I know every store under the sun has already published their gift guides but I always like to do my little part by promoting the handmade community. I’ve been buying and selling on Etsy for several years now and while Etsy has grown so much and has lost a bit of the focus of what it was when it began, it is still a good source for finding unique handmade crafts.

So I put together this little treasury of items I think are fun items that readers and writers would like. Some of these sellers I’ve purchased from before and some are new to me but I hope you’ll enjoy:

Oh and I also found this other great source for literary gifts – The Reader’s Catalog. Have you checked them out? Lovely items.

So are you still doing some holiday shopping or are you done? I have barely started (as usual) so this weekend I hope to cross some names off my list. And, in case you didn’t see my post on bookbinding recently, I’ve got a little sale going on at my shop. Just use coupon code “Happy2013” for a discount.

Have a great weekend everyone and more bookish talk soon!

“Often, very often over the past ten years, he had imagined the day of his release. Now it occurred to him that he’d only thought as far as the moment he would walk out the door into freedom, which all of a sudden seemed threatening. He had no plans for his life. Not anymore.”

Snow White Must Die
By Nele Neuhaus

Tobias Sartorious is finally going home to Altenhain but he won’t be getting a warm welcome. If anything the locals will make sure that Tobias knows they really don’t want him there and that they haven’t forgotten that he killed Snow White.

Ten years ago Tobias was accused of killing two young women. It was all circumstantial evidence and Tobias couldn’t recall the events of the fateful night. The two girls were his girlfriend Stephanie, the beautiful and popular girl who just won the lead role of Snow White in the school play, and Laura, Tobias’s childhood sweetheart. Although the bodies of the girls haven’t been found, everyone in town turned on Tobias as they figured it was a love affair gone sour.

Frankfurt detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are called in to a case of a mysterious traffic accident but their investigation leads them back to Altenhain. Pia believes Tobias’s case was sloppy and feels like she can help find out the truth but her partner isn’t quite in the game. Oliver has a lot of personal matters that he is dealing with and to top it off the two realize that the townspeople are not going to help them at all uncover the truth. They will protect themselves first and there are a lot of secrets in Altenhain.

There were a lot of plot threads and some red herrings to keep a reader entertained but I didn’t find this to be the fast-paced thriller I was expecting. I’m curious if other books in this series will be translated and why they started with book four in the series. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why publishers release these out of order – now that is a mystery.

Source: Personal copy