Told she has six months to live, an Iranian refugee living in Sweden rages against her inevitable decline—and wrestles with the choices of her past—in Hashemzadeh Bonde’s spare and devastating novel, her first to be published in the U.S.

At 50, Nahid is unceremoniously diagnosed with terminal cancer. She knows death: A former Marxist revolutionary who fled Iran for Sweden, she has seen it. Now that it is upon her, she ought to be prepared. “I’ve always carried my death with me,” she announces. “Our time was always borrowed. We weren’t supposed to be alive. We should have died in the revolution.” But the reality of the diagnosis terrifies her. “What do you do when they tell you you’re dying?” she wonders, caustically. What follows is less a plot than a reckoning: As her health declines, she recalls her childhood in Iran, the early excitement of the revolution followed by the brutality of the violence. She reflects back on her marriage and her early years in Sweden, poisoned by the pain she and her husband shared. And in the present, she considers her daughter, Aram, raised in so-called freedom, now an adult with a doting Swedish boyfriend. She loves Aram more than anyone, but her anger makes her cruel. “You have no mother,” she tells Aram, shortly after diagnosis. “You have nobody. You’re an orphan.” Nahid is capable of betrayal; she learned that during the revolution. Now that she is dying, she debates the value of her choices: “I wonder now what’s worth more,” she says. “Freedom and democracy. Or people who love you. People who will take care of your children when you die.” Translated—gorgeously and simply—by Wessel, Nahid’s sentences are short and thrillingly brutal, and the result is exhilarating. Hashemzadeh Bonde, unafraid of ugliness and seemingly unconcerned with likability, has produced a startling meditation on death, national identity, and motherhood.

Always arresting, never sentimental; gut-wrenching, though not without hope.

–Kirkus Reviews

Cutting, often cruel, and with razor-sharp humour, Acts of Infidelity explores the role of the lover in today’s culture.

Selma Lagerlöf’s powerful anti-war novel, written during World War I, grapples with issues any society at war must struggle with. As relevant today as it was when it was written. A true classic.

Swedish title: Bannlyst.

How do you choose who to save?

Stockholm criminal lawyer Martin Benner is frantically chipping away at the false confession and fabricated evidence linking the deceased Sara Texas to a string of killings. Mio, Sara’s four-year-old son, is missing, and Martin has been dragged into finding the child against his will.

Meanwhile, someone is trying to frame Martin for murders he didn’t commit. Investigators are closing in on him, and time is running out. The bodies continue to pile up, as the people with whom Martin has shared his story begin to die, one by one. And when it becomes clear that the identity of the killer and that of Mio’s kidnapper are one and the same, Martin realizes that he cannot save both Mio and himself. He has to choose…

You are his prey…

There’s a face at the window.

A masked stranger stands in the shadow of a garden, watching his first victim through the window. He will kill him slowly – play him a nursery rhyme – make him pay.

A killer in your house.

The police offer ex-Detective Joona Linna a chance to clear his name: help Superintendent Saga Bauer track down the vicious killer terrorising Stockholm, before he strikes again.

ONE GIRL IS DEAD

At a home for troubled girls, a young girl has been brutally murdered during the night. Her body is found arranged in bed with her hands covering her eyes.

ONE GIRL IS MISSING

Vicky Bennet is the only girl unaccounted for. When a bloody hammer is discovered under her pillow, it appears that she was more than just a witness to the killing.

ONE GIRL CLAIMS TO HAVE SEEN IT ALL

Detective Inspector Joona Linna is called in to piece the evidence together. But the case quickly descends into darker, more violent territory, leading him finally to a shocking confrontation with the past.

The gripping first thriller in a chilling new series from the reigning master of Scandinavian crime fiction—Mons Kallentoft, author of the acclaimed Malin Fors novels—is an instant international sensation.

Zack Herry is the golden boy who has stumbled into a career in the Stockholm police force. At night, he hangs out at the clubs, partying with the people he should really be arresting. He knows that it won’t last, but he can’t help himself, even as he starts being investigated by internal affairs. But when four Thai women from a massage parlor in Stockholm are found brutally executed and a fifth badly mutilated and dumped outside a nearby hospital, Zack must get his act together and try to figure out the motives behind the vicious murders, together with his partner, Deniz. Only one thing is for sure: more women will die unless they find the killer.