Each month, Typhani Russo from the Altoona Area Public Library shares her top 10 book picks that center around a specific theme. This month’s theme is “Winter Thrillers.”
Book information and summaries cited from Goodreads.com.
All books listed are available at the Altoona Area Public Library.
YOUNG ADULT BOOKS:
Book: Frost, by M.P. Kozlowsky
Synopsis:
Sixteen year old Frost understands why she’s spent her entire life in an abandoned apartment building. The ruined streets below are hunting grounds for rogue robots and Eaters. She understands why she’s never met a human besides her father. She even understands why he forbids her to look for medicine for her dying pet. But the thing is, it’s not her real father giving the orders. It’s his memories. Before he died, Frost’s father uploaded his consciousness into their robot servant. But the technology malfunctioned and now her father fades in and out. So when Frost learns that there might be medicine on the other side of the ravaged city, she embarks on a dangerous journey to save the one living creature she loves. With only a robot as a companion, Frost must face terrors of all sorts, from outrunning the vicious Eaters to talking to the first boy she’s ever set eyes on. But can a girl who’s only seen the world through books and dusty windows survive on her own? Or will her first journey from home be her last?
Book: Snow Summer, by Kit Peel
Synopsis:
Massive climate change has caused a winter that will not thaw, and it seems that the forces of nature have turned on humanity itself. But in the sleepy British village of Pateley, one special girl may hold the key to the earth’s survival. Wyn, an orphan, has always known that she is different. Unable to feel the biting cold of wind and snow of Pateley’s endless winter, she does what she can to blend in. But when mysterious figures start to appear in the village, insisting that she may have the power to restore order to the natural world, Wyn must look deep inside herself to face the secrets of her past that she has kept hidden even from herself. From debut author Kit Peel, Snow Summer is an immersive fantasy novel that expertly conveys the beauty of the natural world and its conflict with human development. A powerful allegory for climate change and global warming, it is nevertheless a timeless story, reminiscent of classics of the genre.
Book: Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Synopsis:
In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the award-winning Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson explores a girl’s descent into the powerful vortex of anorexia and her painful path toward recovery. Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the skinniest. But what comes after size zero and size double-zero? When Cassie succumbs to the demons within, Lia feels she is being haunted by her friend’s restless spirit.
ADULT BOOKS:
Book: The Winter Witch, by Paula Brackston
Synopsis:
In her small, early nineteenth century Welsh town, there is no one quite like Morgana, who has not spoken since she was a young girl. Her silence is a mystery, as well as her magic. Concerned for her safety, her mother is anxious to see her married, and Cai Jenkins, a widower from the far hills, seems the best choice. After her wedding, Morgana is heartbroken at leaving her mother and wary of this man, whom she does not know. But she soon falls in love with Cai’s farm and the wild mountains that surround it. Cai works to understand the beautiful, half-tamed creature he has chosen for a bride and slowly, he begins to win Morgana’s affections. It’s not long, however, before her strangeness begins to be remarked upon in her new village. A dark force is at work there; a person who will stop at nothing to turn the townspeople against Morgana. Forced to defend her home, her man, and herself, Morgana must learn to harness her power, or she will lose everything.
Book: Winter at Death’s Hotel, by Kenneth M. Cameron
Synopsis:
Arthur Conan Doyle, the renowned creator of Sherlock Holmes, arrives with his wife Louisa at the Britannic Hotel in New York for his first American tour. While Arthur prepares his lectures, Louisa becomes entranced by the vibrant, dangerous metropolis brimming with debauchery and iniquity around every corner. When a woman’s mutilated corpse turns up in a Bowery alley, Louisa recognizes the victim as someone she’s seen in the hotel. Obsessed with the woman’s gruesome death, Louisa starts piecing together clues to reveal a story of murder and depravity. A story that leads back to the hotel itself and a madman who is watching her every move.
Book: The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden
Synopsis:
At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. Vasilisa spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him and honor the spirits of house and forest that protect their homes from evil. After Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, Vasilisa’s new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows. And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa’s stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent. As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse’s most frightening tales.
Book: Beartown, by Fredrick Backman
Synopsis:
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove returns with a dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream and the price required to make it come true. People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys. Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected. Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain.
Book: The Winter People, by Jennifer McMahon
Synopsis:
West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter, Gertie. Now, in present day, nineteen year old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister, Fawn. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that suddenly proves perilous when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished without a trace. Searching for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea’s diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother’s bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked deeper into the mystery of Sara’s fate, she discovers that she’s not the only person who’s desperately looking for someone they’ve lost. But, she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.
Book: Winterkill, by C.J. Box
Synopsis:
It’s an hour away from darkness, a bitter winter storm is raging, and Joe Pickett is deep in the forest edging Battle Mountain. Lamar Gardiner’s arrow-riddled corpse is splayed against the tree in front of him. Lamar’s murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm warn him to get off the mountain. But Joe knows this episode is far from over. And when his own daughter gets caught up in his hunt for the killer, Joe will stop at nothing to get her back.
READ IT BEFORE YOU SEE IT!
Book: The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo
DVD release date: January 16, 2018
Synopsis:
The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf. Police investigator, Harry Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he’s received and the disappearance of Jonas’s mother and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges; he is becoming a pawn in an increasingly terrifying game whose rules are devised by the killer. Fiercely suspenseful, The Snowman is the electrifying work of one of the best crime writers of our time.
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