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Rainy day reads

Rain is permission to stay in. These books have a strong sense of place and weather, and they pull you in so completely that the afternoon disappears. Unlike the cozy picks, a few of them are a little stormy.

Books to start with

  • The Shadow of the Wind

    Carlos Ruiz Zafón

    A boy finds a forgotten book in a hidden Barcelona library and sets out to find its author. Gothic and bookish.

  • Piranesi

    Susanna Clarke

    A man lives alone in a house of endless halls and tides. Strange, hypnotic and slowly revealing.

  • The Remains of the Day

    Kazuo Ishiguro

    A butler takes a drive through the English countryside and looks back on his life. Quiet, precise and heartbreaking.

  • Wuthering Heights

    Emily Brontë

    A stormy love and revenge story on the Yorkshire moors. Best read with the rain actually falling.

  • The Secret Garden

    Frances Hodgson Burnett

    A lonely girl discovers a locked garden at a big, dreary manor. A gentle classic that is all about the weather turning.

  • 84, Charing Cross Road

    Helene Hanff

    Twenty years of letters between a New York writer and a London bookseller. Short, warm and made for a cup of tea.

How to choose

Decide how stormy you want the day to be. The Secret Garden, a children's classic about a lonely girl at a manor on the Yorkshire moors, is gentle and uplifting, with a few sad notes. 84, Charing Cross Road is a true story told in letters between a writer and a bookstore, warm and easy to dip into. The Remains of the Day is restrained and quietly melancholic, told by a butler on a road trip, and it moves slowly.

For atmosphere with more edge, The Shadow of the Wind is a gothic, bookish mystery set in 1940s Barcelona, with some violence. Piranesi, told as journal entries, is eerie and dreamlike, and it is unhurried at first before the tension builds. Wuthering Heights is the stormiest: brooding and bleak, with cruelty and abuse at its heart, so save it for when you want that.

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