench. But he isn’t sleeping—he has a knife in his back. When the police arrive, it’s clear they consider Cami a little flaky and possibly a suspect. After her friends also come under suspicion, Cami starts plowing through clues to find the cold-blooded backstabber—before someone else gets iced…

First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen… From the publisher: Autumn has finally arrived in the small town of Bascom, North Carolina, heralded by a strange old man appearing with a beat-up suitcase.  He has stories to tell, stories that could change the lives of the Waverley women forever…

Sarah Addison Allen writes wonderful stories. She fills them with a bit of mystery, a sprinkling of magic and memorable characters. I loved her novel, The Peach Keeper. And First Frost welcomes back characters from her book Garden Spells, so a treat for anyone who has read that. I've read that this could be a stand alone novel, meaning that you don't have to read the previous book where the characters were introduced to enjoy this book, but I think I myself might indulge in Garden Spells first, so I can enjoy the characters from that first book and see how they grew.

Snowy Days, Steamy Nights: Come in From the Cold. An Anthology of 6 sexy snow romances by 6 award-winning romance writers. These are novella's that will have you enjoying being snow bound. Here are the novella's included and their authors... romance authors:

FROSTED, by Katy Regnery                         
GROUNDED, by Kate Forest
MELTED, by Jennie Marts
REKINDLED, by Susan Scott Shelley
SMITTENED, by Jamie Farrell
SNOWED, by Veronica Forand

I love these romance anthologies. They usually have great writing, the stories are a bit shorter so that you can read them in one night, and even if I'm familiar with one or two authors, I sometimes find new authors that I was not familiar with and could sample their writing. This is a Kindle or Nook treat! Right now this anthology is a bargain at $2.99 for either your Kindle or Nook. Click on whichever eReader you feed for the direct link. You can read all about the individual stories on Goodreads.

Weekly ReCap…
This week, we talked about Amy Poehler's new book, Yes Please on Memoir Monday, chatted a bit about what a "Guy Read" is suppose to be and what books to recommend to a guy on Wednesday and shared National Reading Day and National Readathon Day on Friday! If you missed anything, you can click on the highlighted link to check it out.

I also made a trip to the library this week. One of the books I returned was Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives by John Sutherland. It is a tome at 800 plus pages. I did not read ALL of the entries, but enjoyed reading bits and pieces about favorite authors. The author covers some 17th century authors all the way to 20th century. From authors such as Paul Bunyan to Stephen King. Of course not every author is covered, but a breathe of oldies but goodies. I found it interesting, but not inspiring. Something that I thought I would be dying to buy a copy of my own because it was so fascinating, but in reality the writing just did not grab me. I wouldn't call it dull, more like factual. It's a good book to check out of the library.

Along those same lines, but definitely a much better read, I checked out Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher. Maybe it's a little voyeuristic, but it's so interesting to read through these letters. The last letter Virginia Wolff wrote to her husband before she committed suicide, A letter Mary Queen of Scotts wrote to her brother-in-law before her fate was sealed and even a letter from Elvis Presley to President Nixon. Look for my full review coming next week.

How was your reading week? Any books you'd like to share? How about any "Snow" reads?!  And, did you participate in the National Readathon Day, saturday? Hope you found something here to read!

Happy Reading… Suzanne