Stormy Weather...and Reads

With all the rain (which is sorely needed, so I'm not complaining) I started thinking about books that have a major plot line of storms. Naturally, Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm lept to the forefront but since I am at heart a fiction reader, I kept looking.

One of the earliest storm-related books I read was Storm Warning by Jack Higgins. I had just recently discovered Higgins and this one kept me on the edge of my seat, forgetting to breathe as I read his descriptions of the storm off the coast of Scotland. And, as always, it had the usual Higgins plot twists--who's really the good guy and who's the bad one. Reading it as windows rattle would make it even more realistic.

Other rain-related titles include In Sunlight, In a Beautiful Garden by Kathleen Cambor (and you have the added benefit of a librarian character) which tells two intertwining stories that come together during the Johnstown Flood (for a non-fiction account, see David McCullough's The Johnstown Flood), The Staggerford Flood by Jon Hassler (one of all-time favorite authors), and Agatha Raisin and the Day the Day the Floods Came by M.C. Beaton. I seem to recall that one of Jeanne Dams' mysteries includes a storm--perhaps Holy Terror in the Hebrides--but since the Dorothy Martin series is set in England, it's always raining. And an interesting tale of a lightning strike survivor can be found in Alice Hoffman's The Ice Queen.

The Breathtaker by Alice Blanchard does almost take your breath away--like tornadoes aren't exciting enough and then she throws in a serial killer! There's also Rene Gutteridge's Splitting Storm and The Rescuer by Dee Henderson has a tornado subplot.

And if you didn't get enough hurricane news last fall, check out Margaret Maron's Storm Tracker (or the latest nonfiction by Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast).

Any of these would make a fine rainy day read--unless you don't want to get out to go to the library!