It’s no joke! These winter horrors will give you the chills.

I ain’t even sorry for that headline.

The UK has recently been besieged by terrible wintery weather, bringing tons of snow and Arctic blasts. That is unless you live where I do. Snow fell, but it melted faster than it settled. It was a somewhat lacklustre affair. But I love snow, and if I’m going to satisfy my hunger for snow, I’m going to have to turn to fiction. Here are 5 books that I’ve enjoyed in which snow is a prominent feature:

The Shining – Stephen King

I couldn’t exactly not include The Shining, could I? I’m pretty sure you already know what this one is about, so I’ll write a little about the timing of that snow, and the effect it has on the novel.

Chapter 24 of The Shining is called Snow. It comes just shy of the novel’s half way point, and it’s a moment of serious escalation.  

The sky had been completely clouded over by two-thirty and it had begun to snow an hour later, and this time you didn’t need a weatherman to tell you it was serious snow, no flurry that was going to melt or blow away when the evening wind started to whoop.

This snow falls right after the chapter in which Jack has had an unpleasant experience with the topiary animals. He puts them down as hallucinations, but we know that something’s not right with Jack. Then the snow comes in and means they’re all stuck together until, one way or another, this is all over. The snow is crucial in terms of trapping the Torrances at the Overlook, and it adds to the sense of isolation and the claustrophobia of the second half of the novel.

White Death – Christine Morgan

Set in the late 1800s in the superbly named town of Far Enough, a blizzard strikes, and the only think biting isn’t the wind. There are lots of scenes within this novel in which the characters are taking on either the ferocious weather or the terrifying creature that hides within it. There are multiple viewpoint characters in the text, and their stories cross over and converge well. As a reader, you’re more than aware of the threat every time someone has to venture out into the snow (always with good reason) the tension is incredible.

Here’s a little bit:
And something else was wrong, a terrible noise like a runaway train bearing down from the north… She’d thrown a quick glance that way and seen the end of the world. As if God had held true on his promise not to destroy them by rain, but decided a scouring of wind and snow would do instead. A lightning-shot storm front, a raging death-blizzard … with Far Enough right smack in its path.

Dark Matter – Michelle Paver

This one’s set in the Arctic, so there’s plenty of snow to be found. Alongside the snow here is the darkness as winter sets in, add to that isolation and the fear level skyrockets. The setting here is superbly brought to life through certain routines that have to be carried out as part of the Arctic research. It’s not a fast-paced novel, but the dread creeps ever onwards leaving the protagonist on the edge of losing his sanity. Incredibly effective, and a very satisfying ghost story.

That first sight of it. Like a blow to the heart. The desolation. The beauty
A fierce sun blazed in a sky of astonishing blue. Dazzling snow-capped mountains enclosed a wide bay dotted with icebergs. The water was as still as glass, mirroring the peaks. At the eastern end of the bay, tall cliffs the colour of dried blood were thronged with seabirds, their clamour muted by distance. At the western end shining pavements of pewter rock sloped down to the sea and a stream glinted, and a tiny, ruined hut huddled among boulders.

Chills – Mary SanGiovanni

I didn’t know what to expect when I read this one. I’d never read anything quite like it before. It blends the stories of detectives investigating a murder with a Lovecraftian otherworldy cosmic threat, and it’s bloody awesome. The winter lasts and last and becomes ever worse as the body count increases. The weather is every bit as much as a threat and it come alongside the creatures that cause chaos. It’s really fast paced and well plotted.   

Here’s the discover of the body in chapter one:

All of the John Doe’s blood had formed, drop by drop, fringes of crimson icicles from the lowest-hanging parts of his body, as if every part, every tissue of the man had struggled to escape that branch and its pain and death. The overall effect stripped the humanity from the corpse, leaving it a gross caricature of what it once had been.

I’ve seen this novel described as True Detective meets H.P. Lovecraft, and that’s pretty fitting.

Ghost Story – Peter Straub

The Chowder Society, five men now in their old age, meet regularly to reminisce and tell ghost stories. When one of their number dies, the others struggle with terrible dreams of their own demise. But perhaps the most harrowing of their stories is one of past truth, a old secret that refuses remain that way.

The snow really comes into play in the final part of the novel, but which point I was utterly hooked on the story and hopeful that I’d soon find out how it unravelled. But when the snow sets in, progress is frustratingly, maddeningly slowed. Straub increasing the tension almost to breaking point here; as a reader I was desperate for action which simply wasn’t possible. Masterful.

Ricky walked home, surprised to see snow in the air. It’s going to be a hell of a winter, he thought, all the seasons are going funny. In the glow surrounding the street lamp at the end of Montgomery Street, snowflakes whirled and fell and adhered to the ground for a time before melting. Cold air licked in beneath his tweed topcoat. He had a half hour walk before him, and he was sorry that he hadn’t taken his car, the old Buick Stella happily refused to touch – on cold nights, he usually drove. But tonight he’d wanted time to think: he had been going to grill Sears on the contents of his letter to Donald Wanderley, and he had to work out a technique. This, he knew, he’d failed to do. Sears had told him just what he wanted to, and no more. Still, the damage, from Ricky’s point of view, was done; what point was there in knowing how the letter was worded? He startled himself by sighing aloud, and saw his breath send a few big lazy flakes spinning off in a complicated pattern as they melted.

So how do you fancy a brisk walk in the snow? Or perhaps you’d prefer to settle down with a good book.

On the Shoulders of Otava – Laura Mauro

This was one of my favourite novellas of last year, and part of that was the setting. It’s 1918, we’re in Finland, and they’re embroiled in civil war. If that’s not bad enough, the snow won’t stop falling and there’s something strange in the woods. The snow comes early and remains a fearure of the story:

Halfway to Kuru the sky swell with low grey cloud. A fierce and sudden wind sweeps in , sharp-tongued and cold-throated, and the snow falls so thick and so heavy that they can barely keep sight of the road ahead.

The snow in this novella is heavy, and the cold pervades the text. It’s ever present, and it adds to the threat. Seriously, you’ll shiver reading this one.