Avoid the heat this summer with one of these chilling reads – everything from true crime, to arctic adventure, to classic Japanese literature.

Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck

Swedish Lapland, 1717: Maj, her husband Jan-Erik and her daughters Frederika and Marit arrive from their native Finland, hoping to forget the traumas of their past and put down new roots in this harsh but beautiful land. Above them looms Blackåsen, a mountain whose foreboding presence looms over the valley and whose dark history seems to haunt the lives of those who live in its shadow. Part historical thriller, part Swedish Gothic, Wolf Winter is the story of a vicious murder that threatens to tear apart an isolated community during the coldest of winters.

Monsters by Emerald Fennell

Set in the Cornish town of Fowey, all is not as idyllic as the beautiful seaside town might seem. The body of a young woman is discovered in the nets of a fishing boat. It’s soon established that the woman was murdered. Most are shocked and horrified. But there is somebody who is not – a twelve-year-old girl. She is delighted as she loves murders and starts her own personal investigation when a like-minded new friend arrives town…

A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones

In this literary thriller, a group of six international travellers meet in an empty apartment in Berlin to share stories. Each is enthralled in some way to the work of Vladimir Nabokov, and each is finding their way in deep winter in a haunted city. A moment of devastating violence shatters the group, and changes the direction of everyone’s story.

Across the Arctic Ocean: Original Photographs from the Last Great Polar Journey by Sir Wally Herbert and Huw Lewis-Jones

On February 21, 1968, Wally Herbert and his team of three companions and forty huskies set out from Point Barrow, Alaska, embarking on a route that would take them some 3,800 miles over sixteen months, across the North Pole and the frozen Arctic Ocean via its longest axis. Though their achievement was overshadowed by the Apollo moon landing, it stands today as one of the greatest expeditions of all time. This photography book is an engrossing first-hand record of an astonishing journey.

One of Us: The Story of a Massacre and its Aftermath by Åsne Seierstad (translated by Sarah Death)

On 22 July 2011 Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 of his fellow Norwegians in a terrorist atrocity that shocked the world. Many were teenagers, just beginning their adult lives. Based on extensive testimonies and interviews, One of Us is the definitive account of the massacres and the subsequent trial. Our managing director Mark Rubbo said that the book ‘is destined to become a classic account of evil’.

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata (translated by Edward G. Seidensticker)

Nobel Prize-winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer’s masterpiece. At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome.

Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga by Sylvain Tesson

Consolations of the Forest is a Thoreau-esque quest to find solace, taken to the extreme. No stranger to inhospitable places, Sylvain Tesson exiles himself to a wooden cabin on Siberia’s Lake Baikal with his thoughts, his books, a couple of dogs, and many bottles of vodka. Writing from February to July, he shares his deep appreciation for the harsh but beautiful land, the resilient men and women who populate it, and the bizarre and tragic history that has given Siberia an almost mythological place in the imagination.

The Shining by Stephen King

The Shining is arguably Stephen King’s scariest novel. When Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies he brings his family along. Soon, after a winter storm leaves them snowbound, the supernatural forces inhabiting the hotel influence Jack’s sanity, leaving his wife and son in incredible danger.

The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

First published in 1978, The Snow Leopard is Peter Matthiessen’s account of his two-month journey through the Himalayas to the Crystal Mountain on the Tibetan plateau. The explorer and writer travelled together with field biologist George Schaller in order to study the wild blue sheep, the bharal. The two also hoped to see the snow leopard, a creature so rarely spotted as to be nearly mythical, and Matthiessen’s account is also a meditation on loss and longing.

Plus, one for the kids…

Arctic Animals by Tad Carpenter

This stylish board board is full of arctic animals and children will love guessing which animal they’ll find beneath the flaps. A final spread features all the animals enjoying themselves at a polar party and it’s a refreshingly cool image to linger on.