Here are 60 books that Winter Moon fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve spent a lifetime reading horror, I was probably in third grade when I stumbled across a battered collection of short stories by Saki in the adult section of the library—where I wasn’t supposed to be. I snuck the book back to the children’s section, started reading, and I was hooked. Then it was Edgar Allan Poe, and from Poe until now, it’s been every horror novel or short story I could find. The best of them have never left me. And they make up my list, The Most Terrifying Novels You Can’t Escape From.
Like the other books on the list, The Shining felt personal, more like something that was happening to me than a story I was reading.
Like Jack, I could feel myself hanging on while the menace around me grew more real, more concrete. And more overwhelming. Even today, I can feel the terror of losing control, of becoming part of the menace, part of the threat to everything of meaning and value. Snowbound with horror, and Spring will never come.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Before Doctor Sleep, there was The Shining, a classic of modern American horror from the undisputed master, Stephen King.
Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve spent a lifetime reading horror, I was probably in third grade when I stumbled across a battered collection of short stories by Saki in the adult section of the library—where I wasn’t supposed to be. I snuck the book back to the children’s section, started reading, and I was hooked. Then it was Edgar Allan Poe, and from Poe until now, it’s been every horror novel or short story I could find. The best of them have never left me. And they make up my list, The Most Terrifying Novels You Can’t Escape From.
I love Ghost Story because it didn’t just scare the hell out of me, it scared the hell out of me in a very personal way.
It felt like it was something that could have happened to me. Worse, it felt like something that still might happen to me. And at any time. It lingered in my psyche, like the threat of something waiting to occur. The ghost of terror yet to come.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub’s classic tale of horror, secrets, and the dangerous ghosts of the past...
What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?
In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories—some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives.
But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury…
A few years ago, while researching my novel Incarnate, I sought out Arctic, Alaskan, and winter horror novels. These books explored the dangers of such places—brutal nature, isolation, depression, fear, and suicidal tendencies. Combined with the supernatural, Lovecraftian, and unexplainable, they created gripping stories.
I also read non-fiction essays, books, articles, and watched YouTube videos about these harsh environments. The authors captured the reality of isolation and danger perfectly. If you're curious about what it’s like to venture into these perilous, frozen landscapes—without risking frostbite—these novels are a thrilling way to experience it.
When I think about the arctic, and horror, I immediately think of Dan Simmons and The Terror.
It’s an expansive, tense, visceral book that feels historical. The authority and details make this feel like fact when we know this is fiction. It’s also quite lyrical and haunting—the setting as a backdrop, the weather, and senses brutalized by this expedition, and the events that slowly unfold. Madness, mutiny, and cannibalism? Yes, please. There are so many ways you can die out here in the cold—starvation, hypothermia, scurvy, exposure, etc.
Whether you came to his work via this book, Carrion Comfort, or (like I did) with Song of Kali, this may be his best work to date. And the television series is worth a gander as well. Immersive, unsettling, gripping, and bleak this is one of my favorite Arctic horror novels to date.
The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
There’s something about a horror story set in the winter, especially with characters stuck in a snowstorm, that makes it more chilling to me. My first novel, Ancient Enemy, was inspired by my love of horror set in the dead of winter. If you haven’t read these books on my list, I hope you’ll check them out. It was difficult narrowing the list down to just five – I can think of so many other great winter-themed horror novels.
While not technically a horror novel, this book paints a scary possibility – an unflinching look at what a nationwide blackout in the middle of winter would be like, focusing on a group of people in an apartment building in Manhattan. They are trapped, trying to find food, trying to stay warm, trying to survive. Loved this book. I always recommend this one.
The incredibly realistic story of one family's struggle to survive the apocalyptic destruction of New York. GoodReads Award winning million-copy international bestseller now in development with NETFLIX.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ "Shows how dangerous our transition to an interconnected infrastructure has become." —Karic Allega, Joint Military Cyber Command, US NAVY
New York goes dark in the dead of winter... A terrifying mystery begins... But who is the enemy?
Mike Mitchell is an average New Yorker struggling just to keep his family together and take care of his two-year-old son when a string of disasters shreds the bustling city around…
I’ve been a reader all my life. It started with books like Where the Red Fern Grows, and as I got older, I moved on to books like The Bean Treesby Barbara Kingsolver andSkipped Parts by Tim Sandlin. Whatever I was reading, it was taking place somewhere in the wilds of the mid and western United States. I’m from a small town, and growing up, everybody knew their neighbor’s business. These are the places I love to read and write about. Add some steamy romance, and I’m there! So when the MMC from my first book, Burned, cowboy Jack Cade, showed up in my head, I knew he was from a small town.
This book broke me! Eli, a big, silent cowboy, and Abigail, a determined ranch owner come together in this book in explosive ways. The steam knocked my socks off, and I could picture the dusty ranch and barn set in Deep River, Montana so easily from the author’s descriptions. The love story is intense, filled with angst and a little bit of kink. Breaking Him is a book I will remember for a long time to come.
Folks in town call him a monster—say he’s dangerous. But I know him simply as Elijah Hays, the quiet, gentle giant who works with the horses on my ranch. I can feel him watching me, that steady intense gaze making me crave things I don’t quite understand, burn in a way that frightens me. He’s always kept his distance…until that night.
I remember him coming to my rescue, me following him into the barn, giving him his first taste of a woman, and his inexperienced yet barely reined touch turning me to ash.
My first introduction to the art of reading and storytelling was my dad’s bedtime stories. Sometimes he’d read a favorite, but most times he made them up; complete with sound effects. He was a journalist and inspired my love of reading and writing. My imagination was developed at an early age and shows no sign of slowing down or disappearing. I still gravitate toward fantasy, but am also a history buff and plan to read and write for the rest of my life.
Not only is Hattie Big Sky a Newbery Award Honor Book, it’s a beautifully written story based on the author’s own history and ancestors.
At the ripe ol’ age of sixteen, the main character, Hattie Brooks, moves to Montana to work the homestead of her great uncle. Alone, I might add. I felt Hattie’s fear, tragedy, determination, and triumph throughout the story.
This Newbery Honor winning, New York Times bestseller celebrates the true spirit of independence on the American frontier.
For most of her life, sixteen-year-old Hattie Brooks has been shuttled from one distant relative to another. Tired of being Hattie Here-and-There, she summons the courage to leave Iowa and move all by herself to Vida, Montana, to prove up on her late uncle’s homestead claim.
Under the big sky, Hattie braves hard weather, hard times, a cantankerous cow, and her own hopeless hand at the cookstove. Her quest to make a home is championed by new neighbors Perilee Mueller, her German…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am a former wildland firefighter, so I am passionate about writing about it. I’ve included several personal experiences in my books, and I learned integrity and an outstanding work ethic with the firefighters who trained me in the wildland fire community. I met my husband on another fire crew, so I had to write these fire stories in the romance genre. I have friends who also met their spouses in the world of firefighting, and I loved their romances. While not all wildfire stories in real life may have happy endings, I choose to write these as romances because a happily-ever-after is required for the romance genre.
Nora Roberts can always be counted on to write authentic stories, and she makes me care about her characters. This one is dear to my heart because I lived and worked in Missoula, Montana, where the story is set.
This story is also set at the Missoula Smokejumper Base, where I trained as a wildland firefighter. This story has twists and turns, and the slow-burn romance, along with the close-knit wildland fire community, kept me turning the pages.
In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Nora Roberts delves into the world of elite firefighters who thrive on danger and adrenaline-men and women who wouldn't know how to live life if it wasn't on the edge.
Little else in life is as dangerous as fire jumping. But there's also little else as thrilling-at least to Rowan Tripp. Being a Missoula smoke jumper is in Rowan's blood: her father is a legend in the field. At this point, returning to the wilds of Montana for the season feels like coming home-even with reminders of the partner she lost last season…
I am a history-phobe turned history fanatic thanks to a snippet of a family story about my great-grandmother. Casual interest morphed into a focused passion when I learned that she truly had homesteaded-- all by herself and in her late teens-- in eastern Montana in 1917. Her accomplishment inspired four years of research and writing, resulting in my first historical novel, Hattie Big Sky, which earned a Newbery Honor award and spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. More importantly, that bit of family lore revealed my purpose as a writer and I have since devoted my career to bringing the past alive for today’s young readers.
The story behind this book is nearly as fascinating as the book itself. Evelyn Cameron—Lady Cameron!—accompanied her ne’er do well husband to Montana with a scheme to raise thoroughbreds. When that failed, her husband fell into despair and it was up to Evelyn to put food on the table. She did that by photographing what she saw around her: everything from staged and romanticized “Western photos” that she sold to magazines back East, to interiors of dreary homestead claim shacks. Her glass plate negatives were converted to greenhouses after her passing but were thankfully discovered and restored, resulting in this incredible book of photographs.
Leaving behind her childhood world of the English gentry, Evelyn Cameron began ranching on the harsh and beautiful plains of eastern Montana in 1889 with her husband, Ewen. When their initial venture--raising polo ponies--failed, Evelyn turned to glass-plate photography to help support her family. Nearly 2,000 negatives remained in a friend's basement for 50 years after Evelyn's death until author Donna M. Lucey tracked down the exra-ordinary collection. Photographing Montana showcases more than 150 photographs of life in Montana from the 1890s through the 1920s. Evelyn Cameron's work portrays vast landscapes, range horses, cattle roundups, wheat harvests, community celebrations, and…
Cows and horses were part of daily life in my family. For many years of my youth, my father was a working cowboy, running the cattle ranch on a large agricultural operation. We also had our own herd and trained horses as well. While we watched the popular TV Westerns of the time, we were always aware that they had no connection to the reality of cowboy life, and that “cowboy” was a term misused and abused on the screen and in the pages of shoot-’em-up Western novels. Authenticity and a sense of the reality of cowboy life are important to me, and have been since boyhood.
In a tale of Scottish immigrants who homestead Montana ranches in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains, Dancing at the Rascal Fairfeatures a cast of characters who cooperate and sometimes clash as they build lives in a harsh new country. Human relationships prove as challenging as the land, the livestock, and the weather. Doig, like few authors who write about the West, presents a faithful picture of ranch life.
The central volume in Ivan Doig's acclaimed Montana trilogy, Dancing at the Rascal Fair is an authentic saga of the American experience at the turn of this century and a passionate, portrayal of the immigrants who dared to try new lives in the imposing Rocky Mountains.
Ivan Doig's supple tale of landseekers unfolds into a fateful contest of the heart between Anna Ramsay and Angus McCaskill, walled apart by their obligations as they and their stormy kith and kin vie to tame the brutal, beautiful Two Medicine country.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I have published seven books, all set in the West, including an anthology,West of 98: Living and Writing the New American West, that features writers from every state west of the Mississippi. For four years now, I have been doing a podcast called Breakfast in Montana, where my partner Aaron Parrett and I discuss Montana books. I also published a book in 2016 called56 Counties, where I traveled to every county in Montana and interviewed people about what it means to live in this state. So I have a good feel for the people of this region and for the books they love.
Winter Wheat, published in 1944, tells the story of Ellen Webb, a young woman coming of age on a farm in Montana. Walker moved from back east to Great Falls, Montana in 1933, and she is one of many writers who adopted Montana as their home state and wrote very eloquently about the unique challenges of growing up in such isolation, living a life so focused on hard work and basic survival. Walker published several excellent novels, but Winter Wheatwas her tour de force.
For this Bison Books edition, James Welch, the acclaimed author of Winter in the Blood (1986) and other novels, introduces Mildred Walker's vivid heroine, Ellen Webb, who lives in the dryland wheat country of central Montana during the early 1940s. He writes, "It is a story about growing up, becoming a woman, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, within the space of a year and a half. But what a year and a half it is!" Welch offers a brief biography of Walker, who wrote nine of her thirteen novels while living in Montana.
