A cold-blooded killer strikes at the hottest moment: the new head of a sauna-stove company is murdered … in the sauna. Who has turned up the temperature and burned him to death?
The evidence points in the direction of Anni Korpinen – top salesperson and the victim’s successor at Steam Devil. And as if hitting middle-age, being in a marriage that has lost its purpose, and struggling with work weren’t enough, Anni realizes that she must be quicker than both the police and the murderer to uncover who is behind it all – before it’s too late…
PUBLICATION DATE: 13th MARCH 2025 HARDBACK ORIGINAL | £ 16. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
Description
Expert on body language and memory, and consultant to the Oslo Police, psychologist Kari Voss sleepwalks through her days, and, by night, continues the devastating search for her young son, who disappeared on his birthday, seven years earlier.
Still grieving for her dead husband, and trying to pull together the pieces of her life, she is thrust into a shocking local investigation, when two teenage girls are violently murdered in a family summer home in the nearby village of Son.
When a friend of the victims is charged with the barbaric killings, it seems the case is closed, but Kari is not convinced. Using her skills and working on instinct, she conducts her own enquiries, leading her to multiple suspects, including people who knew the dead girls well…
With the help of Chief Constable Ramona Norum, she discovers that no one – including the victims – are what they seem. And that there is a dark secret at the heart of Son village that could have implications not just for her own son’s disappearance, but Kari’s own life, too…
I reviewed this book when it was first published last year. The paperback was recently published so I’m sharing the details and my review as part of the tour to celebrate the paperback publication.
Since the hardback was published last year the following has happened:
WINNER of the Cultura’s Best Fiction Book of 2023 (France’s biggest book chain), plus Crime Fiction
Book of the Year at seven different festivals
High-spec signed paperback with foil and embossing
NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER in France with seven hardback reprints and counting…
Johana has been shortlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger
FIRST in a new series set in Sweden – The Lidingö Mysteries
Book details
Publication Date: 7 November 2024
Format: Paperback
Price: £ 9. 99
Publisher: Orenda Books
Description
Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she’s asked to appraise the antiques and artefacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found.
Emma must work alone, and with the Gussman family apparently avoiding her, she sees virtually no one in the house. Do they have something to hide?
As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants.
When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate, and memories of his failure to solve the first case come rushing back. Could this young woman’s tragic death somehow hold the key?
Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl to embark upon a chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past – Viking rites and tainted love – and Scandinavia’s deepest, darkest winter…
Born in Marseille, France, and with a degree in Political Science, Johana Gustawsson has worked as a journalist for the French and Spanish press, and television. Her critically acclaimed Roy & Castells series, including Block 46, Keeper and Blood Song, won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards, and is now published in 23 countries. A TV adaptation is currently under way in a French, Swedish and UK co-production. The Bleeding was a number-one bestseller in France, receiving critical acclaim across the globe, and Yule Island has won multiple awards, including Book of the Year with France’s biggest retailer, Cultura, and has been optioned for the screen.
Johana lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband and their three sons.
PUBLICATION DATE: 7th NOVEMBER 2024 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
Description
Two years ago, Alexander Blix was the lead investigator in a missing person’s case where a young mother, Elisabeth Eie, had been kidnapped. The case came to a standstill when Blix’s own daughter was killed and he was arrested for avenging her. Blix is a now free man again, but Elisabeth’s kidnapper has found him, leaving evidence of her murder in Blix’s mailbox.
The police are unwilling to accept Blix’s help. Even if he was acquitted of his crime, his career in law enforcement is over. But Elisabeth’s murderer continues to pursue him, leading Blix to his new victims, while making it clear that he knows details from Blix’s private life that the former investigator has never shared with anyone…
Meanwhile, Emma Ramm has been contacted by a teenage girl, Carmen, whose stepfather has been arrested on suspicion of killing a childhood friend. But there is no body. Nor are there any other suspects…
Blix and Ramm can rely only on each other. And when Blix’s fingerprints are found on a child’s drawing at a crime scene, the present comes uncomfortably close to the past. A past where a victim has found their very own form of therapy. And it is clear that someone is watching…
Shocking, relentless and unbearably tense, Victim marks the return of the international bestselling, blockbuster Blix & Ramm series from two of Norway’s finest crime writers.
PUBLICATION DATE: 10th OCTOBER 2024 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
Description
When Áróra receives a call telling her that a child she’s never met is claiming to be her missing sister reincarnated, she is devastated … as ridiculous as the allegations might seem. For three years she has been searching for her sister without finding a single clue, and now this strange child seems to have new information.
On the same day, Icelandic detective Daníel returns home to find a note from his tenant, drag queen Lady Gúgúlú, giving notice on her flat and explaining that she has to leave the country. Daníel is immediately suspicious, and when three threatening men appear, looking for Lady, it’s clear to him that something is very wrong…
And as Iceland’s long dark nights continue into springtime, that is just the very beginning…
PUBLICATION DATE: 15th AUGUST 2024 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
On her first day back from maternity leave, Detective Sam Shephard is thrown straight into a cold-case investigation – the unsolved murder of a highly respected Anglican Priest in Dunedin.
The case has been a thorn in the side of the Police hierarchy, and for her boss it’s personal. With all the witness testimony painting a picture of a dedicated church and family man, what possible motive could there have been for his murder?
But when Sam starts digging deeper into the case, it becomes apparent that someone wants the sins of the past to remain hidden. And when a new potential witness to the crime is found brutally murdered, there is pressure from all quarters to solve the case before anyone else falls prey.
PUBLICATION DATE: 20th JUNE 2024 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £9.99 | ORENDA BOOKS
Dark secrets from the past threaten everything …
Fresh from maternity leave, Detective Elma finds herself confronted with a complex case, when a man is found murdered in a holiday cottage in the depths of the Icelandic countryside – the victim of a frenzied knife attack, with a shocking message scrawled on the wall above him.
At home with their baby daughter, Sævar is finding it hard to let go of work, until a chance discovery in a discarded box provides him with a distraction. Could the diary of a young boy, detailing the events of a long-ago summer have a bearing on Elma’s case?
Once again, the team at West Iceland CID has to contend with local secrets in the small town of Akranes, where someone has a vested interest in preventing the truth from coming to light.
And Sævar has secrets of his own that threaten to destroy his and Elma’s newfound happiness.
PUBLICATION DATE: 16 FEBRUARY 2023 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £9.99 | ORENDA BOOKS
Blurb
The shocking murder of a heavily pregnant woman throws the New Zealand city of Dunedin into a tailspin, and the devastating crime feels uncomfortably close to home for Detective Sam Shephard as she counts down the days to her own maternity leave.
Confined to a desk job in the department, Sam must find the missing link between this brutal crime and a string of cases involving mothers and children in the past. As the pieces start to come together and the realisation dawns that the killer’s actions are escalating, drastic measures must be taken to prevent more tragedy.
For Sam, the case becomes personal, when it becomes increasingly clear that she is no longer safe, and the clock is ticking…
Pub date: 13 October 2022 ISBN 13: 978-1-914585-32-6 EPUB: 978-1-914585-33-3 Price: £9.99
THE BOOK
When entrepreneur Flosi arrives home for dinner one night, he discovers that his house has been ransacked, and his wife Gudrun missing. A letter on the kitchen table confirms that she has been kidnapped. If Flosi doesn’t agree to pay an enormous ransom, Gudrun will be killed.
Forbidden from contracting the police, he gets in touch with Áróra, who specialises in finding hidden assets, and she, alongside her detective friend Daniel, try to get to the bottom of the case without anyone catching on. Meanwhile, Áróra and Daniel continue the puzzling, devastating search for Áróra’s sister Ísafold, who disappeared without trace. As fog descends, in a cold and rainy Icelandic autumn, the investigation becomes increasingly dangerous, and confusing.
Chilling, twisty and unbearably tense, Red as Blood is the second instalment in the riveting, addictive An Áróra Investigation series, and everything is at stake…
Everything Is Better With Dragons 