Chilly reads for winter eves
By Children's Librarian Kathleen Whalin
YORK VILLAGE - The days may be fractionally longer and the weather relatively mild, but it is still winter in Maine.And for me, winter is prime reading time.
My beloved college football games are over, I've finished my holiday craft projects and I want nothing more in the evening than to settle down with a good book. Somehow it seems fitting to read books set during the winter, books where the chills come from the season as well as the prose. Here are some titles, old and new, to consider from your own warm homes.
"Death in a Cold Climate" by Robert Barnard. A professor's dog uncovers something most unpleasant in a snowdrift.
"A Fine and Bitter Snow" by Dana Stabenow. The possibility of oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife preserve has fatal consequences.
"Gorky Park" by Martin Cruz Smith. A Moscow amusement park is the scene of a triple murder.
"High Country" by Nevada Barr. Four young park employees vanish in Yosemite National Park.
"In the Bleak Midwinter" by Julia Spencer-Fleming. A priest in a small New York town must solve the mystery of an abandoned baby and a murdered young woman.
"Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie. Stranded during a blizzard, a luxury train contains a murder victim, multiple suspects and master detective Hercule Poirot.
"Out Cold" by William Tapley. Brady Coyne has a murder mystery dumped in his backyard.
"Smilla's Sense of Snow" by Peter Hoeg. Smilla senses that a young boy's death is not quite the accident it seems to be.
"Tied up in Tinsel" by Ngaio Marsh. Artist Troy Alleyn finds there's nothing quite as deadly as family feuds at Christmas.
"Winter Prey" by John Sandford. Sandford's writing has been described as Minnesota Noir. Here his detective, Lucas Davenport, faces a pathological murderer in northern Wisconsin.
