A Spell of Winter is a 1995 literary gothic novel[1] by Helen Dunmore, set in England, around the time of World War I.

[2] Cathy and her older brother Rob grow up without their parents on an estate in rural England in the early 20th century.

To prevent Miss Gallagher finding out, Cathy leads her deep into the nearby woods, ostensibly to show her some wild flowers.

In a review in The Washington Post, American writer and academic Nicholas Delbanco described A Spell of Winter as "an erotic pastoral".

A less experienced author may have turned this into a "romantic melodrama", but Delbanco stated that Dunmore's "authoritative telling" has produced a "haunt[ing]" tale.

[1] Some readers may find the book's "intensity and darkness", which hovers between "gripping and overwrought", a little "heavy-handed", but the reviewer was impressed by Dunmore's "keen, close writing" and "artful use of metaphor".

[4] Attempts by Dunmore to make Cathy a "modern update" of Brontë's Catherine Earnshaw turns A Spell of Winter into "a string of salacious, increasingly overwritten adventures straight out of the pulp-fiction files".