* THE MULTI-AWARD WINNING BESTSELLER FOR FANS OF THE BRIDGE * Winner of the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel Winner of the Danish Debutant Award Winner of the Harald Mogensen Prize for the best Danish crime novel A car is found on a deserted beach on the Spanish island of Fuerteventura. On the back seat lies a cardboard box containing the body of a small boy buried in newspaper cuttings. No one knows his name, and there is no trace of a driver. The last thing an ailing tourist resort needs is a murder, and the police are desperate to close the case. The island is rife with rumours about the reclusive Erhard. Two decades of self-imposed exile from his wife and children have left him alienated and alone, whiling away his days in a drunken haze, driving an old taxi to get by. This unlikeliest of detectives determines to solve the crime himself - and he has nothing to lose. But how can one old man, cut off from the modern world, solve a murder whose dangerous web of deceit stretches far beyond the small island? And what if the killer forces Erhard to confront his own long-buried past? Winner of the prestigious Glass Key Award and an instant bestseller in Denmark, The Hermit is taking the international publishing world by storm. Acutely observed and psychologically penetrating, this is existential noir at its finest.

The 14 stories in this collection display the often quiet, inconspicuous way in which terrible truths and experiences are intimated: the death of a sailboarder makes a widower see deeper into love and loss; a young poet visits his former teacher only to discover he is literally not the person he used to be; a middle-aged man glimpses the terrible humdrum of his third marriage as his son embarks on a new chapter in his life. Conveyed without grandeur or pathos, the revelations in these minimalist stories demonstrate clearly and effectively Fruelund's gift of subtlety and nuance; like scenes from life, characters' dramas are played out in brief but brilliant flashes. Ranging across the wide arc of human experience, from the comic to the tragic, each piece explores the complex emotions of the human heart.

Simon Fruelund's Civil Twilight is a tight, precisely told novella about the surprising interconnectedness of life in the suburbs and about people's attitudes towards religion, death, family, and sex.

One summer evening Lily and her husband are enjoying a meal while their baby daughter sleeps peacefully in her pram in the garden. But then Lily steps outside to find her baby soaked in blood. The distraught parents rush to the hospital where they discover that she is unharmed - the blood isn't hers. Inspector Sejer is called in and spends the evening trying to comprehend why anyone would carry out such a sinister prank. Then, just before midnight, somebody rings his doorbell. The corridor is empty, but the caller has left a small grey envelope on the mat. Inside it, Sejer finds a postcard bearing a short message: Hell begins now...