The Surfacing
Crime fiction set in WYOMING and MONTANA
Ten Great Books set in the ARCTIC
12th March 2026
Ten Great books set in the Arctic. The Arctic is a vast, icy realm at the Earth’s northernmost pole, defined by its extreme resilience and stark beauty. Dominated by the Arctic Ocean and sprawling tundra, it is a land of dramatic seasonal shifts—from the haunting polar night to the endless midnight sun.
Far from a desolate wasteland, it supports a fragile ecosystem of specialised wildlife, including polar bears, narwhals, and arctic foxes. For indigenous communities like the Inuit, it is a sacred ancestral home. Today, the region serves as a global thermometer; as rising temperatures melt sea ice at alarming rates, the Arctic reminds us of our profound connection to the planet’s climate health.
Here are ten of our favourite books set in the region.
The Ice by Laline Paul
It’s the day after tomorrow and the Arctic sea ice has melted. While global business carves up the new frontier, cruise ships race each other to ever-rarer wildlife sightings. The passengers of the Vanir have come seeking a polar bear. What they find is even more astonishing: a dead body.
It is Tom Harding, lost in an accident three years ago and now revealed by the melting ice of Midgard glacier. Tom had come to Midgard to help launch the new venture of his best friend of thirty years, Sean Cawson, a man whose business relies on discretion and powerful connections – and who was the last person to see him alive.
Their friendship had been forged by a shared obsession with Arctic exploration. And although Tom’s need to save the world often clashed with Sean’s desire to conquer it, Sean has always believed that underneath it all, they shared the same goals.
But as the inquest into Tom’s death begins, the choices made by both men – in love and in life – are put on the stand. And when cracks appear in the foundations of Sean’s glamorous world, he is forced to question what price he has really paid for a seat at the establishment’s table.
Just how deep do the lies go?
Dark Matter by Michelle Paver
January 1937. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. So when he’s offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year. Gruhuken.
But the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice. Stay or go. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return – when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible.
And Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone. Something walks there in the dark…
The Girl Without Skin by Mads Peder Nordbo
When a mummified Viking corpse is discovered in a crevasse out on the edge of an ice sheet, journalist Matthew Cave is sent to cover the story. The next day the mummy is gone, and the body of the policeman who was keeping watch is found naked and flayed—exactly like the victims in a gruesome series of murders that terrified the remote town of Nuuk in the 1970s.
As Matt investigates, he is shocked by the deprivation and brutal violence the locals take for granted. Unable to trust the police, he begins to suspect a cover-up. It’s only when he meets a young Inuit woman, Tupaarnaq, convicted of killing her parents and two small sisters, that Matt starts to realise how deep this story goes—and how much danger he is in.
The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine
Idealistic, misguided Morten Falck is a newly ordained priest sailing to Greenland in 1787 to convert the Inuit to the Danish church. A rugged outpost battered by unremittingly harsh winters, Sukkertoppen is simmering with the threat of dissent; natives from neighboring villages have unified to reject Danish rule and establish their own settlement atop Eternal Fjord. As Falck becomes involved with those in his care his ambitious catechist, a lonely trader s wife, and a fatalistic widow he comes to love his faith and reputation are compromised. The internationally acclaimed novelist Kim Leine charts the tragic events that connect these seemingly disparate lives, while illuminating the brutal and tender impulses of those seeking redemption and the shifting line between religion and mysticism. In the tradition of We, the Drowned, The Prophets of Eternal Fjord is rich in earthy detail and Dickensian pathos, a visceral panorama of a fragile colony caught in the throes of history.
The Surfacing by Cormac James
THE SURFACING is set largely on board a ship in the 1850s, searching for Franklin’s lost expedition. It’s a challenging and dangerous endeavour in a very male world – that is until Morgan, the second-in-command of the Impetus, realises there is a pregnant stowaway on board and that he is the father. It is too late to turn back, the ice is closing in, and the child will have to be born into the vast and icy wilderness of the Arctic. The men, especially the ship’s doctor, DeHaven, and the second in command, Lieutenant Morgan, have doubts about the judgement of their captain, and soon their own vessel becomes trapped in the remote Arctic. THE SURFACING is in places quite literally breathtaking. It is a powerful novel of isolation and impasse, resilience and resistance, exploring the battle between man and an unforgiving environment, and the struggle between the sexes. The power of ambition, what drives human beings to take outrageous physical risks, the nature of courage, and of love – in an unforgettable setting, often bleak, sometimes beautiful, always conveyed in brilliant, keenly pared prose. And in addition to Kitty and Morgan and the rest of the crew, the ice itself forms an extraordinary character in its own right – sometimes shifting, sometimes stubborn, mostly treacherous.
White Heat by M J McGrath
Nothing on the tundra rotted …The whole history of human settlement lay exposed there, under that big northern sky. There was nowhere here for bones to hide. On Craig Island, a vast landscape of ice north of the Arctic Circle, three travellers are hunting duck. Among them is expert Inuit hunter and guide, Edie Kiglatuk; a woman born of this harsh, beautiful terrain. The two men are tourists, experiencing Arctic life in the raw, but when one of the men is shot dead in mysterious circumstances, the local Council of Elders in the tiny settlement of Autisaq is keen to dismiss it as an accident. Then two adventurers arrive in Autisaq hoping to search for the remains of the legendary Victorian explorer Sir James Fairfax. The men hire Edie — whose ancestor Welatok guided Fairfax — along with Edie’s stepson Joe, and two parties set off in different directions. Four days later, Joe returns to Autisaq frostbitten, hypothermic and disoriented, to report his man missing. And when things take an even darker turn, Edie finds herself heartbroken, and facing the greatest challenge of her life …’A blazing star of a thriller: vivid, tightly-sprung, and satisfying on all levels. Encountering Edie Kiglatuk, the toughest, smartest Arctic heroine since Miss Smilla, left me with that rare feeling of privilege you get on meeting extraordinary people in real life. A huge achievement’ Liz Jensen, author of The Rapture ‘Edie is an ingenious and original creation but the most addictive character is the Arctic itself.
The North Water by Ian McGuire
A 19th-century whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer aboard in this dark, sharp and highly original tale that grips like a thriller.
Behold the man: stinking, drunk, brutal and bloodthirsty, Henry Drax is a harpooner on the Volunteer, a Yorkshire whaling ship bound for the hunting waters of the Arctic Circle. Also aboard is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation, no money and no better option than to embark as ship’s medic on this ill-fated voyage.
In India during the Siege of Delhi, Sumner thought he had experienced the depths to which a man can stoop and imagined he’d find respite on the Volunteer, but now, trapped in the wooden belly of the ship with Drax, he encounters pure evil and is forced to act. As the true purposes of the expedition become clear, the confrontation between the two men plays out in the freezing darkness of an Arctic winter.
An African in Greenland by Kpomassie Tete-Michel
Scorching heat, rich, fertile soil, and treacherous snakes marked the landscape in which Tété-Michel grew up in 1950s Togo, West Africa. When he discovered a book on Greenland as a teen, this distant land became an instant obsession – he was determined to journey to the place these pages had revealed to him and embarked on the adventure of a lifetime.
A book of rich and immersive travel writing, Michel the Giant invites the reader to journey alongside an audacious Kpomassie as he makes his way from the equator to the bitter cold of the artic and settles into life with the Inuit peoples, adapting to their foods and customs. Part memoir, part anthropological observation this captivating narrative teems with nuanced observations on community, belonging and the universality of human experience.
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow is the 1992 mystery crime-fiction novel written by Danish author Peter Høeg. Set in Copenhagen, the story follows Smilla Jaspersen, a lonely half-Inuit scientist from Greenland who feels out of place in Denmark. When a six-year-old Inuit boy named Isaiah plummets to his death from a rooftop one snowy evening, the authorities declare it an accident. However, Smilla suspects murder as the cause of death and sets out on a perilous mission to find the truth. As she investigates, Smilla uses her expertise from years of studying glaciology to discover what really happened to the acrophobic Isaiah, a neighbor whom she’s cared for in the past. Alternatively titled Smilla’s Sense of Snow in America, the novel was shortlisted for an Edgar Award in 1994, and was named Winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger Award in 1994. In 1997, the novel was adapted as a motion picture entitled Smilla’s Sense of Snow, directed by Bille August and starring Julia Ormond as Smilla.
A Death in Siberia by Alex Dryden
The Cold War is dead but Russia’s ambitions continue to rage…
The West is under threat. Russia has been granted sole access to the undersea Lomonosov Ridge in the Arctic Ocean – home to oil reserves even greater than Saudi Arabia’s. The US is determined to claim a share of the oil riches. The CIA send ex-KGB agent Anna on a mission to the brutal wilderness of Norilsk – the base of Russia’s Arctic development and a new floating nuclear station. She must disrupt their plans, but Intelligence reports that a Russian group are already planning to destroy the precious power station. But why are they risking everything to sabotage their own country’s resources? Is the US trying to force an outcome while keeping their hands clean? With the KGB hot on their tail, it’s up to Anna and the CIA to prevent an attack that could destroy the entire Arctic region, and its oil reserves, for ever.
Enjoy our selection of great books set in the Arctic!
Tony for the TripFiction team
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