89 books like Hideaway in Iceland

I discovered Sophie Kinsella back in the 90s. Back then my love of romance was very much a secret love, while I publicly read what idiot-younger-me thought was more worthy serious literature. And then Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes came into my life and blew my mind.

The Shopaholic series is the perfect example of a fun, escapist series that absolutely has stuff to say about the world. Funny isn’t the opposite of serious. Escapist isn’t mutually exclusive with important. Sophie Kinsella is one of the authors who taught me that, and Christmas Shopaholic is the festive installment of her best-known series.

A shopaholic at Christmas – what could possibly go wrong?

I think we all know what we want from a Christmas romance. We know there’s going to be snow. We know it’s going to be heartwarming. We know there are going to be heaps of lovely romance tropes (hello there to the commitmentphobes in the titles!).

What we want to see is all of those things done well and bundled together by a brilliant author into a joyous, uplifting, bundle of escape from our day-to-day stresses. And Rhoda Baxter, who also writes as Jeevani Charika, is a brilliant author and this story absolutely delivers that perfect punch of warm, sparkly, loveliness which is exactly what I’m looking for to get me into the festive mood.

From about mid-September onwards you will find me on the sofa absolutely glued to whatever Christmas movie I can find.

You know the films where the big city lawyer has to go to the small town to close down the Christmas tree farm, and ends up learning the true meaning of Christmas and falling in love with the Christmas tree farmer? I love those movies, and this book is those movies in novel form. It has the small town. It has the hunky hero. It even has a set of festive activities that must be completed. A warm hug of a novel!

Time is tight in the run up to Christmas. There’s so much to get done and all the To Do lists can easily rob the festive period of its joy.

This book is six shorter Christmas stories so it’s perfect to dip into when you need a shot of festive spirit in a hurry. Each story is warmer and more wonderful than the one before.

Katie Fforde is an absolute legend in UK romantic fiction circles, not only because her books are pure perfection, but also because she’s one of the world’s very best people. She’s warm and wise and generous and all of those qualities spill out through her writing.

Another slightly left-field pick, but the atmosphere in this author’s books is just as compelling as in Without Fail as mentioned above. In a snowy, cold Iceland, a beleaguered detective investigates the murder of a local man who was once a shining light as a child. 

Lost potential, old vendettas, and evil preying on the weak are all elements here, in a very unique setting, with a dogged lead who refuses to give up. Slower and colder but just as gripping.

Nobody does dark holiday tradition quite like the Icelanders. From a gigantic cat that preys on children who aren’t wearing new clothes to an ugly ogre who eats naughty children, Icelandic Christmas folklore is replete with macabre creatures ready to pounce. This collection of poems by Jóhannes úr Kötlum was originally published in 1932 and features the inspiration for several characters in my own book, including Grýla, Jóla the Yule Cat, and the Yule Kids (known in Icelandic folklore as the mischievous Yule Lads).

Iceland is one of the first off-the-beaten-track places I visited as an aspiring young travel writer and I arrived with the onset of the first Gulf War - the one against Saddam Hussein.

I visited with three other people. We immediately met a man in Reykjavik who introduced us to his diplomat friend, and before it was all said and done we spent most of that trip with the Icelander and the Frenchman in front of a much more rudimentary CNN, watching the war.

While I’ve been back to Iceland a number of times since, that first trip, the instant friendships, and the very odd experience of watching war in the desert from up at the Arctic Circle, sealed the deal for me about visiting the far north, and indirectly led to my own later book.

Halldor Laxness is the greatest of Icelandic authors and Independent People is very nearly… show more.

I don’t think it is overly ambitious to claim that you can learn a lot about a country from its crime novels. I certainly did, devouring novels by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, Lilja Sigurdardóttir, Ragnar Jónasson, and the Englishman Quentin Bates. A good crime novel describes not only a place and its people but what makes them tick, what they fear, and what they desire. It’s very hard to pick just one crome novel from so many great ones, but Arnaldur Indridason’s Silence of the Grave won the British Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger in 2005 and also features the British occupation of the country during the war. Plus, it’s a damned good story.  

I confess to a huge writer crush on Sjon. I immediately fell head over heels for his vibrant, visceral prose in this magical moving story set in Reykjavik in 1918 (the same year I set my novella Lightning). There is nothing comparable to this author’s dreamy style (after discovering him I read his entire catalogue) and the journey of young queer Manni Steinn is unforgettable. I have to admit: I went so far as to reach out to the author on social media the year we were both nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and ask him to coffee. I did not expect an answer, but he wrote me saying he was not attending the NYC event but thanked me for the offer! Brilliant and approachable! 

Reykjavik Police Inspector Erlendur and his associate, Sigurdur Oli, are sent to investigate the murder of an old man bashed with an ashtray. They soon uncover his sordid past, in which he was accused of rape. Traipsing from clue to clue, interviewing tangential witnesses, they learn more about why he was killed and eventually discover the perpetrator, whose life was tragically altered by the actions of the murdered man. Erlendur and Oli are like the Odd Couple but complement each other in their work. The title refers to the practice of keeping organs in jars for medical research, which figures into the investigation. The journey to the solution of the case is very satisfying.