Get Cozy With Our Picks for the Best Sweater Weather Reads

We’re deep into fall and barreling toward winter, and for many of us, that means a lot more time spent at home reading. You can, of course, read anything you like whenever you like—I am no believer in the so-called beach book; they’re all beach books—but there is a certain type of read that is particularly well-suited to gray and gloomy skies, cozy rooms and entire days of indoor introspection. To that end, here are a few of our favorites.

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

With her latest, Ravn draws inspiration from a series of 17th-century witch trials. Told from the vantage of an enchanted wax doll, it traces the shocking events through the author’s characteristically eccentric mix of narrative, documents, and spells. What’s more wintery than witchcraft?

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

His life in shambles, a man retreats to his remote ancestral village in Newfoundland, where he takes a job reporting on car accidents and ship arrivals for the local newspaper. A weird story about family and the inescapability of one’s roots, the novel has a claustrophobic yet life-affirming tone that feels right for the colder months, especially when the plot tightens with the arrival of a winter storm.

Startlement: New and Selected Poems by Ada Limon

For poetry lovers, the two-time poet laureate’s recently released collection Startlement is a must. This expansive career retrospective includes 102 of her finest poems, plus 21 previously unpublished, spanning everything from joy to grief, humor to heartbreak and offering her trademark warmth and insight throughout.

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Sometimes when you’re penned up inside, you need something funny, and few writers offer humor as rich as Murakami. He has many options to choose from, but A Wild Sheep Chase is arguably his funniest. Following a surreal search for a sheep with a star-shaped mark, it’s as stirring and thought-provoking as it is genuinely funny.

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

Whether you’ve read him before or are diving in for the first time, Borges’ short stories are perfect literary labyrinths for a stint indoors. They’re impossible to capture in a few words. Suffice it to say that his stories are enjoyable and puzzling, approachable and mysterious, and they have a way of lingering long after you finish them.

School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Over the past half-decade, the renowned Norwegian author has been pouring out his excellent and haunting Morning Star series, which follows a rotating and sometimes overlapping cast of characters who, while navigating their own troubles, are suddenly confronted by the unexplained appearance of a massive new star that seems to usher in supernatural events. The School of Night is the fourth installment. While reading the earlier volumes helps, you can fully enjoy its dark, Faustian tale on its own.

The Essential Harlem Detective by Chester Himes

If you’re looking for a bingeable series, Chester Himes’ thrilling detective novels featuring the grim investigations of Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are bona fide page turners. Set in the 1950s and ’60s, these nine novels are known for their gritty realism and razor-sharp pacing. Short, fast reads, they’re the kind of books you tear through and wish lasted longer.

Deep River by Karl Marlantes

Readers of historical fiction will appreciate this one. Set in the early 20th Century, it follows a Finnish family forced to flee political terror and settle in the Pacific Northwest, then tracks how subsequent generations carve out a place for themselves in a rapidly modernizing United States. Packed with historical context that still resonates, it has the kind of epic scale that begs to be read fireside.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

There’s no better time than winter to tackle Russian tome builders like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Arguably the most epic of epic novels, War and Peace explores how individual lives become entangled in and help shape the events of their era, suggesting that history is not driven by “great” figures like Napoleon but by the small doings of everyday people. Don’t be intimidated by its length—once you settle in, the story carries you along and is ideal for whiling away hours indoors.