Fearsome Five: Five Books For When the Weather Outside is Frightful

When the weather outside is frightful, the song says, but it can be frightful because while the snow might be falling outside there might be something sinister inside. Christmas has come and gone, and it was for many a soggy one. But there is some bitterly cold weather around the corner. I enjoy the snow, but I enjoy it from the safety of my home, watching the snow majestically fall outside without me having to shovel it. Polar vortex, you say? Then don’t be outside if you can be inside, and cuddle up to some reads that keeps the snow where it belongs: in our imaginations.

Snowblind by Christopher Golden. The editor of Hark!The Herald Angels Scream, as well as an author of his own fiction, demonstrates he knows what chills someone’s blood. The town of Coventry has weathered some bad blizzards, storms that have taken loved ones literally without a trace. Now there’s a new blizzard but its bringing back old ghosts, and these ghosts have very specific people to haunt. Brothers, spouses, and others are targeted as this storm looks to increase its tally of lives stolen.

The Terror by Dan Simmons. Not content to simply stay home and watch the snow around them, the crew of the HMS Terror has journeyed to find the Northwest Passage only to find a harsh winter approaching and a truly terrible creature haunting them. A blend of historical fiction and supernatural horror, this book could be for fans of Alma Katsu’s diabolical Donner Party tale TheHunger. Also, any fans of the series on which this book is based may want to see where the Terror originated.

Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris. Those familiar with the gothic tradition/trope of stormy nights and being forced to stay the night in a place where they obviously shouldn’t be staying will recognize it as a the Addison family (husband, wife, son, and fresh-from-rehab Uncle Robbie) to stop for the night in the town of Goodnight, Idaho as a snowstorm rages around them. However, the book takes a hard right into the Twilight Zone as the family is not only physically separated but experiencing their own separate time periods and realities, unable to find one another. The book might not be the best beach reading, and not because of the snowstorm within. With reality unmooring as readers flow along Morris’s surreal sentences, it becomes very easy as a reader to drift into Goodnight’s clutches.

30 Days of Night by Steve Niles. It’s a graphic novel, with an emphasis on the graphic as some vampires finally begin using their heads and head up north to the town of Barrow, Alaska, where the sun goes down and stays down for 30 days, leaving plenty of time for the undead to feed. If the snow-covered scenery and plight of Barrow’s sheriff doesn’t give you a twinge of cabin fever, picture a night that never ends, a night that is full of artist Ben Templesmith’s vampires that are mostly teeth and tongue.

The Shining by Stephen King. People can argue all day about how the Shining entered our pop culture lexicon. Was it through Jack Nicholson’s performance as frustrated novelist Jack Torrance? The eye-catching and subversive visuals of Kubrick’s film? Kubrick’s film may have spawned a few parodies, from Simpsons to memes about Jack being a dull boy, but where would the film be without Stephen King’s tale of overbearing isolation and bubbling-to-the-surface trauma? People probably know the story: Jack Torrance, writer and disgraced English teacher, is forced to take the job of winter caretaker at the Overlook hotel. He, his wife, and son soon discover that despite the wind whooping outside and snowdrifts piling up that they are not alone in the house, that the Overlook wants to make the family, especially Danny and his Shining, a permanent part of it. Nicholson’s performance is memorable but nowhere near as subtle or as heartbreaking as King depicts. Jack Torrance in the book is a broken man, who might have been a good man if not for his demons, exploited by the hotel until Jack succumbs to them. Add King’s depiction of the hotel as not just the setting but the primary antagonist and this is a book that lives up to the adage of the book being better than the movie.