For me, going home to Windsor at Christmas means sleeping in every day, getting spoiled and having a lot of free time. There's something about lazing around inside when there's a real Canadian winter going on that begs curling up on an overstaffed chair, drinking good coffee (cleverly brought with me from Vancouver) and immersing myself in a good read. Maybe it's my dad's almost complete collection of James Bond movies that gets me going, because in Windsor I like to dip into the world of espionage, complete with its dark mysterious strangers and exotic destinations. This year my brother supplied me with Ted Allbeury's The Seeds of Treason (New English Library), about a loyal British spy who falls in love with a Russian agent's wife and is manipulated into committing an act of treason. It's an intelligent story with believable characters, and it swept me far away from the flat southern Ontario expanse.