Hot Topic: Winter Reads
Books set in snowy settings are a bit quieter; slower to unfold, and there's something a little haunting about them. What better way to spend a winter's day (or night) bundled up by the fire with a cup of cocoa and a good book?! The following titles are a small selection of what is on offer at Dunedin Public Libraries:
Life after Life. Kate Atkinson
On a cold and snowy night in 1910 Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies and then is born again. This is a recurring element in this story where Ursula has several lives (and deaths) during the course of the twentieth century.
61 Hours: a Reacher novel. Lee Child
This is the fourteenth book in the Jack Reacher series. A tour bus crashes in a savage snow storm and lands Jack Reacher in the middle of a deadly confrontation, and marooned in Bolton, South Dakota. One woman is fighting for justice and Reacher will risk his own life to save hers from a sinister assassin.
Rebecca. Daphne du Maurier
A quiet ladies' companion, staying in Monte Carlo with her employer, meets the wealthy Maxim de Winter. She and Max fall in love, marry and return to Manderley, his large country estate in Cornwall. Max is still troubled by the death of his first wife, Rebecca, in a boating accident the year before. The second Mrs de Winter clashes with the housekeeper, Mrs Danvers, and discovers that Rebecca still has a strange hold on everyone at Manderley.
Winter Garden. Kristin Hannah
Two sisters, Meredith and Nina, and their mother, Anya, are reunited upon the death of their beloved father and husband, Evan. Anya has always seemed cold and withdrawn and it transpires that she is the sole survivor of the German army's siege of Leningrad and has known great deprivation, seeking solace in her winter garden.
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. Peter Hoeg
Smilla Jaspersen is a Greenlander by birth and lives in Copenhagen. A quirky character, she takes it upon herself to investigate the death of a six-year-old boy who has fallen to his death from a high-rise apartment building in the midst of an dark, icy cold winter.
Burial Rites. Hannah Kent
Inspired by actual events which took place in Iceland in 1828, the book tells the story of Agnes Magnusdottir, who was convicted of a double homicide. While awaiting her execution, Agnes is interned on a remote farm in Denmark. The family is horrified to have her with them and Toti, a priest seems to be her only friend. The family eventually discovers there is another side to the story.
Winter. Ali Smith
The second book in the series "Seasonal". A family gathering in the middle of a harsh British winter brings past tensions to the fore. A very contemporary novel (Brexit and Trump feature). Long-buried secrets and rivalries are hashed out between two previously estranged sisters. A story of time and memory.