English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion

For the month of September we have 14 books to choose from, they are:

1) We Know You Remember by Tove Alsterdal to be published 1st of September 2021. Sweden.

A missing girl, a hidden body, a decades-long cover-up, and old sins cast in new light: the classic procedural meets Scandinavian atmosphere in this rich, character-driven mystery, awarded Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, that heralds the American debut of a supremely skilled international writer.

It’s been more than twenty years since Olof Hagström left home. Returning to his family’s house, he knows instantly that something is amiss. The front door key, hidden under a familiar stone, is still there. Inside, there’s a panicked dog, a terrible stench, water pooling on the floor. Upstairs in the shower, the father Olaf has not seen or spoken to in decades is dead.

For police detective Eira Sjödin, the investigation of this suspicious death resurrects long-forgotten nightmares. She was only nine when Olof Hagström, then fourteen, was found guilty of raping and murdering a local girl. The case left a mark on the town’s collective memory—a wound that never quite healed—and tinged Eira’s childhood with fear. Too young to be sentenced, Olof was sent to a youth home and exiled from his family. He was never seen in the town again. Until now.

An intricate crime narrative in which past and present gracefully blend, We Know You Remember is a relentlessly suspenseful and beautifully written novel about guilt and memory in which nothing is what it seems, and unexpected twists upend everything you think you know.

2) Warrior: Assassination and Activism in the Arctic by Christoffer Petersen to be published the 4th of September 2021. Greenland.

When a fugitive is discovered in Greenland, retired police constable David Maratse revisits an old case and works with a foreign detective to solve an international act of terrorism.

Warrior is the sixth book in the Greenland Crime series, revisiting the past to solve a crime in the present, while reuniting readers with familiar characters and threads.

3) Defending Britta Stein: A Novel by Ronald H. Balson to be published the 7th of September 2021. Denmark & U.S.A..

Defending Britta Stein is a story of bravery, betrayal, and redemption—from Ronald H. Balson, the winner of the National Jewish Book Award

Chicago, 2018: Ole Henryks, a popular restauranteur, is set to be honored by the Danish/American Association for his many civic and charitable contributions. Frequently appearing on local TV, he is well known for his actions in Nazi-occupied Denmark during World War II—most consider him a hero.

Britta Stein, however, does not. The ninety-year-old Chicago woman levels public accusations against Henryks by spray-painting “Coward,” “Traitor,” “Collaborator,” and “War Criminal” on the walls of his restaurant. Mrs. Stein is ultimately taken into custody and charged with criminal defacement of property. She also becomes the target of a bitter lawsuit filed by Henryks and his son, accusing her of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Attorney Catherine Lockhart, though hesitant at first, agrees to take up Mrs. Stein's defense. With the help of her investigator husband, Liam Taggart, Lockhart must reach back into wartime Denmark and locate evidence that proves Mrs. Stein's innocence. Defending Britta Stein is critically-acclaimed author Ronald H. Balson's thrilling take on a modern day courtroom drama, and a masterful rendition of Denmark’s wartime heroics.

4) Fear and Trembling: A New Translation by Søren Kierkegaard new Translation to be published the 7th of September 2021. Denmark.

First published in 1843 under the pseudonym “Johannes de silentio” (John of Silence), Soren Kierkegaard’s richly resonant Fear and Trembling has for generations stood as a pivotal text in the history of moral philosophy, inspiring such artistic and philosophical luminaries as Edvard Munch, W. H. Auden, Walter Benjamin, and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Retelling the biblical story of the binding of Isaac, Kierkegaard expounds on the ordeal of Abraham, who was commanded to sacrifice his son in an exceptional test of faith. Disgusted at the self-certainty of his own age, Kierkegaard investigates the paradox underlying Abraham’s decision to allow his duty to God to take precedence over his duties to his family.


Now, in a new era of immense uncertainty and dislocation, renowned Kierkegaard scholar Bruce H. Kirmmse, in his accessible translation and engaging introduction, eloquently brings this classic work to a new generation of readers, demonstrating Kierkegaard’s enduring power to illuminate the terrible wonder of faith.

5) The Last Viking: The True Story of King Harald Hardrada and the End of the Norsemen by Don Hollway to be published on the 7th of September 2021. Norway.

First published in 1843 under the pseudonym “Johannes de silentio” (John of Silence), Soren Kierkegaard’s richly resonant Fear and Trembling has for generations stood as a pivotal text in the history of moral philosophy, inspiring such artistic and philosophical luminaries as Edvard Munch, W. H. Auden, Walter Benjamin, and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Retelling the biblical story of the binding of Isaac, Kierkegaard expounds on the ordeal of Abraham, who was commanded to sacrifice his son in an exceptional test of faith. Disgusted at the self-certainty of his own age, Kierkegaard investigates the paradox underlying Abraham’s decision to allow his duty to God to take precedence over his duties to his family.


Now, in a new era of immense uncertainty and dislocation, renowned Kierkegaard scholar Bruce H. Kirmmse, in his accessible translation and engaging introduction, eloquently brings this classic work to a new generation of readers, demonstrating Kierkegaard’s enduring power to illuminate the terrible wonder of faith.

6) Last One Alive by Karin Nordin to be published the 15th of September 2021. Norway and Sweden.

Louisa’s eyes narrowed, trying to get a clearer look at the person standing before her. Their expression was cold. Mercilessly cold. Louisa crawled back against the wall and screamed…

When Detective Kjeld Nygaard is called to the discovery of a body in the burnt-out shell of a house, his heart sinks. He never wanted to see this house again. The house of a notorious serial killer. The house where he rescued Louisa Karlsson from being murdered.

But when they discover the body is in fact Louisa, the mystery deepens. It can’t be the old serial killer. He’s dead.

Then another body is found, again killed in the exact place where Kjeld saved them from another murderer. Another survivor dead.

With the clock ticking Kjeld and his partner Detective Esme Jansson are desperate to stop any more survivors from being murdered. But every clue they find leads to a dead end. Why is the killer picking off people Kjeld rescued? Could it be connected to another of his previous cases?

When Kjeld’s daughter is kidnapped – it’s a race against time to save her life. Can Kjeld stop the killer without paying the ultimate price or will he be the last one alive?

A heart-stopping and gripping crime thriller that will keep you up all night!

7) Red Milk: A Novel by Sjón to be published the 21st of September 2021. Iceland & U.K.

A timely and provocative novel about a mysterious Icelandic neo-Nazi and the enduring global allure of fascism.



In England in 1962, an Icelandic man is found dead on a train bound for Cheltenham Spa. In his possession, policemen find a map on which a swastika has been drawn with a red pen. Who was he, and where was he going?

In a novel that reads as both biography and mystery, the internationally celebrated novelist Sjón tells the story of Gunnar Kampen, the founder of Iceland's anti-Semitic nationalist party, with ties to a burgeoning network of neo-Nazi groups across the globe. Told in a series of scenes and letters spanning Kampen's lifetime--from his childhood in Reyjavík during the Second World War, in a household strongly opposed to Hitler and his views, through his education, political radicalization, and his final clandestine mission to England--Red Milk urges readers to confront the international legacy of twentieth-century fascism and the often unknowable forces that drive some people to extremism.

Based on one of the ringleaders of a little-known neo-Nazi group that operated in Reykjavík in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this taut and potent novel explores what shapes a young man and the enduring, disturbing allure of Nazi ideology.

8) Friendship: Echoes of the City II by Lars Saabye Christensen to be published the 28th of September 2021. Norway.

Part Two of the Echoes of the City series, set in post-war Oslo, by an author who understands the city like no other.

In Kirkeveien, Oslo, in the year 1956, forty-year-old Maj is worn down by being a homemaker and widowed mother. To the indignation of the Red Cross ladies, she cautiously frees herself from the role she has otherwise fulfilled to the letter. She finds a job that she turns out to be more than good at, and some kind of love, too. Her friend Margrethe is sick of her marriage to the antiquarian bookseller, Olaf Hall, but cannot think of divorce. Jesper gets a girlfriend who opens the door to a new, more liberated environment of vegetarianism and politics. And his best friend Jostein realises that his talent for making money will allow him access to a world that is larger and richer than that of the Oslo slaughterhouse.

Friendship is a beautifully orchestrated story about people and their dreams, about social conventions, personal constraints and what it takes to have the courage to realise oneself. In this book brimming with human insight, as in Echoes of the City, in each of these characters we recognise something of ourselves.

9) A Time For Monsters by Gareth Worthington to be published the 28 of September 2021. Scandinavia.

A Nordic thriller in the vein of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets Death Wish, in which a female serial killer, who only feels emotion when listening to music, is hell-bent on revenge and must outwit a disgraced detective determined to redeem himself if she is to complete her carefully orchestrated plan and cover up the ultimate secret.

ONLY A MONSTER CAN DO THE WRONG THINGS FOR THE RIGHT REASONSDo you remember the first tape or CD you ever bought? Perhaps you waited for the local station to play the top forty songs on a Sunday so you could record your favorite band. Maybe you downloaded a certain track that reminded you of your wedding day or a graduation.

Reyna Blackburn remembers.

Every single song for every horrific event in her life. She remembers what song was playing on the radio the first time he hurt her. And she remembers what was playing through her headphones the first time she killed.

10) The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgård to be published on the 28th of September 2021. Norway.

A major new work from the author of the renowned My Struggle series, The Morning Star is an astonishing, ambitious, and rich novel about what we don't understand, and our attempts to make sense of our world nonetheless

It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in S�rlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar, the journalist Jostein is out on the town, and his wife Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence. Over these days in August, the characters the novel follows will each understand what is happening differently, and all face new struggles in their own lives.

The Morning Star is a novel about what we do not understand, about great drama seen through the limited lens of little lives. But first and foremost, it is a novel about what happens when the dark forces in the world are set free.

11) Streets of Lonely Ghosts: A short story of sorrow and spirits in the Arctic by Christoffer Petersen to be published the 28th of September 2021. Greenland.

After a flurry of ghost sightings in the village, Greenland Police Constable David Maratse investigates.

Streets of Lonely Ghosts is the twenty-first in a series of novellas to feature Constable David Maratse in Greenland. Each novella is set during Maratse’s career as a police constable, and features aspects of Greenlandic culture, tradition, and not least the stunning natural environment.

Constable David Maratse also features in the popular Greenland Crime series starting with Seven Graves, One Winter.

12) The Ice Coven by Max Seeck to be published the 28th of September 2021. Finland.

Investigator Jessica Niemi is in a race against time to find the link between a body with strange markings that has washed up on a frigid shore in Finland and two mysterious disappearances in this terrifying new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Witch Hunter.

Six months have passed since Jessica's encounter with the mysterious serial-killing coven of witches and the death of her mentor Erne. Her nightmares about her mother and the witchcraft that undid her have only gotten worse, but she's doing what she can to stay focused. Her homicide squad, now under new leadership, has been given a murder case and a new series of disappearances to investigate. A young woman's corpse has washed up on an icy beach, and two famous Instagram influencers have gone missing at the same time.

The missing influencers and the murdered woman all have ties to a sinister cult. Jessica finds an eerie painting--of a lighthouse on a frigid island--as she investigates and under the picture is a gruesome poem detailing a murder. The nightmares about her dead mother have intensified and seem all too real, making Jessica wonder if the woman might be trying to tell her something about the killings. And as Jessica works frantically to solve her latest case, her terrifying past and the coven of witches that almost killed her shockingly reemerge and threaten to destroy her.

13) Old Blood by Morgan Greene to be published the 30th of September 2021. Sweden.

They took everything from her. Now she has nothing left to lose…

With the scars of her last case still fresh on her skin, DI Jamie Johansson is piecing together a puzzle that’s been buried for twenty years. It killed her father, and now she’s determined to finish what he started and expose the corruption threaded through every street of Stockholm.

When a series of violent incidents rock Jamie’s fragile existence in Sweden, she’s faced with a choice — drop the case, or have her loan to Stockholm Police terminated.

Jamie must let go of everything she once believed in, and call in all the favours she can to find a chink in the impenetrable armour of the shadowy Imperium Holdings. They aren’t above extortion, bribery, murder, or anything else. And they don’t like it when people ask questions. Jamie wouldn’t be the first determined detective they’ve silenced, but she may be the last.

From gritty, blood-soaked city streets to desolate and deadly frozen tundras, this case will take Jamie all across Scandinavia in pursuit of the men responsible for shattering her life. They thought they weakened her by prising her from the protection of the Stockholm Police, but really, they just cut the chain around her neck…

Jamie Johansson is out for blood. Old Blood. And she won’t stop until she gets it.

***

Old Blood is the hotly anticipated third instalment in the DI Jamie Johansson series. Angel Maker opened old wounds, Rising Tide stoked the first, and now Old Blood will settle a score that’s dogged Jamie for years. This tightly-wound Scandinavian thriller will sweep you off your feet and take you on a breathless thrill-ride that will be Jamie’s toughest outing yet.

14) Wild Shores by Maria Adolfsson to be published on the 30th of September 2021. Denmark & U.K..

A disused quarry. A suspicious death. A dark past bubbling to the surface . . .

Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby is one of the few female police officers on the remote island nation of Doggerland, situated in the North Sea between the UK and Denmark. Though she returned to her homeland from London some years ago, she has largely avoided visiting the northernmost island, Noorö, where her father's wayward family reside.

When a man's body is discovered on Christmas morning in a flooded quarry on Noorö there are questions surrounding his death. With illness and overseas holidays preventing any of her colleagues from attending, Karen has no choice but to head north to investigate.

The stakes are raised when another body is found on New Year's Eve. However, with limited resources at her disposal and seasonal festivities causing delays, Karen is largely on her own - and she cannot shake the feeling that her relatives, with their somewhat lax approach to the rule of law, could be involved . . .

>>>>>>>>>>>We will add any additional books published in September 2021. Good reading.

Not a new book but a new release of The Dog Park by Sofi Oksanen to be published the 21st of September 2021. Finland. Takes place in Finland (ending) and the Ukraine (beginning).

From a major internationally acclaimed writer--the author of Purge--who is poised to break out in the U.S. comes a ferociously plotted novel of intrigue, betrayal, and murder in the global fertility market.

Helsinki, 2016. Olenka sits on a bench, watching a family play in a dog park. A stranger sits down beside her. Olenka startles; she would recognize this other woman anywhere. After all, Olenka was the one who ruined her life. And this woman may be about to do the same to Olenka. Yet, for a fragile moment, here they are, together--looking at their own children being raised by other people. Moving seamlessly between modern-day Finland and Ukraine in the early days of its post-Soviet independence, Dog Park is a keenly observed, dark, and propulsive novel set at the intersection of East and West, centered on a web of exploitation and the commodification of the female body. Sofi Oksanen brings fearless psychological acuity to this captivating story about a woman unable to escape the memory of her lost child, the ruthless powers that still hunt her, and the lies that could well end up saving her.

Evil Beneath The Skin by Venezia Miller to be published 10th of September 2021. Sweden.

Marie Lång disappears without a trace. Two months later, her body is found in a lake. And the killer left a strange mark. It soon becomes clear that the case is more complex than originally thought, leading the Gävle police team to a group of unlikely friends with a dramatic past, a self-made millionaire and his family, a missing wife and old cases with a remarkable resemblance to Marie's murder.

But inspector Isa Lindström's attention is not entirely on the new case. Still trying to process the impact of the dramatic events on her life, she refuses to accept the official conclusion of the Sandviken case and is determined to bring the real culprits to justice.
The arrival of a new superintendent, who seems to have a hidden agenda of his own, complicates things even further.

Will they be able to untangle the web of lies and drama, and find Marie's killer?
And will Isa finally be able to put the Sandviken case to rest?

Evil Beneath the Skin is the second book in The Find series. If you have not yet read book one, it is recommended that you read this book first. Book two continues the story that began in "The Find".

A Necessary Death by Anne Holt published 2 September 2021. Norway. This is a paperback version of the hardback book printed in 2020.

The snow is falling

Selma Falck is living a nightmare. Trapped in a burning cabin on a freezing snow-covered mountain, she has no idea where she is or how she got there. Bruised, bleeding and naked, she barely makes it out in time as the flames engulf the cabin. With no signs of human habitation nearby, the temperature rapidly dropping, and a blizzard approaching, how will she survive?

She's lost in the wilderness

As Selma fights the cold, the hunger and her own wounds, she eventually forms a frightening picture of the past six months. Not only does she have to find a way to stay alive, she needs to make it back to civilization, quickly. Murder has been committed, and a great injustice must be stopped. The very future of the nation itself is at stake...

If the cold doesn't kill her, they will...