Duncan Ball is an American-born Australian author who has written the children's series Selby (about a talking dog named Selby who tries to keep his secret away from his owners) and Emily Eyefinger (about a girl who has an eye on her finger). He also writes under the name of John St Claire. Duncan currently lives in Glebe‚ NSW with his wife‚ Jill.
Apparently no two snow flakes are exactly alike, they are all somehow unique, well this is Selby Snowbound book six of the series of Selby, the talking dog series, and Selby is clearly not a snow flake because you could pick this up and mistake it for any of the other five books really, they are all pretty similar. There is some minor continuity to show you that you have read other things before, but it wouldn't drastically affect you if you had missed it. Meanwhile it is basically another collection of Selby short stories. If you like Selby you would enjoy it if you don't like Selby you may suffer.