Cold Snap

A grieving mother and son hope to survive Christmas in a remote mountain cabin in Pennsylvania, in this award-nominated chilling novella of dread, isolation and sinister spirits lurking in the frozen woods. Perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians, The Shining and The Babadook.

Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire’s husband slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn. 

Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they’d reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.

It isn’t long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it’s just a forest animal—a moose, maybe, since the property manager warned her about them, said they’d stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody’d find it ’til spring. 

But moose don’t walk upright like the shadowy figure does. 

They don’t call Christine’s name with her dead husband’s voice.

Lindy Ryan is a Bram Stoker Awards® Nominee and a Silver Falchion Award-winning editor, author, professor, short-film director, and anthologist whose books have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree, Ryan is the author of BLESS YOUR HEART, COLD SNAP, and more. She is the current author-in-residence at Rue Morgue, the world’s leading horror culture and entertainment brand, and the “Chill Quill” columnist at BookTrib. Her guest articles and features include NPR, BBC Culture, Irish Times, Daily Mail, and more. In 2022, Ryan was named one of horror's most masterful anthology curators, and she has been declared a "champion for women's voices in horror" by Shelf Awareness (2023). Her animated short film, TRICK OR TREAT, ALISTAIR GRAY, based on her children's book of the same name, won the Grand Prix Award at the 2022 ANMTN Awards. Lindy also writes contemporary romance that has been adapted for film.

On social @LindyRyanWrites and at LindyRyanWrites.com.