We’re nearing the shortest, darkest day of the year and it looks like we’re heading for a cold snap, too. Normally this would bum me out, but I’ve got some goals I’m working towards in my reading life.

The Delaware County District Library’s Winter Reading Club is back and there are prizes to be won! This challenge runs from December to the very last day of January. The concept is simple; the more you read, the more you can enter to win.

At the library, in our quarterly Check It Out newsletter, and on our website, you can pick up a Winter Reading Club bookmark to get started. As you read, add the names of the books you’ve finished to the bookmark. When you’ve conquered four titles, fill out your name and contact info and return the bookmark to the library. You can choose to drop your bookmark is any of the four prize baskets at each location.

These baskets are curated by our staff and each one is geared towards a different age group. We’ve got a basket for babies, kids, teens, and adults. Don’t feel like you have to put your bookmark in the box that corresponds to your age either. You can win a basket for the littles and teens in your life too, if you’d like!

Once you’ve entered, pick up a couple more bookmarks and keep reading. The only limit to how many bookmarks you can submit is how many books you can read by the end of January.

So as we hunker down for the holidays and the cold, I’ve made a cozy little reading nook in my house. I’ve got my chair, a blanket, a pup curled on my lap, my Kindle, and a stack of bookmarks ready to go. (Staff have their own Winter Reading Club, we can’t win those awesome baskets.)

Here are some books I’m looking forward to reading this winter:

• “Hell Bent” by Leigh Bardugo. Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of hell—even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale. But Alex is playing with forces far beyond her control, and when faculty members begin to die off, she knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if Alex is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.

• “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder” by David Grann. An epic survival tale by the author of Killers of the Flower Moon. What begins as an adventurous quest to capture a Spanish galleon filled with silver and gold ends in disaster after the Wager, part of a fleet of British warships, sinks and the crew is left stranded on a desolate island off the coast of South America. Wracked by hunger and battered by an unforgiving climate, the men splinter into warring factions that jeopardize attempts to escape a grim fate. This is being made into a movie by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

• “The Stroke of Winter” by Wendy Webb. She’s restoring the old family home on the hill. And unearthing something evil. In the tourist town of Wharton, on the coast of Lake Superior, Tess Bell is renovating her old family home into a bed-and-breakfast during the icy dead of winter…As the house’s restoration commences, a shuttered art studio is revealed. Inside are paintings Tess’s late grandfather, beloved and celebrated artist Sebastian Bell, hid away for generations. But these appear to be the works of a twisted mind, almost unrecognizable as paintings she and others familiar with his art would expect. The sinister canvases raise disturbing questions for Tess, sparking nightmares and igniting in her an obsession to unearth the truth around their origins. What evil has been locked away for so many years?

• “The Rain Watcher” by Tatiana de Rosnay. The Rain Watcher is a powerful family drama set in Paris as the Malegarde family gathers to celebrate the father’s 70th birthday. Their hidden fears and secrets are slowly unraveled as the City of Light undergoes a stunning natural disaster. Seen through the eyes of charismatic photographer Linden Malegarde, the youngest son, all members of the family will have to fight to keep their unity against tragic circumstances.

• “Under the Whispering Door” by T.J. Klune. When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead. But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days. Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.