English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion

For the month of November 2022 we have ten reads so far. We will add books as they become known to us. Good reading.

1) A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors to be published on the 1st of November 2022. Denmark.

A celebrated Danish writer explores the unsung histories and geographies of her beloved slice of the world.

Me, my notebook and my love of the wild and desolate. I wanted to do the opposite of what was expected of me. It’s a recurring pattern in my life. An instinct.

Dorthe Nors’s first nonfiction book chronicles a year she spent traveling along the North Sea coast—from Skagen at the northern tip of Denmark to the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea. In fourteen expansive essays, Nors traces the history, geography, and culture of the places she visits while reflecting on her childhood and her family and ancestors’ ties to the region as well as her decision to move there from Copenhagen. She writes about the ritual burning of witch effigies on Midsummer’s Eve; the environmental activist who opposed a chemical factory in the 1950s; the quiet fishing villages that surfers transformed into an area known as Cold Hawaii starting in the 1970s. She connects wind turbines to Viking ships, thirteenth-century church frescoes to her mother’s unrealized dreams. She describes strong waves, sand drifts, storm surges, shipwrecks, and other instances of nature asserting its power over human attempts to ignore or control it.

Through a deep, personal engagement with this singular landscape, A Line in the World accesses the universal. Its ultimate subjects are civilization, belonging, and change: changes within one person’s life, changes occurring in various communities today, and change as the only constant of life on Earth.

2) Euphoria by Elin Cullhed to be published on the 1st of November 2022. Sweden.

A woman's life, erupting with brilliance and promise, is fissured by betrayal and the pressures of duty. What had once seemed a pastoral family idyll has become a trap, and she struggles between being the wife and mother she is bound to be and wanting to do and be so much more.

The woman in question is Sylvia Plath in the final year of her life, reimagined in fictive form by Elin Cullhed, who seizes the flame of Plath's blistering, creative fire in Euphoria, lending a voice to women everywhere who stand with one foot in domesticity and the other in artistic creation.

As Plath's marriage to Ted Hughes unravels through the heady days of their first summer in Devon together, Sylvia turns increasingly to writing to express her pain and loss, yet also her resilience and power. She has decided to die, but the art she creates in her final weeks will set her name, and the world, ablaze.

3) Leap by O.C. Heaton to be published on the 5th of November 2022. Iceland & U.K.

Three broken people.
Two centuries of emissions.
One last chance to reverse global warming…

Uma Jacobsdottir, eco activist and daughter of famed quantum scientist Jakob Arnasson, dreams of reversing global warming.

From his London HQ, Ethan Rae is looking to cement his position as Britain’s youngest tech billionaire as he recovers from the trauma of his parents’ death.

After a chance meeting Uma teams up with Ethan to launch her father’s greatest invention - LEAP, a mysterious device that could replace all transportation, transform manufacturing and revolutionise food production.

But playboy CEO, Samuel Reynolds III has other ideas. Considered a failure by his patriarchal father he needs LEAP to save his family’s airline, once the biggest in the US but now facing bankruptcy in the wake of 911.

As the big day approaches, a terrible accident involving LEAP rips Uma and Ethan’s plans apart and they suddenly find themselves battling not only Reynolds but each other in the race to launch LEAP onto an unsuspecting world.

From the frozen wastelands of Iceland to the leafy suburbs of London and in the shadow of the Twin Towers, all three will stop at nothing to control the greatest invention in the history of mankind.

4) The Other Sister by Peter Mohlin & Peter Nyström to be published on the 8th of November 2022. Sweden.

The highly anticipated follow-up to the acclaimed Scandi-noir thriller, The Bucket List

Alicia Bjelke has always been the "other sister," the foil to her beautiful sister Stella—people turn their backs when they see Alicia's disfigured face. So she created a life in the background, becoming a coding genius and founding a groundbreaking dating app company. With Stella as the face of the company, Alicia has found success. Until one day, when Stella is found dead and Alicia’s life takes the wrong turn. Soon, she realizes that she is the next target.

The case is given to former FBI agent John Adderley, who is still in Karlstad under a new identity. He is haunted by shadows of his past and is about to leave Sweden when the game plan changes. Instead of running, he is forced to once and for all face his past, and the murder investigation gives him a way out. If he can go through with his plan, he might have a shot at the freedom he has so long wanted to have. But is it too late?

In a successful mix of high-octane suspense and psychological depth, authors Peter Mohlin and Peter Nyström deliver a thrilling sequel in the John Adderley series. The Other Sister is an ambitious crime thriller that is tight, layered, and gripping from start to finish.

5) The Collector by Anne Mette Hancock to be published 9n the 8th of November 2022. Denmark.

For fans of Katrine Engberg and Lars Kepler, the second chilling novel in Anne Mette Hancock’s #1 bestselling Danish crime series is a psychological whirlwind that explores the nature of truth and what it means when we can no longer trust what we know to be real.

When 10-year-old Lukas disappears from his Copenhagen school, police investigators discover that the boy had a peculiar obsession with pareidolia—a phenomenon that makes him see faces in random things. A photo on his phone posted just hours before his disappearance shows an old barn door that resembles a face. Journalist Heloise Kaldan thinks she recognizes the barn—but from where?

When Luke’s blood-flecked jacket is found in the moat at Copenhagen’s Citadel, DNA evidence points to Thomas Strand, an ex-soldier suffering from severe PTSD. But then Strand turns up dead in his apartment, shot in the head execution style.

What did the last person to see Lukas really witness that morning in the school yard? Was it really Lukas, or an optical illusion? Can you ever truly trust your eyes?

6) The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories: From Hans Christian Andersen to Angela Carter by Jessica Harrison to be published on the 8th of November 2022. Various including Scandinavia.

The perfect gift this Christmas season: a generous selection of some of the greatest festive stories of all time.

This is a collection of the most magical, moving, chilling and surprising Christmas stories from around the world, taking us from frozen Nordic woods to glittering Paris, a New York speakeasy to an English country house, bustling Lagos to midnight mass in Rio, and even outer space.
Here are classic tales from writers including Truman Capote, Shirley Jackson, Dylan Thomas, Saki and Chekhov, as well as little-known treasures such as Italo Calvino's wry sideways look at Christmas consumerism, Wolfdietrich Schnurre's story of festive ingenuity in Berlin, Selma Lagerlof's enchanted forest in Sweden, and Irène Nemerovsky's dark family portrait. Featuring santas, ghosts, trolls, unexpected guests, curmudgeons and miracles, here is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short story writers of all time.

7) Iron and Gold by S.J.A. Turney to be published on the 17th of November 2022. Viking.

The wolves of Odin land in Italy, and the tantalising scent of gold is in the air…
AD 1043. Having escaped Constantinople with their lives – barely – but not their ship, Halfdan and the wolves of Odin are now mercenaries in the Byzantine army, sailing to Apulia in Italy to help retake territory from the Normans.

But cracks are beginning to show among the tight-knit wolves. Gunnhild, having forsaken the fate woven for her by the Norns in order to continue her journey with Halfdan, has lost her ability to communicate with the goddess Freyja, and so glimpse the future. And Ketil the Icelander, having watched his ship, the Sea Wolf, stolen from him yet again, grows resentful, as seemingly every decision Halfdan makes leads them further from his original promise of riches and renown.

But aboard their ship is an official with secret orders for the general in charge of the Italian campaign, Maniakes. The orders will throw everything into chaos, and put a fork in the path of the wolves of Odin. Each will have a choice to make: loyalty to themselves, or to the pack?

8) All The Blood We Share by Camilla Bruce to be published on the 22nd of November 2022. U.S.A. & Norway.

A sinister novel based on the real Bloody Benders, a family of serial killers in the old West bound by butchery and obscured by the shadows of American history.

The winds shift nervously on the Kansas plain whispering of travelers lost and buried, whispering of witches. Something dark and twisted has taken root at the Bender Inn.

At first the townspeople of Cherryvale welcome the rising medium Kate Bender and her family. Kate's messages from the Beyond give their tedious dreams hope and her mother's potions cure their little ills—for a price. No one knows about their other business, the shortcut to a better life. And why shouldn’t their family prosper? They’re careful. It’s only from those who are marked, those who travel alone and can easily disappear, that the Benders demand their pound of flesh.

But even a gifted seer like Kate can make a misstep. Now as the secrets festering beneath the soil of the family orchard threaten to bring them all to ruin, the Benders must sharpen their craft—or vanish themselves.

9) The Greenland Manifesto: Business, Bodies, and Bad Deals in the Arctic by Christoffer Petersen to be published on the 22nd of November of 2022. Greenland.

Greenland means business, and business is good.

When working as a guide for a whale safari company operating out of Nuuk, retired police constable David Maratse is slowly adjusting to life in Greenland’s capital city.

But as the world’s attention shifts north and foreign investors compete for favourable terms and lucrative contracts, Maratse is drawn into the increasingly cutthroat world of tourism, business, and politics.

When a local entrepreneur is murdered, strong evidence places Maratse at the scene and on the opposite side of a murder investigation led by his partner, Sergeant Petra Jensen.

To solve the murder, Maratse must first break the law to enforce it, in a high stakes game of winner takes all.

The Greenland Manifesto is the seventh book in the Greenland Crime series.

10) The Night Man by Jorn Lier Horst to be published on the 24th of November 2022. Norway.

A SEVERED HEAD ON A STAKE, A BODY IN THE LAKE

WISTING: NOW A MAJOR BBC 4 TV SHOW

'Up there with the best of the Nordic crime writers' THE TIMES

_______

WILLIAM WISTING IS IN A RACE AGAINST TIME

When a severed head is found on a stake in the quiet town of Larvik, Police Inspector William Wisting is called in to investigate. The only clue? The killer is trying to send a message.

ALL ROADS LEAD BACK TO THE NIGHT MAN

As the media closes in on the biggest story of the year, Wisting's journalist daughter Line receives a tip. Soon, it becomes clear that there is more to this case than anyone thought. A criminal network has lodged itself deep into the roots of the city, and it's up to Wisting to take down the elusive and dangerous Night Man.

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

But hunting down The Night Man will take everything Wisting has, and it's all too easy for the hunter to become the prey . . .

Praise for Jørn Lier Horst

'Horst, a former Norwegian police detective, is often compared to Sweden's Henning Mankell for his moody, sweeping crime dramas' New York Times

'Jørn Lier Horst writes some of the best Scandinavian crime fiction . . . His books are superbly plotted and addictive, the characters wonderfully realized' Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

'One of the most brilliantly understated crime novelists writing today' Sunday Times

11) MISSION IN MALMÖ: THE NINTH INSPECTOR ANITA SUNDSTRÖM MYSTERY by Torquil MacLeod to be published on the 24th of November 2022. Sweden.

2006. Anita Sundström has only been with Chief Inspector Erik Moberg’s Criminal Investigation Squad for a year when they have to tackle the aftermath of an armed robbery at a cash handling facility in Malmö. The raid has left one security guard dead and there is no sign of the stolen millions. Though the team make early progress, they soon become frustrated as the investigation stalls. Then a murder with a possible connection to the audacious heist only raises more questions than answers.

In the present day, Anita is just finding her feet as chief inspector. Her first big case is an old couple’s apparent suicide pact, but if it is murder as she suspects, there seems to be no motive or suspects. Complicating her life further is the arrival of an FBI agent whose mission is to track down a Swede accused of a murder in Chicago. As Anita Sundström’s ninth mystery unfolds, the past comes back to haunt her.

The Night Man: The pulse-racing new novel from the No. 1 bestseller now a major BBC4 show by Jørn Lier Horst to be published in the U.K. on the 24th of November 2022. Norway.

THE PULSE-RAISING NEW WISTING NOVEL FROM 10 MILLION COPY BESTSELLER JØRN LIER HORST, NOW A MAJOR BBC 4 TV SHOW

A SEVERED HEAD ON A STAKE. A BODY IN THE LAKE . . .

'Up there with the best of the Nordic crime writers' THE TIMES
_________

It happened in the quiet town of Larvik.

A severed head displayed on a stake. A crime so dark only one man is capable of solving it: Police Inspector William Wisting.

Before long, more bodies are found. Media frenzy sweeps the locals into panic. And when Wisting's investigation leads him to a deadly underground crime ring, he fears the whole town may be in danger.

But at the heart of it is just one man: The Night Man.

Their elusive leader. The man Wisting must find if he wants to stop the murders.

That is, if The Night Man doesn't get to him first . . .

Karen Fastrup has a book called Hunger Heart to be published on the 24th Of November 2022. Denmark.

A few days ago, Karen was a writer and translator immersed in Copenhagen’s creative scene, madly in love with her partner. Now she’s a patient in a psychiatric facility.

Hunger Heart is a sensual, profound work of autofiction about love, relationships, mental illness, and recovery by one of Denmark’s most celebrated literary writers. Fastrup immerses us in the alienations of her breakdown and hospitalization: what it’s like to apologize for threatening your loved one with a knife; how an eating disorder can begin with the discomfort of family and adolescence; and how to make the long journey back to one’s creative life.

But this is not primarily a book of heartache and damage. We are reminded of the electricity of love and the power of language to support our identities and our lives. Deeply courageous, captivating and affecting, Hunger Heart is as much a balm as it is a firework.

Murder in Helsinki by John Swallow to be published 0n the 12th of November 2022. Finland.

When a frozen corpse is discovered amid a Helsinki winter, Detective Superintendent Topias Torikka is brought in to investigate. The dead man is the husband of a beautiful and beguiling young woman, whom Topias suspects knows more than she reveals. However, before long, she also finds herself in peril, and as the case progresses, so too does the body count. Intriguing connections arise, and motives appear, including the usual suspects: love, betrayal and money. Can Topias identify and bring a criminal conspiracy to justice before someone else dies?