Lea

From the author of the giant bestseller, Night Train to Lisbon, comes a finely calibrated heartbreaker of a novel about fathers and daughters, great rises and sudden falls.

It all starts with the death of Martijn van Vliet’s wife. His grief-stricken young daughter, Lea, cuts herself off from the world, right up until the day that she hears a snatch of Bach being played on a violin by a busker. Transfixed by the sweet melody, she emerges from her mourning, vowing to learn the instrument. Lea’s all-consuming passion is matched by talent, and she becomes one of the finest players in the country – but as her fame blossoms, her relationship with her father only withers. Desperate to hold on to Lea, Martijn is driven to commit an act that threatens to destroy both him and his daughter.

The White City

SHORTLISTED PETRONA AWARD 2018

Karin knew what she was getting herself into when she fell for John, the high-flying criminal and love of her life. But she never imagined things would turn out like this: John is now gone and the coke-filled parties, seemingly endless flow of money and high social status she previously enjoyed have been replaced by cut telephone lines, cut heat and cut cash. All that remains of Karin’s former life is the big house he bought for her – and his daughter, the child Karin once swore she would never bring into their dangerous world.

Now Karin is alone with the baby, and the old promise of ‘the family’ has proved alarmingly empty. With the authorities zeroing in on organized crime, John’s shady legacy is catching up with her, and the house is about to be seized. Over the course of a few nerve-wracking days, Karin is forced to take drastic measures in order to claim what she considers rightfully hers.

A slow-burning psychological thriller with a sophisticated, dreamlike atmosphere, The White City is both the portrayal of one woman’s struggle to pull herself up from the paralyzing depths of despair, and an unflinching examination of what it means to lose control – over your body, your life and your fate.

Norma

From the internationally acclaimed author of Purge and When the Doves Disappeared, comes a deliciously dark family drama that is a searing portrait of both the exploitation of women’s bodies and the extremes to which people will go for the sake of beauty.

When Anita Naakka jumps in front of an oncoming train, her daughter, Norma, is left alone with the secret they have spent their lives hiding: Norma has supernatural hair, sensitive to the slightest changes in her mood–and the moods of those around her–moving of its own accord, corkscrewing when danger is near. And so it is her hair that alerts her, while she talks with a strange man at her mother’s funeral, that her mother may not have taken her own life. Setting out to reconstruct Anita’s final months–sifting through puzzling cell phone records, bank statements, video files–Norma begins to realise that her mother knew more about her hair’s powers than she let on: a sinister truth beyond Norma’s imagining.

Top Dog

Now a major Swedish TV series, with plans to bring it to UK audiences.

For decades, a secret network in Stockholm has been exploiting young girls, ruthlessly eliminating anyone who threatens to reveal their secret. As oddly paired duo Teddy and Emelie – the thug and the lawyer – investigate, the terrifying noose tightens. The police force has established a special team to find out just who’s involved in the network, but can’t seem to get close enough. And who is it that’s trying to silence Teddy and Emelie, using any means necessary?

Nervous System

‘Nervous System is fast, uncompromising and shimmering with intelligence’ Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater

‘Meruane is one of the one or two greats in the new generation of Chilean writers who promise to have it all’ Roberto Bolaño

A young woman struggles to finish her PhD on stars and galaxies. Instead, she obsessively tracks the experience of her own body, listening to its functions and rhythms, finally locating in its patterns the beginning of illness and instability. As she discovers the precarity of her self, she begins to turn her attention to the distant orbits of her family members, each moving away from the familial system and each so different in their experiences, but somehow made similar in their shared history of illness and trauma, both political and personal…

The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Unfortunately people and tribes degenerate. They lose their teeth, forget their language, until finally they’re bending meekly on the fields and cutting straw with a scythe.

Leemut, a young boy growing up in the forest, is content living with his hunter-gatherer family. But when incomprehensible outsiders arrive aboard ships and settle nearby, with an intriguing new religion, the forest begins to empty – people are moving to the village and breaking their backs tilling fields to make bread. Meanwhile, Leemut and the last forest-dwelling humans refuse to adapt: with bare-bottomed primates and their love of ancient traditions, promiscuous bears, and a single giant louse, they live in shacks, keep wolves, and speak to snakes.

Told with moving and satirical prose, The Man Who Spoke Snakish is a fiercely imaginative allegory about a boy, and a nation, standing on the brink of dramatic change.