By Zoe Settle

Get inspired to tackle your own home with a few recent decorating books.

Decoration Liberation

With “Why Not?” suggestions, the insightful Charlotte Moss Decorates reminds us that decorating really is about breaking preconceived rules. The Southern-born Moss, partnering with writer Mitchell Owens, shows her taste for lush interiors (a rich scent, a heavy dose of patterns) with over 200 enticing interior shots and intimate vignettes that stay with us far after leaving the room, or the page. Moss’s “mood boards” reveal her decorating process and provide a great launching point to start your own decorating process. The book is sure to earn a spot on a shelf next to Dorothy Draper’s 1939 book Decorating is Fun!  $50, Rizzoli, through Amazon.

Chic in the Country

Nestled in the bucolic northwest corner of Connecticut just 100 miles from New York City, Litchfield County is dotted with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonials and farmhouses.  In Annie Kelly and Tim Street-Porter, her photographer-husband, have captured eleven of these homes, and their gardens, in Litchfield Style: Classic Country Houses of Connecticut. Think quilts, faded and chipped paint, fireplaces and European and American period antiques. The area has attracted such tastemakers and interior designers as Bunny Williams and John Rosselli, Robert Couturier, Carolyne Roehm and Matthew Patrick Smyth; the book provides a look at their elegant homes, proving that Litchfield is no “country” for bumpkins.  $45, Rizzoli, through Amazon.