The first book in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s - the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime writing. Hugely acclaimed, the Martin Beck series were the original Scandinavian crime novels and have inspired the writings of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo. Written in the 1960s, 10 books completed in 10 years, they are the work of Maj Sjoewall and Per Wahloeoe - a husband and wife team from Sweden. They follow the fortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic, taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen in crime fiction; without his creation Ian Rankin's John Rebus or Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander may never have been conceived. The novels can be read separately, but are best read in chronological order, so the reader can follow the characters' development and get drawn into the series as a whole. 'Roseanna' begins on a July afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from Sweden's beautiful Lake Vattern. Three months later, all that Police Inspector Martin Beck knows is that her name is Roseanna, that she came from Lincoln, Nebraska, and that she could have been strangled by any one of eighty-five people. With its authentically rendered settings and vividly realized characters, and its command over the intricately woven details of police detection, 'Roseanna' is a masterpiece of suspense and sadness.

Four nuns and a fifth woman are killed in a savage night-time attack in Africa. A year later, Inspector Kurt Wallander investigates the disappearance of an elderly birdwatcher and discovers a gruesome and meticulously planned murder - a body impaled in a trap of sharpened bamboo poles. Then, another man is reported missing. Once again Wallander's life is put on hold as he and his team work tirelessly to find a link between the series of vicious murders. Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger for Sidetracked.

Now that he's getting older, Joel Gustafson has a lot to consider. His birthday is next month. He'll be fifteen, and he can't stop thinking about the new liberties that come with being fifteen: he'll be allowed to ride a moped, and he'll no longer need to sneak into the cinema to see an adults-only film. And maybe his father will finally agree to leave their small Swedish town and the two of them will become sailors--something Joel has always dreamed of.
Joel's life takes a turn, but nothing like he had anticipated. Joel and his father are unexpectedly faced with an aspect of their past and emotional wounds resurface. Can their relationship survive this complex situation, and the very different ways in which they respond?

The leader of a religious cult in Guyana instigates a mass suicide. He succeeds in killing himself and his whole flock of worshippers, save one. In a wood outside Ystad, the police make an horrific discovery: a severed head, and hands locked together in an attitude of prayer. A Bible lies at the victim's side, handwritten corrections and amendments on every page. A string of incidents, including attacks on domestic animals, has been taking place and Inspector Wallander fears that these events could be the prelude to attacks on humans on a much greater scale. Meanwhile Linda Wallander, preparing to join the Ystad police force, arrives at the station. Showing all the hallmarks of her father - the maverick approach, the flaring temper - she becomes involved in the case and in the process is forced to confront a group of extremists bent on punishing the world's sinners.

In January 2014 Henning Mankell was informed that he had cancer. However, Quicksand is not a book about death, but about what it means to be human. Mankell writes about love and jealousy, courage and fear, about what it is like to live with a fatal illness. This book is also about why the cave painters 40,000 years ago chose the very darkest places for their fascinating pictures. And about the dreadful troll that we are trying to lock away inside the bedrock of a Swedish mountain for the next 100,000 years. It is a book about how humanity has lived and continues to live, and about how Henning lived his own life. And, not least, about the great zest for life, which came back when he managed to drag himself out of the quicksand that threatened to suck him down into the abyss.

Sweden, winter, 1991. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team receive an anonymous tip-off. A few days later a life raft is washed up on a beach. In it are two men, dressed in expensive suits, shot dead. The dead men were criminals, victims of what seems to have been a gangland hit. But what appears to be an open-and-shut case soon takes on a far more sinister aspect. Wallander travels across the Baltic Sea, to Riga in Latvia, where he is plunged into a frozen, alien world of police surveillance, scarcely veiled threats, and lies. Doomed always to be one step behind the shadowy figures he pursues, only Wallander's obstinate desire to see that justice is done brings the truth to light.

Discover the first novel in the addictive Wallander series. 'Wallander is among the very best fictional crimebusters' Daily Telegraph One frozen January morning at 5am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he believes is a routine call out. When he reaches the isolated farmhouse he discovers a bloodbath. An old man has been tortured and beaten to death, his wife lies barely alive beside his shattered body, both victims of a violence beyond reason. The woman supplies Wallander with his only clue: the perpetrators may have been foreign. When this is leaked to the press, it unleashes a tide of racism. Wallander's life is a shambles. His wife has left him, his daughter refuses to speak to him, and even his ageing father barely tolerates him. He works tirelessly, eats badly, and drinks his nights away. But now Wallander must forget his troubles and throw himself into a battle against time and against mounting racial hatred. 'Mankell is one of the most ingenious crime writers around. Highly recommended' Observer 'Mankell is in the first division of crime writing' The Times

Nelson Mandela is dead and his dream of a rainbow nation in South Africa is fading. Twenty years after the fall of apartheid the white Afrikaner minority fears cultural extinction. How far are they prepared to go to survive as a people? Kajsa Norman's book traces the war for control of South Africa, its people, and its history, over a series of December 16ths, from the Battle of Blood River in 1838 to its commemoration in 2011. Weaving between the past and the present, the book highlights how years of fear, nationalism, and social engineering have left the modern Afrikaner struggling for identity and relevance. Norman spends time with residents of the breakaway republic of Orania, where a thousand Afrikaners are working to construct a white-African utopia. Citing their desire to preserve their language and traditions, they have sequestered themselves in an isolated part of the arid Karoo region. Here, they can still dictate the rules and create a homeland with its own flag, currency and ideology. For a Europe that faces growing nationalism, their story is more relevant than ever. How do people react when they believe their cultural identity is under threat?Bridge Over Blood River's haunting and subversive evocation of South Africa's racial politics provides some unsettling answers.

Fredrik Welin is a seventy-year-old retired doctor. Years ago he retreated to the Swedish archipelago, where he lives alone on an island. He swims in the sea every day, cutting a hole in the ice if necessary. He lives a quiet life. Until he wakes up one night to find his house on fire. Fredrik escapes just in time, wearing two left-footed wellies, as neighbouring islanders arrive to help douse the flames. All that remains in the morning is a stinking ruin and evidence of arson. The house that has been in his family for generations and all his worldly belongings are gone. He cannot think who would do such a thing, or why. Without a suspect, the police begin to think he started the fire himself. Tackling love, loss and loneliness, After the Fire is Henning Mankell's compelling last novel.

It is Midsummer's Eve. Three young friends meet in a wood to act out an elaborate masque. But, unknown to them, they are being watched. Each is killed by a single bullet. Soon afterwards, one of Inspector Wallander's colleagues is found murdered. Is it the same killer, and what could the connection be? In this investigation Wallander is always, tantalisingly, one step behind.

Midsummer approaches, and Inspector Kurt Wallander prepares for a holiday with the new woman in his life, hopeful that his wayward daughter and his ageing father will cope without him. But his restful summer plans are thrown into disarray when a teenage girl commits suicide before his eyes, and a former minister of justice is butchered in the first of a series of apparently motiveless murders. Wallander's desperate hunt for the girl's identity and his furious pursuit of a killer who scalps his victims will throw him and those he loves most into mortal danger. WINNER OF THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION GOLD DAGGER

An early gem from the creator of the Kurt Wallander series, charting the life of a principled man through tragedy, heartbreak, true love and the battle for a nation's soul. "A very engaging portrait . . . There is a powerful lack of sentimentality to the telling of the story [and] a lovely and genuinely moving love story at the heart of the book." Liam Heylin, Irish Examiner At 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon in 1911, Oskar Johansson is caught in a blast in an industrial accident. The local newspaper reports him dead, but they are mistaken. Because Oskar Johansson is a born survivor. Though crippled, Oskar finds the strength to go on living and working. The Rock Blaster charts his long professional life - his hopes and dreams, sorrows and joys. His relationship with the woman whose love saved him, with the labour movement that gave him a cause to believe in, and with his children, who do not share his ideals. Henning Mankell's first published novel is steeped in the burning desire for social justice that informed his bestselling crime novels. Remarkably assured for a debut, it is written with scalpel-like precision, at once poetic and insightful in its depiction of a true working-class hero. Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding

As it has in the past, the first snow of the year signifies to Joel Gustafson his very own New Year's Eve. So when the snow begins to fall on a cold November day, Joel gets busy making resolutions--three to be exact. Resolution #1: Live to be at least a hundred. He realizes that this will require toughening himself up by testing his physical limits. Resolution #2: Set his eyes on the sea for the first time. To do this, Joel knows he needs to help sort out his father Samuel's problems and get him back to the life he left behind--being a sailor at sea. Resolution #3: See a naked lady. At almost fourteen, Joel feels he needs to see the world--including females--in an entirely different light.
As the winter days pass, life becomes ever more complicated, but Joel is determined to keep his resolutions--for his father, for himself, and for their future.
"When the Snow Fell" follows Joel's journey as he realizes along the way that it will require determination, strength, and valor in order to truly become a young man.

First published in Sweden in 1994, Mankell's terrific fourth Kurt Wallender mystery opens with the kind of startling image typical of this internationally bestselling series (Firewall, etc.): a lawyer, driving home through the fog, stops after he sees "a human-sized effigy" propped on a chair in the middle of a deserted highway. Gustaf Torstensson gets out of the car to investigate, is hit from behind and was "dead before his body hit the damp asphalt." The police accept the assailant's claim that it was an accident, but when Torstensson's son, Sten, is shot dead just two weeks later, the brooding Wallender, who's on sick leave and vowing to retire from the Ystad police force, decides to pursue the killer and resume his career. The chief suspecta powerful, globe-trotting Swedish businessman who's the smiling man of the titleleads Wallender on an exquisitely plotted search for motive and evidence. Dark and moody, this is crime fiction of the highest order. Reed Business Information

After killing a man in the line of duty, Kurt Wallander resolves to quit the Ystad police. However, a bizarre case gets under his skin.
A lawyer driving home at night stops to investigate an effigy sitting in a chair in the middle of the highway. The lawyer is hit over the head and dies. Within a week the lawyer's son is also killed. These deeply puzzling mysteries compel Wallander to remain on the force. The prime suspect is a powerful corporate mogul with a gleaming smile that Wallander believes hides the evil glee of a killer. Joined by Ann-Britt Hoglund, Wallander begins to uncover the truth, but the same merciless individuals responsible for the murders are now closing in on him.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WALLANDER MYSTERIES REVENGE CAN TAKE MORE THAN A LIFETIME In a sleepy hamlet in north Sweden, the local police make a chilling discovery; nineteen people have been brutally slaughtered. It is a crime unprecedented in Sweden's history and the police are under incredible pressure to solve the killings. When Judge Birgitta Roslin reads about the massacre, she realises that she has a family connection to one of the couples involved and decides to investigate. When the police make a hasty arrest it is left to her to investigate the source of a nineteenth century diary and red silk ribbon found near the crime scene. What she will uncover leads her into an international web of corruption and a story of vengeance that stretches back over a hundred years. The Man from Beijing is a gripping political thriller and a compelling detective story from a writer at the height of his powers.