International Literary Fiction

The irascible, obdurate, and very thirsty Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström of the National Murder Squad returns in a new novel from the reigning master of Scandinavian fiction.

Venice is a beautiful and mysterious city. Lucifer's Shadow combines two stories in the city, set centuries apart from one another, and both involving the shady but seductive characters of Venice. The stories involve an anonymous manuscript for a violin concerto, and run parallel, interweaving to lead listeners into a stunning double twisted ending.

Ten-year-old orphan Libète has been hardened by the daily struggle to survive in Cité Soleil, Haiti's most infamous slum. But when she and her best friend, Jak, discover a young mother and her baby brutally murdered in a nearby marsh, it's unlike anything she's encountered before. Though initially shocked, the adults of Cité Soleil move on quickly from the event; after all, death is commonplace in this community.

Can you redeem your life in a corrupt world? That's the question for Callie Byrne, a street savvy Iraq vet recently out of drug rehab for heroin addiction, trying to reignite her life and regain custody of her son. Bartending in Philadelphia when a friend gets entangled with her ex-dealer, Callie must navigate the underground world of drug and sex trafficking between the jungles of Guatemala and a shady Manhattan leather import business.

Rust and Metro live life to the fullest in the small Finnish city of Kotka. The lovers work together by day and write graffiti by night, always staying one step ahead of the law. But their luck runs out after an ambush by rogue security guards causes Rust to fall to his death. Having literally left their marks all over the city, Metro cannot help but be reminded of Rust everywhere she goes, making it impossible for her to move past the tragedy.

Private investigator Heredia spends his days reading detective novels; commiserating with his cat, Simenon; and peering out over the Mapocho River from his Santiago apartment. The city he loves may be changing, but Heredia can't stop chasing the ghosts of the past. This time, they've come to him...

In the Cambodian hinterlands, a lone Western prisoner suffers through a hot, muddy, interminable sentence. Wasted by repeated torture, lack of sleep, malnutrition, and psychotropic drugs, he has been abandoned. His years of exemplary service to his government mean nothing. No one is coming for him.

Madeleine Karno is an ambitious young woman eager to shatter the confines of her provincial French town. Driven and strong headed, Madeleine is set apart by her unusual occupation: assisting her father, Dr. Albert Karno, in his job as a forensic doctor.

Bodies keep turning up dead in Mother Russia... and all the murder victims are direct descendants of the infamous Mad Monk Rasputin, the most vilified man in Russian history. The intricate and dangerous murder case falls squarely in the lap of overwhelmed and underachieving Moscow Militia Investigator Iliya Podipenko, son of a famous Red Army marshal. Podipenko must stop the killing before the murderer claims the next victim, the alluring Lena Sharapova, Rasputin's great-great-granddaughter, with whom the rumpled investigator is unwittingly falling in love.

TV presenter Allis Hagtorn leaves her partner and her job to take voluntary exile in a remote house on an isolated fjord. But her new job as housekeeper and gardener is not all that it seems, and her silent, surly employer, 44-year-old Sigurd Bagge, is not the old man she expected. As they await the return of his wife from her travels, their silent, uneasy encounters develop into a chilling, obsessive relationship, and it becomes clear that atonement for past sins may not be enough.

South Korea, 1974: A young Korean woman is found strangled to death on the frozen banks of the Sonyu River with only a carefully calligraphed poem on her person. Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, agents in the US Eighth Army CID, are called in by the formidable KNP detective Gil Kwon-up to investigate. As they begin to investigate, George and Ernie come into direct contact with the US Army's Second Infantry Division, a disciplined and often brutal force.

Monsieur Pierre Arthens är världens främste matkritiker, gastronomins Påve, de överdådiga festmåltidernas Messias. Han kommer att dö i morgon. Han vet om det men han bryr sig inte: vid dödsrikets port söker han desperat efter en smak som vibrerar i hans hjärta, en smak från barndomen eller ungdomsåren, en originell och underbar anrättning som han anar är mer värd än alla de gästabud han har upplevt i egenskap av fulländad finsmakare. Så han minns.

В детстве Байрон и Бенни были неразлучны, однако, повзрослев, брат и сестра не только отдалились друг от друга, но и вообще перестали общаться. Впервые за восемь лет они встречаются на похоронах Элинор, их матери, которая вместе с завещанием оставила им в наследство испеченный ею черный торт, символизирующий в их семье счастье и любовь, — оставила в надежде, что Байрон и Бенни сумеют преодолеть разногласия и восстановить былую дружбу.

Maigret receives an anonymous phone call concerning the brutal murder of a woman and young child. The tip off concerns the woman's nephew, a mild-mannered man by the name of Gaston Meurant. Maigret remains unconvinced of the man's guilt and at his trial exposes some shocking truths about Meurant's private life that may prove his innocence.

When Maigret's .45 revolver is stolen from his home, he becomes embroiled in a murder in which the gun may have played a deadly role. Maigret is the victim of a burglary in which the .45 revolver he had received as a gift from the FBI is stolen. That evening Maigret attends a dinner where François Lagrange, an acquaintance of Maigret's friend, is expected but fails to appear due to ill health. Following his instincts, Maigret decides to investigate Lagrange's absence and uncovers a body stowed in a trunk....

"Veridica relazione degli strani eventi accaduti nella nostra città l'inverno 1888, così come da me registrati..." Con queste parole, cariche di mistero e aspettativa, inizia il documento che il narratore dice di aver trovato nel cassetto segreto di un mobile di famiglia. E ben più che strani sono gli eventi che si svolgono in una ricca e tranquilla città di mare affacciata sul Baltico negli anni in cui la navigazione a vapore ha ormai sostituito i grandi velieri.

Instantly reminiscent of the work of Osamu Dazai and Patricia Highsmith, Fuminori Nakamura's latest novel is a dark and twisting house of mirrors that philosophically explores the violence of aesthetics and the horrors of identity. A young writer arrives at a prison to interview a convict. The writer has been commissioned to write a full account of the case, from its bizarre and grisly details to the nature of the man behind the crime.

For decades, the Reverend Sammy Milton was a force in American politics. An outspoken leader of the Religious Right, Milton divided his time between evangelizing the lost and galvanizing conservative voters. His rhetoric was polarizing, his positions were divisive, and he garnered many enemies over the years. When news outlets carried word of his death, many openly expressed joy at his passing.

Mary Margaret “Mame” Blackwell yearns for a way out of the sleepy little town of Beckley. After a coal mine explosion kills her father in 1922, pretty little Mame is not willing to accept her mother’s hardscrabble plan for farming burley tobacco in rural West Virginia, but trying to survive in a nearly deserted coal mining town without a father in the early 1900s is anything but easy. When Mame eagerly leaves home on her first trip to Charleston at age 19, she meets tobacco heir Clint Paddington and sees her chance to move up in the world.

This is another romantic thriller from one of Amazon's best-selling authors. This story of a serial killer that stalks and brutally kills literary agents is set inside the world of publishing, looking at it from both a writer and publisher's point of view. When Amy, who suffers from bipolar disorder, receives a form rejection letter from Edward, an agent she had an affair with at a recent convention, she takes the rejection as both personal and professional - in short - a declaration of war.