If you are looking for a last minute holiday gift from Amazon.com, try one of these three. A MEDAL OF HONOR by Olympian John Morton captures the real life drama of biathlon. As a competitive biathlete from the 1980s several characters are composites of folks I used to race against. Any Nordic racer would love this novel. THE DOWNHILL RACERS by Oakley Hall was the inspiration for the 1969 movie with Robert Redford. It does for Alpine skiing what the previous book does for Nordic. Finally, THE SNOW GODS by Herbert Burkholtz is a fictionalized history of skiing in the 20th century, with terrific writing, and a cast of characters that spans multiple generations. I read each of these novels every year as the snow begins to fly.
