Seven novels that enhance the suspense by using weather

Jody Gehrman is a native of Northern California, where she can be found writing, teaching, reading, or obsessing over her three cats most days. She is also the author of numerous award-winning plays and novels, including The Girls Weekend.

Her Young Adult novel Babe in Boyland was optioned by the Disney Channel and won the International Reading Association's Teen Choice Award.

Gehrman's plays have been produced in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I.

She is a professor of English and Communications at Mendocino College.

At CrimeReads, Gehrman tagged seven favorite "books that use the weather beautifully to enhance the reader’s sense of imminent danger," including:

The Widow’s House by Carol Goodman

My husband and I listened to this during a Christmas road trip, and we loved the rich descriptions of winter in the Hudson Valley. We’re both suckers for a gothic mansion with ghosty undertones and sudden, violent storms, so this book checked plenty of boxes for us. Set in the dilapidated estate known as Riven House, a crumbling mansion once owned by the protagonist’s old college professor, this book has some of the claustrophobic dread of Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca, another one of our favorites. There’s lots of swirling fog and hazy figures emerging from the mist; what’s not to love?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue