English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion

For the month of April 2023 we have 7 books to choose from. We will add books as we see that they are published during April. Good reading.

1). First Comes Summer: A Novel by Martin Aitken to be published on the 11th of April 2023. Viking.

Winding seamlessly betwe. ement, Folkvi and her brother, Aslakr, have always been close--unnaturally close. They've grown more intimate still as Folkvi learns her shaman mother's craft, as men regard her with newly devouring eyes. Then illness carries off their parents, and the nest of home is shattered. Áslakr sets off on his first expedition, abandoning Folkvi to the dark of an endless winter. When he returns, he's done the unthinkable: He's found someone else to love.

Sick with grief, Folkvi rages to the gods where they sit at the foot of an ancient tree, contemplating the twisted passions of humans that play out in the face of an ever-approaching end of days. Will none of them save her now? Very well, Folkvi will save herself. The wedding date is set. But first comes a fateful summer. . .

Deeply unsettling and brilliantly imagined, First Comes Summer captures the terror of losing the world you've always known--and the uncanny extremes to which you might go to hold on to it.

2). Odin's Betrayal by Donovan Cook to be published on the 11th of April 2023. Viking.

Francia AD853

After a failed Viking raid on the Frankish coast over 20-years-ago, Jarl Sven the Boar is forced to leave his only son, Torkel, as a hostage and warned never to raid Francia again or his son will die.

In Hügelburg, a small town in East Francia, Torkel and his 9-year-old son Charles are ambushed at home.

Before dying, Torkel thrusts a package into young Charles’s hands and tells him to flee Francia for Denmark in search of his grandfather Sven the Boar’s protection.

But the man Charles eventually finds is not who he e

xpects, and Charles must put his fate in the hands of a man betrayed by Odin.

Together they must uncover the significance of the package and why the Kings of Francia want Charles dead.

3). The Call of the Cormorant by Donald S. Murray to be published on the 11th of April 2023. Denmark and Germany.

From the author of the prize-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes a remarkable ‘unreliable biography’ of Karl Kjerúlf Einarsson: an artist and an adventurer, a charlatan and a swindler, forever in search of Atlantis.

As a child in the windswept, fog-bound Faroe Islands in the late nineteenth century, Karl Einarsson believes he is special, destined for a life of art and adventure. As soon as he can, he sets out for Copenhagen and beyond, styling himself as the Count of St. Kilda. He’s an observer and citizen of nowhere, a serial swindler of aristocrats and Nazis, fishermen and fops.

But when his adventures find him in 1930s Berlin, he is forced for the first time to reckon with something much bigger than himself. As the Nazis rise to power around him, his wilful ignorance becomes unwitting complicity, even betrayal.

Based on a true story, this is a fantastical tale of island life, of those who leave and those who stay behind, and the many dangers of delusions and false identities.

4). Scandinavia since 1500: Second Edition by Byron J. Nordstrom to be published on the 11th of April 2023. Denmark (Faroe Islands and Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden.

An updated edition of the definitive history of Scandinavia over the past five centuries

Despite certain distinctions and differences, the lands of Scandinavia, or Norden—Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and the Faroe Islands—are united by bonds of culture, language, and geography, and by a shared history that comes richly to life in this landmark work. Now in an expanded, updated edition, this definitive chronicle of five centuries of Scandinavian history incorporates the geopolitical developments and momentous events that have marked the Nordic world in recent decades.

Scandinavia since 1500 situates the region’s political history within the traditional European chronology—in which the long “modern” period is subdivided into the Renaissance, early modern, modern, and contemporary. Within this framework, Byron J. Nordstrom traces the various ways in which economic, social, and cultural ideas and practices have come to Scandinavia from abroad, only to be modified and recast in a uniquely Nordic character. Long-unquestioned national mythologies come under Nordstrom's scrutiny, along with historical blind spots and erasures, as he ranges from canonical figures like Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Christian IV of Denmark to the constitutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the resistance movements in World War II, and the Scandinavian welfare states, literary culture, and modern design. Expanded to include the nature and realities of the increasingly postindustrial economies of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—including environmental concerns, integration with Europe, globalization, and immigration—Scandinavia since 1500 offers a comprehensive yet nuanced portrait of this unique region in all its political, diplomatic, social, economic, and cultural complexity.

5). Stigma by Jørn Lier Horst & Thomas Enger to be published on the 13th of April 2023. Norway.

Alexander Blix is a broken man. Convicted for avenging his daughter's death, he is being held in one of Norway's high-security prisons.

Inside, the other prisoners take every opportunity to humiliate the former police investigator. Outside, Blix's former colleagues are hunting for a terrifying killer.

Walter Kroos has escaped from prison in Germany and is heading north. The only lead established by the police is that Kroos has a friend in Blix's prison ward. And now they need Blix's help.

Journalist Emma Ramm, one of Blix's few visitors, becomes his ally as he struggles to connect the link between past and present, between the world inside and outside the prison walls.

As he begins to piece things together, he identifies a woodland community in Norway where deeply scarred inhabitants foster deadly secrets...secrets that may be the unravelling of everyone involved.

6). Tell Me The Truth by Felicia Heilgendorff to be published on the 18th of April 2023. Denmark.

No one told her about her twin. And she can’t remember.

A single accident wiped out the first eighteen years of Katie’s life. Three years on and about to start her graduate degree in cognitive science, she still remembers nothing.

Then her new flatmate, Sam, sends Katie a photo of herself. With no other flat options, Katie prays it’s just a joke. But Sam arrives in Denmark, a spitting image of Katie.

SHE SAYS THEY'RE TWINS

Sam won’t tell Katie anything about their past and when Katie demands to take a DNA test, Sam refuses. But if Sam’s supposed to believe Katie can’t remember, why won’t Katie believe they’re related?
Christoffer Petersen
WHO'S LYING?

A tense psychological thriller set in mainland Europe perfect for fans of Sally Hepworth, TM Logan and JP Delaney.

7). Glacier Beat: A Greenland Missing Persons Stand-Alone Novel by Christoffer Petersen to be published on the 18th of April 2023. Greenland.

During a narcotics bust at a remote research station in the High Arctic, Constable Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen stumbles upon a murder when she finds the diary of a missing scientist.

As the case unfolds, Petra is caught up in an international corporate conspiracy, with key players willing and capable of doing anything to end the investigation and anyone connected to it.

Glacier Beat is a stand-alone novel from the Greenland Missing Persons series of novellas and novels set in the harsh, unpredictable Arctic, rich in tradition, myth and culture.

Glacier Beat continues the adventures of Constable Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen, ably assisted by interesting characters, together with a few familiar faces making cameo appearances in the series.

All the Greenland Missing Persons stories are set prior to The Ice Star and Seven Graves, One Winter.

Hi, not sure if this is the right place but while I find it useful to get notifications of English translations of Scandinavian mysteries and thrillers, I've just received 3 emails for novels by authors with Anglo-Saxon names one of which appears to be non fiction, one science fiction and the other one romance?
Can you please stick to the group descriptions with your choices?

@Duncan You realize that Ken volunteers his time to moderate this forum, and that is a huge time commitment that he does to share his passion with others? I am very grateful he does so, as otherwise I would never hear about *any* of these books as I work 60 hour weeks and have no time to investigate this on my own. If you don't want to read about something, delete it. So my short response is "No, not the right place or right sentiment to express to a volunteer, full stop".

Duncan wrote: "Hi, not sure if this is the right place but while I find it useful to get notifications of English translations of Scandinavian mysteries and thrillers, I've just received 3 emails for novels by au..."

All the authors that have written Scandinavian novels are listed. I have included some of the books they have written that aren't about Scandinavia but they are the authors that live in Scandinavia now! And thank you Dalia for your support. I'll be back next week Wednesday, right now back in Rome.

8) The Lazarus Solution by Kjell Ola Dahl to be published on the 27th of April 2023. Norway & Sweden.

Summer, 1943. When a courier for Sweden's Press and Military Office is killed on his final mission, the Norwegian government-in-exile appoints a writer to find the missing documents in this breathtaking WW2 thriller.

Daniel BerkÅk works as a courier for the Press and Military Office in Stockholm. On his last cross-border mission to Norway, he carries a rucksack full of coded documents and newspapers, but before he has a chance to deliver anything he is shot and killed and the contents of his rucksack are missing. The Norwegian government, currently exiled in London, wants to know what happened, and the job goes to writer Jomar Kraby,whose first suspect is a Norwegian refugee living in Sweden, whose past that is as horrifying as the events still to come...

Both classic crime and a stunning exposÉ of Norwegian agents in Stockholm during the Second World War, The Lazarus Solution is a compulsive, complex, richly authentic historical thriller from one of the godfathers of Nordic Noir.

9) Burning Sommer by Nicholas Harvey to be published on the 26th of April 2023. The Main Character is from Norway.

A fiery murder. A serial arsonist. A race to save the next victim.

Tragedy strikes when a holidaymaker dies in a blazing car, but when trainee detective, Constable Nora Sommer, is called to the scene of a second fire, she discovers a ruthless pattern emerging.

When an investigator with the UK's National Crime Agency arrives, further complicating and escalating the arson case, tensions rise… like the flames around another victim.

Book four in the Nora Sommer Caribbean Suspense series turns up the heat for the young Norwegian ex-pat.

Can be read in series or as stand-alone novel.

10) Heidi Hansen by Lisa J Rivers to be published on the 6th of April 2023. Norway.

A woman searches for clues to why her husband went missing and never returned.
For three years, Anna has been in limbo, not knowing what happened to Emil, her husband. Every day she hopes Emil will return but he never does. One day, her dog dies, and Anna is left alone. So she goes in search for the truth about Emil's disappearance.

Her trek takes her across the mountains and glaciers of her native Norway, looking for people who might have met Emil. Did he reach the coast and photograph the sunset? Do the humanists assembling at a villa in Uektefjord know anything about him?

Beyond the North Wind is the third book in a series that started with The Book of Alexander (book 1) and Magnus (book 2), both traditionally published by Salt, a leading independent publisher in the UK.

This is the second edition of Beyond The North Wind, originally published on Amazon KDP as an ebook in 2012.

The text has been revised and expanded to take into account the other two books in the series.

8) WHEN THE SKY DANCES : Exploring the Northern Lights in SCANDINAVIA by ROBIN J. HARRIS to be published on the 15th of April 2023. Denmark.

"When the Sky Dances: Exploring the Northern Lights in Scandinavia" is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of witnessing the magic and wonder of the Aurora Borealis. This comprehensive guide takes you on a journey through the Arctic Circle and beyond, exploring the best times and places to see the Northern Lights and what to expect when you visit.

With tips on how to dress, what gear to bring, and how to photograph this breathtaking natural display, this book is the perfect resource for planning your trip to see the Northern Lights in Scandinavia. But it's not just a practical guide - "When the Sky Dances" also delves into the science, history, and cultural significance of this phenomenon, providing a fascinating and enriching reading experience.

So whether you're a seasoned traveler or someone who has always been fascinated by the Northern Lights, "When the Sky Dances" is the ultimate guide to exploring this incredible natural wonder. Get your copy today and embark on a journey that will leave you awestruck and inspired.