Snuggle up with our pick of the best cosy winter books – from new releases to timeless tales.
Shorter days, darker evenings and chillier weather all call for one thing: snuggling up under your favourite blanket with a good book. Immerse yourself in the season with our pick of the best cosy books set in winter.
Solace in Winter by Mary Lawson
Read our review here.
In the isolated town of Solace, nestled deep in the Canadian North, getting through the long winter requires supplies, planning and a great deal of fortitude. It’s 1969: photographer Jack Gallagher lost his artist wife the year before and has been on his own since, much to the concern of the small community – so when Jack discovers an injured dog, a vet seizes on the chance to bring companionship to the widower’s cabin.
Just as soon as the dog has settled in and Jack grows accustomed to her presence, the household gains another occupant. A young American draft-dodger has wrecked his car during his escape across the border into Canada and also requires lengthy rehabilitation, supported by the town’s nurse.
Two accidents, two new faces and a beautiful lesson in the value of human connection, lives intrinsically woven together like the tapestry work by Jack’s wife that adorns the walls of his cabin.
Find out more at penguin.co.uk
Snow Birds by Roisin Maguire
Read our review here.
Grace – who made her debut in Maguire’s first novel, Night Swimmers – is annoyed. Her quiet, rural life in the village of Ballybrady has been disrupted by dryrobe-wearing out-of-towners, who have formed the Duckie Divers Swimming Club and crashed her secret beach for gleeful, shrieking cold dips and wild swimming sessions.
Snow Birds explores the joy in unexpected connection and what can happen when Grace looks deeper than the Duckie Divers’ goose-pimpled skin to learn the stories that have brought the women together and into the icy waters of the Irish Sea. Perhaps by working together, they can save the terns’ beach – and maybe even themselves.
Ideal reading with hot tea after a chilly winter dip in the lido.
Find out more at hachette.co.uk
Cold by A.S. Byatt
Read our review here.
First published as part of a collection in 1998, A.S. Byatt’s Cold has been republished in a new, beautiful, standalone edition with a guest afterword by the brilliant RF Kuang.
Cold tells the story of delicate Princess Fiammarosa, who leads a safe and protected life in her family’s castle, until the winter when she comes of age and discovers that the long-feared ice and snow actually sustains and breathes new life into her. The prospect of marriage is raised: her family hopes she will marry into the frozen North, but her head is turned by gifts from a prince of the warm Southern regions, where the ice woman will struggle to survive. How can the two be together – and at what cost to Fiammarosa?
This edition would make a meaningful gift for younger women, or those trying to rediscover themselves in the new year.
Find out more at penguin.co.uk
The Woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons
Ivy Gower, a curmudgeonly middle-aged charwoman with some slightly witchy talents, inherits a rural cottage in Buckinghamshire and takes up residence near the tiny village of Little Warby. Having settled in with a rescued dog and a pet pigeon, she manages, despite her anti-social instincts, to have surprising effects on her new neighbours, but her biggest challenge will likely be the 12-year-old runaway who shows up at her door.
First published in 1970, this new edition features an introduction by twentieth-century women’s historian Elizabeth Crawford.
A pointer not just to this title, but to Dean Street Press’ entire Furrowed Middlebrow imprint, sharing the best women’s fiction from the 20th century. Look out for #DeanStreetDecember26!
Find out more at deanstreetpress.co.uk
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
A tale of beauty and hopeless love, delicately and sparsely translated from the original Japanese. Shimamura leaves the city to visit Komako, the geisha he loves, who is trapped by expectation. Can the two ever truly be together? Dream-like fiction to float away into: perfect for an icy winter’s day.
Find out more at penguin.co.uk
A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter
Unforgettable, chilly, classic non-fiction about Christiane’s 1933 winter in Svalbard with her fur-trapper husband. Stunning nature writing with sound advice for surviving a harsh winter, including the maxim of always taking a daily walk, even if just around the floor of one’s snow-bound cabin…
Find out more at pushkinpress.com