5 Unpredictable Climate Thrillers We Loved Reading
Not only are these stories packed with thrilling mysteries but also with the unpredictability of threatening weather circumstances. Getting snowed in and escaping tornadoes heighten the stakes even more for characters looking for answers and trying to survive.
After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.
When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram.
But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare.
When Heather and the kids are separated from Tom, they are forced to escape alone, seconds ahead of their pursuers.
Now it’s up to Heather to save herself and the kids, even though they don’t trust her, the harsh bushland is filled with danger, and the locals want her dead.
Heather has been underestimated her entire life, but she knows that only she can bring her family home again and become the mother the children desperately need, even if it means doing the unthinkable to keep them all alive.
Pinecrest Estate became a place of horror for Lexi. Once the site of her teenage movie debut, she’s haunted by memories of working on a legendary horror director’s most famous film and of the terrible death that propelled them all to infamy. She’s fled the Keys and vowed never to return. Years later, her daughters go to Pinecrest for answers right when a Category 4 hurricane hits the southern coast. Lexi is forced to go back to the ravaged island and along with the few left behind, must do everything she can to make it out alive.
Two brothers travel to the wooded frontiers of Ohio to plant apple orchards they plan to profit from in the years to come. Their relationship gets tested as they remake the wilderness in their own image. Fifty years later, climate change ravages the Earth and one company now owns all the world’s resources through early investments. Increasing resistance attempts to redistribute land and power and in a pivotal moment, one of the company’s original founders will destroy what he helped build. North America is covered by a massive sheet of ice a thousand years into the future. One lonely sentience being inhabits a tech station on top of a glacier and sets out to follow a homing beacon across the continent in search of the last remnant of civilization.
Taz Blackwell, a former environmental negotiator, moves to the island of Chincoteague on Virginia’s Atlantic Coast. Here, he explores friendships with a cast of misfits and romance with a beautiful, but wary divorcee. Meanwhile, he fights a corporate land grab on the shore and a shady billion-dollar mining play in the international Artic.
Wylie Lark, a true crime writer, doesn’t mind being snowed in at the isolated farmhouse she’s trying to write her book in. It’s idyllic, except for the fact that two people were murdered and a girl disappeared at this very house. Wylie finds herself haunted by the secrets of the house as the storm worsens. Then she discovers a small child outside. She brings the child inside and tries to search for answers. It becomes clear that the farmhouse isn’t as isolated as she thought. Someone is willing to do anything to find them.
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Emily Hoang is a writer and editor, who is obsessed with haunted houses, ghosts, and dreams. More info can be found on her website.