Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg

Smilla Jaspersen may be an expert on snow and ice but has found figuring out her own life more difficult. Carrying a history of resentment over the treatment of the Inuit/Greenlander minority by the country of Denmark where she now lives, hers is a lonely, caustic life. An unlikely friendship formed with a young Greenlander boy living in her apartment complex comes to a tragic end when he apparently falls from the rooftop. Knowing that this is not the accident the police believe it to be, she begins her own search for the truth. The snow blinding environment of this dark suspenseful thriller will provide chills of both kinds.