An Unwanted Guest

An Unwanted Guest is a thriller by the Canadian writer Shari Lapena, published in 2017.

Mitchell's Inn is a lodge set deep in the woods of the Catskills, with spacious old rooms, large wood-burning fireplaces and a well-stocked wine cellar, and it offers cross-country skiing and snowshoeing to anyone who wants them. For the guests arriving at the start of the novel, the weekend is meant to be a relaxing one, and for some of them a romantic one.

Then the weather turns, and a blizzard cuts off the electricity and every means of contact with the world outside. The guests settle in to wait it out, since there is nothing else they can do.

The waiting does not stay peaceful for long. One of the guests is found dead in circumstances that look like an accident, and when a second guest dies the others stop believing in accidents altogether. They are snowed in with a killer, and their only options are to work out who it is and to stay alive until the storm passes.