I’ve recently swapped my summer sandals for woolly socks and winter boots, having returned to Melbourne after time in the Northern Hemisphere. This relocation to chillier climes has reminded me of all things cold and frosty, including one of my absolute favourite books: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, set in nineteenth-century northern Iceland.
Understandably for a country whose northern regions experience up to eight months of snow a year, the Icelandic language possesses over 50 different words dedicated to describing snow and ice.
- Mjöll: Freshly fallen, fluffy, pure white snow.
- Hjarn: A hard, crusty layer of frozen snow that forms on top of the snowpack.
- Hundslappadrífa: Heavy snowfall of large fluffy flakes, translated as “dog’s paw snowfall”.
- Skafrenningur: Fast-moving, blinding snow that sweeps along the ground due to heavy winds.
- Krapi: Wet, slushy, half-thawed snow on the ground.
While a typical wintery day in Melbourne is unlikely to be so extreme as to produce mjöll, hjarn or krapi, the chilly local temperatures are still the perfect excuse for snuggling beneath a blanket with a hot drink in hand.
When the wind outside blows bitter and loud, the ultimate comfort is surely losing yourself in a book that matches the season’s raw energy. Here are my favourite fiction recommendations that are perfect for a cozy winter hideaway.
- Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (2013) – The encroaching arctic winter in a bleak, isolated valley acts as a ticking clock towards discovering the truth behind a woman’s murder conviction.
- Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg (1992) – The mystery behind a boy’s death moves from the biting, urban winter of Copenhagen to the vast ice fields of Greenland, where snow reads like a language of its own.
- The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon (2023) – A midwife must cross a treacherous, ice-choked river to investigate a shocking crime in the bitter winter of 1789 Maine.
- The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (2012) – A grieving couple builds a child out of freshly fallen snow in the brutal yet magical wilderness of 1920s Alaska.
- Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson (2010) – An isolated fishing village in northern Iceland, accessible only by a mountain tunnel, becomes completely trapped by heavy snow and avalanches with a murderer at large.
- Beartown by Fredrik Backman (2016) – A suffocatingly small, hockey-obsessed Swedish forest town is completely buried under thick ice and snow, where the climate mirrors harsh community pressures.
- The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (2020) – A violent winter storm wipes out the village’s entire male population in seventeenth-century Vardø, an isolated storm-battered island in the arctic circle of Norway.
- The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (2019) – A group of friends is snowed in during a deadly blizzard on New Year’s Eve in a remote, luxury estate in the Scottish Highlands.
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969) – The alien planet of Gethen, known as “Winter,” is trapped in a permanent, sub-zero ice age where navigating glaciers is a matter of survival.
- The Absolutist by John Boyne (2011) – The story shifts between the freezing mud of the WWI trenches in France and a bleak post-war English autumn, capturing a profoundly emotional chill.
- Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson (1994) – A massive, unexpected blizzard blankets a murder trial in silence and isolation in the fictional island of San Piedro in the Pacific Northwest.
- Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1911) – The inhabitants of a dismal New England town in Massachusetts are trapped in a relentless, unforgiving winter that serves as a metaphor for the characters’ emotional imprisonment.
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (1934) – A glamorous vintage train is stuck fast in a massive snowdrift in the remote, freezing mountains of Yugoslavia, leaving a killer inside with Hercule Poirot.
Whether you’re keen to escape into an arctic mystery or wrap yourself up in a haunting classic, these books will bring the perfect atmospheric chill to your cosy reading corner.
Which fiction books make you want to snuggle under a blanket when the weather turns cold? Drop your recommendations in the comments below.
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