Scandinavian Literature

Set in seventeenth-century Estonia, The Wolf's Bride is a werewolf story that follows Aalo, a forest ranger's wife who is living a double life.

This horrifying thriller, partly based on a true story, is the scariest novel yet from an international bestseller. The crunching noise had resumed, now accompanied by a disgusting, indefinable smell. It could best be described as a blend of kelp and rotten meat. The voice spoke again, now slightly louder and clearer: Don't go. Don't go yet. I'm not finished. In an isolated village in the Icelandic Westfjords, three friends set to work renovating a derelict house. But soon they realise they are not alone there—something wants them to leave, and it's making its presence felt. Meanwhile, in a town across the fjord, a young doctor investigating the suicide of an elderly woman discovers that she was obsessed with his vanished son. When the two stories collide the terrifying truth is uncovered...

The man E lives a lonely and anonymous existence dedicated to the company Dansk Standard, which standardizes the size of everything from shopping baskets to light bulb sockets. The work keeps chaos under control, as his sister, Mette, says. She is a doctor, plagued by a darkened mind and regularly tries to kill herself. When she is hospitalized with severe blood loss after performing an abortion on herself, E's orderly existence begins to be broken by another terrifying and vi>Dansk Standard is a horror novel about a pair of siblings haunted by the past—a dark and nightmarish tale of repeat offenders and the reality of evil (publisher's description, translated).

Born severely disabled in 1950s Sweden, Desiree cannot walk or talk but can use her clairvoyant and onmiscient powers to travel through time and space into the lives of her three foster sisters.

In several of his books, Mare Kandre has used historical and mythological material in various ways. In The Devil and God (1993) she wrote an alternative creation story and Quinnan and Dr Dreuf (1994) did away with the old musty view of women in a sarcastic and unabashedly funny way. Bestiarium (1999) is an allegorical fairy tale, this time set in 19th-century England. The environment and the strange events that take place here can make one think of Sherlock Holmes as well as gothic horror novels and ghost stories with archetypal elements. In a gloomy and dark London, the fatherless Doré lives a cramped and confined life, hurrying between his unpleasant apartment, the office and the childhood home where he spends all his free time. Reluctantly, but as if guided by an inner compulsion, he watches over his unconscious mother, who is still the center of his life. Her death triggers a tumultuous crisis that causes him to break up—by chance or a whimsical fate, he is guided to the moorland of the Lake District, where a couple of old women seem to have been waiting for him in their castle. And in the lake awaits the sea monster, a monster whose look has unexpected consequences for Doré. The rest of the plot shall not be revealed, in this dense, dark and mysterious story where Mare Kandre takes the turns properly (publisher's description, translated).

On Midsummer's Eve, 1974, Annie Raft arrives with her daughter Mia in the remote Swedish village of Blackwater to join her lover Dan on a nearby commune. On her journey through the deep forest, she sumbles upon the site of a grisly double murder—a crime that will remain unsolved for nearly twenty years, until the day Annie sees her grown daughter in the arms of one man she glimpsed in the forest that eerie midsummer night. Like Gorky Parkand Smilla's Sense of Snow, Blackwater is a unique thriller in which the hearts and minds of the characters are as strikingly compelling as the exotic northern landscape that envelops them.

On a night after the apparent suicide of high school student Elias Malmgren, a blood-red moon fills the night sky. Minoo wakes up outside her house, still in her pajamas, and is drawn by an invisible force to an abandoned theme park on the outskirts of town. Soon five of her classmates—Vanessa, Linnea, Anna-Karin, Rebecka and Ida—arrive, compelled the same force. A mystical being takes over Ida's body and tells them they are fated to fight an ancient evil that is hunting them. The park is a safe haven; the school, a place of danger. The six are wildly different and definitely not friends...but they are the Chosen Ones. As the weeks pass, each girl discovers she has a unique magical ability. They begin exploring their powers, but they are not all firmly committed to their mission—to discover the truth about Elias's death. Then a horrible tragedy strikes within the circle. Newly determined to fight the evil forces, they begin to learn magic from The Book of Patterns, an ancient work with a will of its own that reveals different things to different witches. In this gripping first installment of the Engelsfors Trilogy, a parallel world emerges in which teenage dreams, insanely annoying parents, bullying, revenge, and love collide with flirtation, dangerous forces, and ancient magic.

On the idyllic island of Öland, off the coast of northern Sweden, a young couple from Stockholm tries to start life afresh. For Joakim and Katrine Westin, reclaiming a long-neglected family manor will be a labor of love, as they slowly bring the sprawling home back to life and introduce their two children to the island'ss woodlands, glens, and beaches. But in the Westins' new home, there are things that cannot be repaired, lives that have gone wrong, and secrets that have followed them. When the family is struck by tragedy, it's up to grief-stricken Joakim to put together a puzzle of inexplicable loss, unbearable suspicion, and tangled lives. In this powerhouse of suspense, at once a crime novel and a searing family drama, a home built as a shelter from the sea becomes a human storm of murder.

A young woman breaks away from her parents' home, a small fishing and smallholder farm on the Skåne coast out in Österlen. It is at the end of the poor Swedish twenties. A man has appeared and disappeared from her life. Her dramatically dark destiny starts from that man. The destructive powers of him return in their daughter. And then in the daughter's son. Dykungens dotter is a dense, vivid novel about the difficulty of people reaching out to each other and taking root in a time of rupture from country to city, from earth and animals to the world of machines. In lyrically visionary images, the black-shimmering saga brings forth the big questions of power and betrayal, of guilt and forgiveness, of the search for meaning and for unconditional love (Goodreads, translated).

A collection of nineteen ghost stories from Sweden and abroad.

Four families wake up one morning in their trailer on an ordinary campsite. However, during the night something strange has happened. Everything outside the camping grounds has disappeared, and the world has been transformed into an endless expanse of grass. The sky is blue, but there is no sign of the sun; there are no trees, no flowers, no birds. And every radio plays nothing but the songs of sixties pop icon Peter Himmelstrand. As the holiday-makers try to come to terms with what has happened, they are forced to confront their deepest fears and secret desires. Past events that each of them has tried to bury rise to the surface and take on terrifying physical forms. Can any of them find a way back to reality?

A classic short story collection from the writer called Sweden's Stephen King that continues the breathtaking story begun in the internationally acclaimed classic Let the Right One In. Because of the two superb films made of John Ajvide Lindqvist's vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In, millions of people around the world know the story of Oskar and Eli and of their final escape from Blackeberg at the end of the novel. Now at last, in Let the Old Dreams Die, the title story in this absolutely stunning collection, we get a glimpse of what happened next to the pair. Fans of Let the Right One In will have to read the story, which is destined to generate much word of mouth both among fans and online. "Let the Old Dreams Die" is not the only stunner in this collection. In "Final Processing," Lindqvist also reveals the next chapter in the lives of the characters he created in Handling the Undead. "Equinox" is a story of a woman who takes care of her neighbor's house while they are away and readers will never forget what she finds in the house. Every story meets the very high standard of excellence and fright factor that Lindqvist fans have come to expect. Totally transcending genre writing, these are world class stories from possibly the most impressive horror writer writing today.

It is autumn 1981 when inconceivable horror comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenager is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last—revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day. But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik's Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night. . .

The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense. Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed "The Lost Village," since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother's entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left--a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn--have plagued her. She's gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened. But there will be no turning back. Not long after they've set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice: They are not alone. They're looking for the truth... But what if it finds them first? Come find out.

Part psychological novel, love story, folk tale, and Gothic melodrama, this is the story of two young lovers rescuing each other from their psychological underworlds.

A short story collection containing several of Lagerkvist's best-known short stories, such as "The Elevator Who Went Down in Hell," "Father and Me," and "A Hero's Death."

A powerful combination of ghost story and social realism.

Rosen på tistelön is a novel about an unspeakable crime and how it affects those who committed it, as well as those that know who is behind the crime.

Summer 1978. A young boy disappears without a trace from a mountain cabin. His mother claims he was carried away by a giant. He is never found. Twenty-five years later, another child goes missing. This time there's a lead: a single photograph taken by Susso Myren. Myren has devoted her life to the search for trolls, legendary giants known as stallo, who can control human thoughts and assume animal form. Convinced that trolls are real, she follows the trail of missing children to northern Sweden.

With cool illustrations by Hans Arnold. True ghost stories in an aristocratic setting, among spiritual petty tyrants and adventurers from Sweden's motley historical past. The book is a must for anyone who wants to enjoy ghost stories of the best vintage...(Parthenon förlag och bokhandel, translated).

A man in 1690s Sweden creates conflict when he cannot accept a gypsy man with whom he is spending the summer.

Swedish Lapland, 1717. Maija, her husband Paavo and her daughters Frederika and Dorotea arrive from their native Finland, hoping to forget the traumas of their past and put down new roots in this harsh but beautiful land. Above them looms Blackåsen, a mountain whose foreboding presence looms over the valley and whose dark history seems to haunt the lives of those who live in its shadow. While herding the family's goats on the mountain, Frederika happens upon the mutilated body of one of their neighbors, Eriksson. The death is dismissed as a wolf attack, but Maija feels certain that the wounds could only have been inflicted by another man. Compelled to investigate despite her neighbors' strange disinterest in the death and the fate of Eriksson's widow, Maija is drawn into the dark history of tragedies and betrayals that have taken place on Blackåsen. Young Frederika finds herself pulled towards the mountain as well, feeling something none of the adults around her seem to notice. As the seasons change, and the "wolf winter," the harshest winter in memory, descends upon the settlers, Paavo travels to find work, and Maija finds herself struggling for her family's survival in this land of winter-long darkness. As the snow gathers, the settlers' secrets are increasingly laid bare. Scarce resources and the never-ending darkness force them to come together, but Maija, not knowing who to trust and who may betray her, is determined to find the answers for herself. Soon, Maija discovers the true cost of survival under the mountain, and what it will take to make it to spring.