THE SECRET LIFE OF A SNOWFLAKE by Kenneth George Libbrecht

Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel by Tess Gerritsen

Ice Cold in Alex - Christopher Landon

Story of a WWII army group in N Africa kept going through the desert by the thought of a dewy glass of cold beer once they get to Alexandria. Excellent film made of it.

No heat wave in England. A typical summer of dull wet days just in time for the harassed parents to entertain their children who finish school this week. Temps in the 50's; had to light the fire last night. ;-)

Oh, to have to light a fire !

Combine this heat and humidity with hot flashes and heat rashes and you get the gist.

I am Princess Crabbypants lately.

Winter's Tales by Isak Dinesen.

I'm with you Yoyobon-I live a straight shot down 81 about 4 hours-and it is miserable x 2. However, BF lives in OKC, and they have had 30+ days over 100....

here's my title:

Valley of the Shadow Peter Tremayne.
Cooling and chilling, no?

The Children's Blizzard, a book on the Donner party expedition, or The Call of the Wild! Here in MN, I like to read about treacherous snow and cold in a heat wave :)

How about a chilling title, The Terror by Dan Simmons, which is also a fictionalized account of The Franklin Expedition caught in frozen ice while looking for the Northwest Passage.

George R.R. Martin's series, The Song of Ice and Fire. Remember, winter is coming.

Or how about Frozen Drinks: With or Without the Buzz by Bruce Weinstein

Let's roast a pig at YoYobon's, set up tents to tend it overnight, and talk food and books. I'll bring frozen strawberry daiquiris and coleslaw.

Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean

I'll join the food and books talk and, since we're just pretending, stop by Hawaii for shave ice with ice cream in the bottom. (My favorite is pina colada flavored ice over coconut ice cream.)

The Dog Who Came in from the Cold....Alexander McCall Smith

Sounds like a great adventure to me !
If you don't mind the bear, I'll open up my vast woods to all who care to pitch a tent, build the fire and bring the cooler of ice !!

A Thoreau-ly perfect book retreat !!

Any novel set on the steppes of Russia: e.g. "Doctor Zhivago", "Anna Karenina", "War & Peace."

Despite the heat and humidity of last summer in Tidewater, VA, Charleston has got it beat by a longshot. Those who built the old houses in the city centuries ago were well aware of the need to position porches and windows with exactitude to catch the breezes off the nearby Ashley and Cooper rivers.... Benches in the shade are fortunately placed along the sidewalks, as well.

"Love of Life" a SS in Jack London's, To Build A Fire and Other Stories. Men stuck in the cold fighting for survival.

One of my favorite books -- Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg. If you want chilling, this one is icy and intriguing. This mystery/thriller moves from the wintry streets of Copenhagen to "an icebound island off the coast of Greenlannd." I read it in the middle of summer and almost found myself reaching fora fleece throw.

Here is a link that might be useful: Smilla's Sense of Snow

I was working in the library for a while here on campus, and it was actually too cold for me so I had to leave it to come back to my office to thaw..! It's rare for me to find something too chilly..!

Now I am back to normal body-temperature wise, how about The Winter Book by Tove Jansson?

lemonhead, i just finished Jansson's The Summer Book a few days ago - how does The Winter Book compare?

My usual hot weather read is Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter, or Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, where Genly and Estraven cross the glacier.

Arctic Chill and Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason. Not only are the titles chilling, but both books take place during a miserable and cold Icelandic winter.

In Iceland right now, however, a heatwave is subsiding, but another one is predicted on the weekend. Houses here are generally not air-conditioned and my office was boiling hot on Friday, Monday and Tuesday. Today it's quite comfortable.

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier alternates two story lines and one of them is set in Antartica. The other setting, the City, gets cold towards the end. I had the thermal misfortune of having to read it in winter for a book club. But this time of the year, it should prove refreshing.

Or you can come over for a visit to western Washington, where we are having a very cool summer: they said in the news this morning that 72% of the first 200 days of the year have been below average (average is 77 in July). It was only 62 degrees on Sunday (and rainy and gray). We are not happy about it, but seeing what you guys on the rest of the US are going through, we complain less...

Netla,
Your "heat wave" was in our news here: they said you guys were only in the 70's! I'm sorry to report that the newscasters had a laugh at that... But then they added: "That's the mentality we should embrace. In that case, like Iceland, we are having a heat wave also!". (They clarified that your temperatures are usually much lower than 70's).

Reader in transit, I know it sounds funny to people used to higher temperatures, but in Iceland 20 ðC feels like 30 ðC does in e.g. California. It's probably the difference in air humidity.

One book I'd like to add to the list does not have a cold title, but a cold subject: Endurance: ShackletonâÂÂs incredible voyage by Alfred Lansing. Taking place almost entirely in Antarctica, it is a cooling story and a chilling one too, but ultimately inspirational. I read it on a sunny summer's afternoon and felt as if I was in Antarctica.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage.

In all my long life, I've never known a summer like this one in most of the USA.

In high school, we had to read O.E. Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth", a saga about Norwegian emmigrants in the mid-west in the 1800's. There were a lot of long winters with heavy snows described vividly. Indeed, the author's description of one fateful blizzard still remains with me....

The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

I learned that the unusually high humidity is due to the heavy spring rains across most of the US, which began evaporating into the atmosphere as the high heat arrived....thus creating a huge blanket of humid, saturated air mass accompanying the heatwave.

This must be how a rain forest feels !!

Winter Dreams by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Here in West TX, we have not had measurable rain since last October, so we are shrivelling up. The gardens look rather tired (unless you are someone who completely disregarded the water shortage and planted the wrong of type of grass for the region)...

It has been so long without rain that when it does come, eventually, I will be outside in it just to remind myself of how it feels. We had a rain drop the other day, but that was it. One or two rain drops. June is usually our wet month, and not a drop. We could have seven inches of rain today, and still not have enough to make up for the drought.

We have also set a new record for the number of days over 100 degrees - more than 30 right now, and we're not even in the hot part of summer. Phew.

I dream of 70 degrees. And a bit of rain.