If you want to truly embrace the terror and beauty of winter, a Russian-inflected modern folktale should do the trick. In Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale we meet Vasilisa Petrovna, who has no wish to marry. She grew up on tales of Frost Demons, rusalka, all that is wild and magical in the dark and frozen forests—including the great Bear, who is gathering his power in the darkness beyond the village. Enter the stepmother, who agrees with the village priests that following the ancient ways will lead to Hell; she wants to see her new daughters packed off to convents, where devotion to God will cure them, or wed, where lives as wives will keep them too busy to bother with uncanny spirits and old lore. When a blizzard freezes the village, everyone Vasya loves faces certain starvation. The young woman will have to defy her stepmother and the priest to ally with every “demonic” force who’s willing to help her before the Bear destroys them all.