European Thriller

I don’t wish to frighten you, reads the anonymous note introverted and bullied eight-year-old Leo Cruz finds in his backpack. All the sender asks is that he avoid a certain spot on a certain day, or he’ll die. Leo has reason to be afraid. The warning hearkens back to nearly a decade ago - to the same site, where a murder has become local folklore and a favorite campfire tale reinvented year after year by the kids of Arenas, a small Spanish town.

"Don Blas s'avançait lentement dans la rue d'Alcolote, regardant de côté et d'autre les maisons avec ses yeux de lynx. Comme il passait devant l'église on sonna une messe ; il se précipita de cheval plutôt qu'il n'en descendit, et on le vit s'agenouiller auprès de l'autel. Quatre de ses gendarmes se mirent à genoux autour de sa chaise ; ils le regardèrent, il n'y avait déjà plus de dévotion dans ses yeux. Son œil sinistre était fixé sur un jeune homme d'une tournure fort distinguée qui priait dévotement à quelques pas de lui."

From the outside, Frank and Grace seem to have the perfect family. He’s a loving husband, she’s a devoted wife, and together they have two happy children. But appearances can be deceiving. A strange series of misfortunes has left them reeling: an unexplained break-in, a catastrophic handgun accident, and a bizarre poisoning that’s left Grace feeling especially unnerved. Packing up their RV for a move across the country, they’re ready for a fresh start, expecting to leave all their problems safely behind.

Sept jours d'idylle... Il aura suffi d'une semaine pour que s'inverse le cours de l'existence monotone de Sarah. Depuis qu'elle a rencontré Eddie sur une petite route de campagne anglaise, la jeune femme est certaine qu'un bonheur sans nuages les attend. Sa vie débute enfin. Le jour où il lui annonce qu'il doit s'absenter pour un voyage prévu de longue date, Sarah n'a aucune inquiétude. Mais le temps passe et Eddie ne revient pas. La laisse sans nouvelles. Ne répond plus à ses messages. Rien.

Susan has everything she ever wanted. A loving husband, an angelic daughter and the cottage of her dreams in County Cork. Her picture-perfect life seems too good to be true. And it is. At a housewarming party with their new neighbours, her daughter Amelia goes missing. As friends become suspects, Susan’s life spirals out of control. And when Amelia’s yellow cardigan is dredged from the lake, every parent’s worst nightmare suddenly seems horribly real. In the aftermath of Amelia’s disappearance Susan and her husband Paul are not themselves. Someone is hiding something.

After completing a dangerous mission training police officers in war-torn Afghanistan, Detective Maria Kallio returns to Finland as the head of a new special crimes unit. But what awaits her in her home country is her most challenging and unsettling case yet. Three immigrant Muslim girls, all members of the same social club, have gone missing under mysterious circumstances. When the body of a fourth girl is found in the snow, strangled with her own headscarf, the investigation takes on a grim new urgency.

Max Anger is a man on the edge. The former fighter in an elite band of special-ops soldiers in Sweden, Anger is haunted by battle scars, a childhood spent in the Stockholm archipelago, and his own mysterious family past. Now behind a desk at Vektor, a think tank conducting research on Russia, he’s met his match - and fallen in love - with fierce fellow operative Pashie Kovalenko. Like all of Vektor, she’s set her sights on the tenuous future of her country.

No one has forgotten the unsolved kidnapping of four-year-old Nicolás Acosta. It galvanized Madrid, shaking it to its core. Two years later, another young child - similar in age and appearance to Nicolás - disappears from the same suburban shopping mall, drawing Chief Inspector Ana Arén back into the case she could never close. This is her chance at redemption. As fears of a serial kidnapper threaten to consume the city once again, Ana’s friend, reporter Inés Grau, jumps at the chance to cover it. But the pressure on Ana is greater than ever as she straddles an ethical line.

Tariq Khan is a Pakistani born and raised in Norway. An outsider in his own country - adrift between two worlds divided by class, race, and culture - he’s always been searching for home. Alongside a flock of other streetwise young men, each looking for direction and each easily susceptible, Tariq finds his cause in the Muslim revival. Idealistic, driven by faith, and empowered with purpose, he’s drawn to radical Islam - his last resort for achieving a sense of belonging. It’s only when he enlists in the war against Assad that Tariq’s eyes are truly opened.

Since the death of his father by a drunk driver, Giulio Rodari has touched alcohol only twice—and the second time was the night his ex-girlfriend, Patrizia, was murdered. The morning after, the celebrated children’s author awoke to a black hole in his memory—and to accusations of the crime. He had been known to stalk her. He had confronted her in an intoxicated rage on her last night alive. Beyond that, Giulio doesn’t remember a thing.

Detta är den 3: dje och avslutande delen av trilogin Kriminalkommissarie Leah Quiller skipar rättvisa två gånger, Uppgörelsen. Leah Quiller har vid ett flertal tillfällen varit hemma på sitt gods på Österlen, där hon alltid är känd under sitt rätta namn, grevinnan Caroline von Steinberg, och för varje gång får hon en allt större längtan att återta sin rätta identitet. Men hon är också väl medveten om att för att återfå friheten måste hon hitta mannen som både våldtog och misshandlade henne brutalt och lämnade henne att dö i ett dike.

Den 2 delen av tre. Gärningen. I över ett decennium har kriminalkommissarie Leah Quiller försökt att skapa sig ett tryggt liv efter den våldsamma våldtäkten som nästan ändade hennes liv. Samtidigt arbetar hon och åklagare Jeanette på den nya sexbrottsroteln i Göteborg för att få till åtal och att sätta så många våldtäktsmän i fängelse som det bara är möjligt, och i vissa fall tvekar inte Leah att skipa rättvisa två gånger i sin privata rättssal.

As a widowed mother of three, new love seems impossible for Freya - until she meets Duncan, and suddenly she feels alive again. While Freya’s older children are less than welcoming, six-year-old Sophie helps Duncan find his place in the family - but even Sophie harbours fears that threaten to overshadow any chance of a new start. The past is hard to leave behind when pictures of Freya’s idolised late husband hang in every room, and the more Duncan tries to find the source of Sophie’s anxiety, the more he is convinced that Reuben was not the perfect husband and father Freya remembers.

A grievously mutilated young woman arrives at the hospital in Espoo, Finland - only to vanish without a trace. Though the victim refused to identify herself, Violent Crimes Unit Commander Maria Kallio suspects she's connected to the city's sex-worker underworld. The next day her suspicions grow when celebrity call girl Lulu Nightingale is murdered during a live television broadcast. The victim's clients included some of the top names in Finnish society, but the list of suspects is longer: her infatuated bodyguard, a suicidal TV producer, and a talk-show host with political aspirations.

Devastated by a broken engagement, Stella Jackson leaves her old life behind for a new start in rural Scotland. But when she arrives in the remote coastal village of Arisaig, nothing is what she expected. At the edge of Arisaig sits Munro House; grand, imposing and said to be cursed by a string of tragic deaths. No less intriguing is its eccentric and handsome young owner, Jamie Munro, who hires Stella as his assistant while he pursues a seemingly impossible aim.

At an art auction in Madrid, Elías Segado, a religious art appraiser and detective, is getting ready to secure a painting for the bishop of Cartagena. But in a brilliant sleight of hand, the iconic work is stolen, drawing Elías into the confidence of its corrupt and seductive thief.

Now, Bram Stoker's Dracula - the pinnacle of Gothic horror for generations - rises again. When young English lawyer Jonathan Harker arrives in Transylvania on the eve of Saint George's Day, he cannot shake a strange feeling of uneasiness. The air grows colder as he arrives at his destination: the castle of Count Dracula. Jonathan has been summoned by the count for business, and while he finds his new host obliging and polite, he can't help but notice the man's pallid skin, odd lack of appetite, and long daytime absences.

Alice was a hopeful young graduate student when, on a beautiful August night, her body was found in the woods. She'll always remember the night she was murdered. And she still suffers the grief and rage that destroyed her family. But what Alice regrets most is the last fight she had with her boyfriend, Enrico - and the fact that she never had the chance to tell him something that would have changed everything. A decade later, Enrico has returned to the provincial town where Alice lived and died, to sell his family home.

When a woman's body turns up in a lake - a bullet to the back of her head - Violent Crime Unit commander Maria Kallio, freshly back from maternity leave, is fast to get on the case. The victim is ID'd as Annukka Hackman, wife of a prominent publisher and author of an upcoming unauthorized tell-all book on Sasha Smeds, Finland's celebrated racing rally driver. Almost as soon as the inquiry starts, it goes off the rails, as those connected to Annukka - and to Smeds - seem to have more secrets than they have alibis.

Inspired by 50 years of Cuban literary noir, from Cold Tales by Virgilio Piera to Reinaldo Arenas' Before Night Falls, Robert Arellano's Havana Lunar intertwines an insider testimony on the collapse of socialist Cuba with a psychological mystery.