--- title: 10 Books by Women for Long Winter Evenings, From Katherine May's Wintering to Little Women description: Ten winter books by women, from Katherine May's Wintering and Agatha Christie's snowbound train to Ali Smith's Winter and The Woman in Black. author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-11-09T10:15:50.743Z updated: 2026-11-09T10:15:50.782Z canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/winter-books-by-women-reading-list image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-11665248.webp categories: Reading Lists content_type: Guide region: Global publication: Rich Books schema_type: Article --- By half past four the light has gone, and the evening stretches ahead of you. Winter is the best reading season of the year, and women have written some of its finest books: memoirs about resting when life falls apart, ghost stories told on Christmas Eve, murders on snowbound trains and family Christmases that go wrong in every possible way. These ten books by women cover comfort, chills and big, absorbing stories. Some are recent, some are classics you may not have opened since school, and every one of them belongs to the cold months. For this month's new releases, see our [hot titles to read this November](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/hot-titles-to-read-this-november-from-the-friday-bookshop-to-judi-dench-s-memoir). ## Wintering by Katherine May ### Book: Wintering *The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times* By Katherine May Katherine May's memoir of a season when her husband fell seriously ill, her son stopped going to school and her own illness led her to leave her job, and of what she learned about resting, retreating and recovering when life knocks you down. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780593189481) Start here if this year has been hard. In the space of a few months, May's husband nearly died when his appendix burst, her young son stopped going to school and her own illness pushed her to leave her job as a university lecturer. Wintering is the memoir of that season and of what she learned from it. May treats the difficult stretches of life as winters, times when you have to slow down, rest and repair before you can move on. She swims in a cold sea, learns from old winter customs and looks at how animals and plants get through the dark months. The book reads like a long letter from a wise friend, and you will want to give a copy to someone you love. ## How to Winter by Kari Leibowitz ### Book: How to Winter *Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days* By Kari Leibowitz Health psychologist Kari Leibowitz moved to Tromsø, Norway, more than 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, expecting to study how people endure two months without sun. Instead she found residents who looked forward to winter. Drawing on her research into the wintertime mindset and on travels to cold places from Iceland to Japan, she sets out practical ways to treat winter as a season to enjoy rather than endure. Pair May's memoir with this practical companion. In 2014 the psychologist Kari Leibowitz moved to Tromsø in northern Norway, a city where the sun does not rise for two months each winter. She expected to find people struggling through the dark. Instead she found that many of them looked forward to it. How to Winter shows you how to change the way you see the season: planning winter pleasures in advance, getting outside in every kind of weather and switching off the overhead lights in favour of lamps and candles, a habit she calls 'Big Light Off'. If you dread the clocks going back, this is the book for you. ## A Winter Book by Tove Jansson ### Book: A Winter Book *Selected Stories* By Tove Jansson Twenty stories by Tove Jansson, thirteen of them from her first book for adults, Sculptor's Daughter, and seven later stories, translated from Swedish and introduced by Ali Smith. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780954899523) You know Jansson as the creator of the Moomins. In A Winter Book you meet the writer she was for adults. The collection gathers twenty stories, thirteen of them from her first book for adults, Sculptor's Daughter, with an introduction by Ali Smith. They move across her life, from a childhood in Helsinki as the daughter of a sculptor and an illustrator, to her later years spent on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. The stories are short, clear and often funny, with children who see the world more sharply than the grown-ups around them. Read one before bed and it will stay with you for days. ## Little Women by Louisa May Alcott ### Book: Little Women By Louisa May Alcott Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March grow up in New England while their father is away at the American Civil War, in Louisa May Alcott's classic novel, which opens at Christmas. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780140390698) Alcott opens her novel at Christmas, with the four March sisters in New England grumbling that the holiday will be no holiday without presents. Their father is away at the American Civil War and money is short, and over the following years Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy grow up, fall in love, lose each other and find their own way in the world. If you last read it as a girl, read it again now. You will notice how hard Marmee works to hold the family together, and how fiercely Jo fights for the right to write and earn her own money. ## Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton ### Book: Ethan Frome By Edith Wharton Edith Wharton's short novel of a poor farmer, his sickly wife Zeena and her young cousin Mattie Silver, set in the snowbound New England village of Starkfield. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780141389400) Wharton's short novel takes place in the snowbound New England village of Starkfield. Ethan Frome is a poor farmer married to Zeena, a sickly and bitter wife. When Zeena's young cousin, Mattie Silver, comes to live with them, Ethan falls in love with her, and a winter's night of sledding sets the course of all three lives. It runs to fewer than 200 pages and you can read it in an evening. The cold seems to come off the page, and the ending will stay with you long after the book is closed. ## Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie ### Book: Murder on the Orient Express By Agatha Christie A snowdrift stops the Orient Express in the night, an American passenger is found dead in his compartment and Hercule Poirot must find the killer among the passengers, in Agatha Christie's most famous mystery. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780007119318) A snowdrift stops the Orient Express in the mountains of Yugoslavia in the middle of the night. By morning, an American passenger, Samuel Ratchett, lies dead in his compartment, stabbed many times. Hercule Poirot is on board, the train cannot move and every passenger in the carriage has a secret. Christie built one of her most famous endings on this snowbound train, and the novel still works perfectly when you know the solution. Read it with the curtains drawn and the fire lit. ## The Woman in Black by Susan Hill ### Book: The Woman in Black By Susan Hill On Christmas Eve, Arthur Kipps remembers the journey he made as a young solicitor to settle the affairs of Mrs Alice Drablow at the remote Eel Marsh House, in Susan Hill's classic English ghost story. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780099288473) On Christmas Eve, while his stepchildren tell ghost stories by the fire, Arthur Kipps sits in silence. Years earlier, as a young solicitor, he travelled to a remote market town to settle the affairs of the late Mrs Alice Drablow at Eel Marsh House, a lonely building cut off from the land at every high tide. What he saw there has haunted him ever since. Hill wrote her ghost story in the tradition of the great Victorian tales, and it is short, elegant and frightening. Save it for a night of fog and wind. ## Life After Life by Kate Atkinson ### Book: Life After Life By Kate Atkinson Ursula Todd is born in a snowstorm in February 1910 and lives her life again and again through the turbulent 20th century, in Kate Atkinson's Costa Novel Award winner. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780552776639) On 11th February 1910, during a heavy snowstorm, Ursula Todd is born in an English country house and dies before she can take her first breath. Then she is born again, and again, and each time her life takes a different course through the 20th century, through the Blitz in London and into Germany on the eve of war. Atkinson's novel won the Costa Novel Award in 2013 and is the kind of big, absorbing book a long winter deserves. Each new life makes you look again at the one before. ## Winter by Ali Smith ### Book: Winter By Ali Smith A Christmas gathering in a large house in Cornwall brings together Sophia, her son Art, the young woman he has paid to play his girlfriend and Sophia's long-estranged sister Iris, in the second novel of Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet. [Waterstones](https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780241973332) The second novel in Smith's seasonal quartet takes place over Christmas in a large old house in Cornwall. Sophia, a retired businesswoman, is seeing things. Her son Art, who writes a nature blog, arrives with Lux, a young woman he has paid to pretend to be his girlfriend. Then Sophia's sister Iris, an activist she has not spoken to for decades, joins them. Smith writes about family quarrels, politics and the stories we tell about ourselves, with jokes on almost every page. It is the perfect antidote to a Christmas film. ## The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden ### Book: The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy Book 1) By Katherine Arden The first book in Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy, set in the forests of medieval Russia and drawn from Russian folk tales. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=The+Bear+and+the+Nightingale+Katherine+Arden) Arden takes you to a village at the edge of the forest in medieval Russia, where the winter lasts for months. Vasilisa, known as Vasya, grows up listening to her nurse's stories of the frost king and the household spirits who protect the family. When a new stepmother and a zealous priest forbid the old ways, the spirits begin to weaken and something dark wakes in the woods. This is the first book of Arden's Winternight trilogy, and once you finish it you will want the second, The Girl in the Tower, straight away. Read it under a blanket on the coldest night of the year. ### Book: The Girl in the Tower *Winternight Trilogy, Book 2* By Katherine Arden The second book in the Winternight trilogy, set in medieval Moscow and drawn from Russian folk tales, with Kaschei as its main villain. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9781785031069) ## How to Choose Your First Winter Read For comfort and good sense: Wintering or How to Winter. For short stories before bed: A Winter Book. For a family classic: Little Women. For a chill: The Woman in Black or Ethan Frome. For a puzzle: Murder on the Orient Express. For a big novel to live inside: Life After Life, Winter or The Bear and the Nightingale.