One of my favorite things about reading for a living is watching authors who I discovered as debut writers mature. One I have had my eye on was Michele Martinez, whose latest book COVER-UP will be in stores on March 13th. Michele's work gets better with each book (this is her third) and I truly love her style, as well as her characters. I see a huge future for her. We will have a feature about her starting next week.

Cold weather and school stress got you down? My older son is taking exams this week, and I told him the other day that I am getting stressed recalling memories of test taking like this. I was looking through his vocab book the other day and realized I knew many of the words and their definitions! I guess things have not changed THAT much in high school.

Winter moved in this week, but luckily there were great author and book events to keep my mind off the weather and other things. I was lucky enough to catch Linda Fairstein's appearance Tuesday evening where she gave a fabulous chat and Q&A about her latest book, BAD BLOOD, which is just on sale. As readers know, I really enjoyed this one and Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum gives it a thumbs up review this week. Linda does extensive research and her description of hunkering down in an elevator to plummet below the depths of New York to see the work the sandhogs do was just one example of her diligence to getting the details right.

Here at FaithfulReader.com we're celebrating the arrival of 2007 with some terrific new books. Some are pure enjoyment while others might inspire you and shape your goals for the year.

A three-day weekend like this one so soon after the holidays is just grand, especially when it is has no obligatory event strings attached. No special dinner. No special presents. The way I see it this holiday weekend is for two things --- skiing or shopping. And with the warm weather at least here in the northeast, I think shopping may be more on the calendar than schussing.