If the meteorologists have got their calculations right, the UK will be hit by a snow barrage this weekend. Forecasts like this always get people excited because we so rarely get snow in the UK (Scotland excepted) but I prefer to read about it rather than experience the real thing.

I’ve picked ten books that are either set in a location where snow is just a way of life or where snowy weather is part of the plot. We’re visiting the cardinal points on a compass, starting in the west.

1. Snow by John Banville

Investigations into the murder of a Catholic priest are complicated by heavy snowfall which cuts off an old manor house from the rest of County Wexford. The snow doesn’t just add to the atmosphere, it mirrors the idea of things being concealed. Review is here.

2. Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

This Booker Prize contender is set during the Big Freeze of 1962-3. which saw parts of England enveloped in deep snow for weeks. Cut off from the rest of the world, two recently married couples contend with disappointments and resentments in their relationships. Review is here.

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Let’s head north, to Lapland, Iceland and then Canada.

3. Land of Snow and Ashes  by Petra Rautianen

Lapland is where an increasing number of families are flying right now in pursuit of a “magical” Christmas experience complete with reindeer and sledding. Petra Rautianen’s novel however features Lapland’s dark past not its romanticised present. Land of Snow and Ashes deals with a time when the Nazi regime sent undesirables there to detention camps. Review is here.

4. Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson

Bleak settings feature heavily in Nordic Noir but as Ragnar Jonasson shows in his Dark Icelandic series, there is also a beauty in those first days of winter.

As far as the eye could see the world was white, the streets bleached with silvery snowdrifts piled across the pavements. The mountains sparkled, their peary surfaces broken by the occasional fleck of black. The pale sky was an indication that the next fall of snow was not far away. it was as if nature had called a temporary truce, although everyone knew that sooner or later the weather would close in once again.

5. How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny

f you like snowy landscapes but prefer something a little less extreme, try the Chief Inspector series by Louise Penny. Her fictional village of Three Pines in Quebec province is often cut off by snow but that’s a great excuse to drop into the bistro for hot chocolate and croissants.

In How the Light Gets In, book number nine ,Christmas is approaching and preparations well underway for friends and family to shelter from the snow in front of a blazing hearth. One guest, a once hugely famous woman, fails to turn up in Three Pines.

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And now we’ll go to the most southerly tip of the planet to the bleakest and coldest location in my list.

6. Victim of the Aurora by Thomas Keneally.

This is a wonderfully atmospheric novel with a truly authentic depiction of the conditions experienced by explorers and scientists in this region. Keneally wrote the book from personal knowledge having been a guest with an American expedition in 1968.

7. Lean, Fall, Stand by Jon McGregor.

A brilliant novel about survival which begins with a catastrophic event on the Antarctic ice field. Review is here.

8. Mind Over Matter by Ranulph Fiennes.

For a non-fictionalised account of Antarctic exploration, it’s hard to beat account of a two-man attempt to achieve the first unsupported crossing of Antarctica. It almost cost them their lives.

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We’ll end our trip by heading east

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

A short, rather bleak tale of a love affair between  Shimamura, a wealthy intellectual from Tokyo and Komako, a young geisha he met in a remote hot spring town. As the book opens  Shimamura travels to the town in. the depths of winter in the hope of rekindling the affair. Review is here.

The Snow Kimono by Mark Henshaw

Henshaw’s novel is a meditation on love, loss and betrayal that moves between Paris and Japan with a brief visit to Algeria. There’s a lyrical quality to the writing, particularly in the sections set amid the snow-covered mountains, where the new season’s kimonos are laid out for the colours to set.