Reviews

Hackers, oil, murders and a crime-writer-turned-investigator all meet in The Writing in the Water, a suspense novel by horror-writer-turned-crime-writer John Ajvide Lindqvist.

An in-depth and readable analysis of Russia and its leadership in the post-Soviet era, The Fallen Empire looks at the developments, events and rhetorical manoeuvres that led the country where it is today.

A band of orphans fights for survival – and against each other – in The Bear Hunter’s Daughters, Anneli Jordahl’s feminist retelling of Aleksis Kivi’s Seven Brothers. While the sisters prove that women can do everything men can do, do they really want to?

You Are Not My Mother and If You Meet a Bear, two new picture books illustrated by Linda Bondestam, have very different narratives and styles, but both reveal an artist at the height of her powers.

A closer look at the development of strikes that homes in on different aspects of industrial conflict, Jesper Hamark’s Strike. From Dark Satanic Mills to the Gig Economy offers some interesting ideas on the trade unionism and capitalism of today.

A heinous criminal - or criminals - stalk the alleys, passages, churches and walls of medieval Visby. No one is safe until Thierry of Liège doggedly gets to the truth in Dick Harrison’s latest crime fiction.

A loosely autobiographical tale of touring musicians, anxiety, suicide and drug use, narrated in nail polish colours, Moa Romanova’s Off the Rails is an image-driven, witty and moving account of friendship.

Set in the South of France and inspired by cinema, Nina Wähä’s novel Babetta is a mysterious story of friendship in which nothing is as it seems.

Have you ever dreamt of spending your summers on a remote Swedish island? Well, that’s exactly what the main character in Oskar Kroon’s children’s novel Waiting for the Wind gets to do in this heart-warming tale about freedom, sadness, loneliness, love, death, friendship and the sea.

Åke Smedberg, one of Sweden’s best-loved contemporary writers, presents a very Swedish genre: nature lyricism running like a red thread through a narrative, illuminated by bittersweet reminiscence.

Manda and her best friend Malin are inseparable. In We'll just ride past, it's them against their small-town world... or not so much ‘against’ but outside it, cycling round the periphery of anything thrilling, as the end of the school year looms and with it the end of their compulsory education.

Kayo Mpoyi's Kitoko (meaning ‘beautiful’) is the touching story of how a little girl helps her father find hope again.

Lucid Dreams: A User’s Manual is a collection of stories spanning suburbia, science fiction, loneliness, violence and sheer horror from Johanna Holmström, a past master of uncomfortable writing.

The most brilliant and beautiful woman you never saw in the best debut you’ve ever read? Collected Works braids three characters into an unforgettable story.

Saturated with the sights, sounds and tastes of Ermoupoli and loaded with simmering tensions, Hanna Johansson’s Antiquity is a suggestive exploration of desire, power, and the endless shifts of memory.

The Twin Sisters is a captivating story about closeness, distance and exclusion, following the life of two young girls adopted from a Thai orphanage by a Swedish couple.

Monsters from Nordic mythology and changelings disguised as human teenagers are loose on the streets of modern-day Stockholm in Changelings 1 – The Army of Orphans.

In Letters to Men, comedian, actress, and author Bianca Kronlöf addresses the men in her own peer group to ask for their loyalty, help and commitment to the feminist struggle for gender equality.