Scandinavian Mysteries

The downloadable, digital audiobook edition of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s sensational new thriller, read by the actor Steven Pacey. Two boys, brothers, wake tied and bound in a boathouse by the sea. Their kidnapper has gone, but soon he will return. Their bonds are inescapable. But there is a bottle and tar to seal it. Paper and a splinter for writing; blood for ink. A message begging for help. In Copenhagen’s cold cases division Carl Morck has received a bottle. It holds an old and decayed message, written in blood.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Buried, the fifth installment of the Department Q series by Jussi Adler-Olsen, read by Steven Pacey. More than three years ago, a civil servant vanished after returning from a work trip to Africa. Though he is missing and presumed dead, the man's family still want answers. It is one of the many unsolved crimes left for Department Q, Denmark's cold-case unit headed up by Detective Carl Morck.

Sonny's on the run. Sonny is a model prisoner. He listens to the confessions of other inmates, and absolves them of their sins. He's been lied to his whole life. But then one prisoner’s confession changes everything. He knows something about Sonny’s disgraced father. Sonny wants revenge. He needs to break out of prison and make those responsible pay for their crimes. Whatever the cost.

When Kurt Wallander first appeared in Faceless Killers back in 1990, he was a senior police officer, just turned 40, with his life in a mess. His wife had left him, his father barely acknowledged him; he ate badly and drank alone at night. The Pyramid chronicles the events that led him to such a place. We see him in the early years, doing hours on the beat whilst trying to solve a murder off-duty; witness the beginnings of his fragile relationship with Mona, the woman he has his heart set on marrying.

When a young woman is found dead, the police are quick to respond. But what they find at the scene is unexpected. The body is posed, the scene laboriously set. And there is almost no forensic evidence to be found. Detective Mia Krüger has been signed off work pending psychological assessment. But her boss has less regard for the rules than he should. Desperate to get Mia back in the office, Holger Munch offers her an unofficial deal.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell, read by Sean Barrett. 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.

When a six-year-old girl is found dead, hanging from a tree, the only clue the Oslo Police have to work with is an airline tag around her neck. It reads, 'I'm travelling alone'. Holger Munch, veteran police investigator, is immediately charged with reassembling his homicide unit. But to complete the team, he must convince his erstwhile partner, Mia Krüger - a brilliant but troubled investigator - to return from the solitary island where she has retreated with plans to take her own life.

Midsummer approaches, and 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 summer is ruined when a girl commits suicide before his eyes, and a former minister of justice is butchered in the first of a series of apparently motiveless murders.

Four nuns and a fifth woman, a visitor to Africa, are killed in a savage nighttime attack. Months later in Sweden, the news of the unexplained tragedy sets off a cruel vengeance for these killings. Inspector Kurt Wallander is home from an idyllic holiday in Rome, full of energy and plans for the future. Autumn settles in, and Wallander prays the winter will be peaceful. But when he investigates the disappearance of an elderly birdwatcher, he discovers a gruesome and meticulously planned murder - a body impaled in a trap of sharpened bamboo poles.

Jurek Walter was shot and killed years ago. The police moved on and managed to forget the darkness that had tainted their lives. But now someone is leaving a trail of broken bodies across Sweden, and the clues all point to Walter. Detective Joona Linna is convinced his worst nightmare is becoming a reality: the man who tore apart his family has returned to finish the job. When Joona’s partner is taken - and locked inside an underground coffin - he finds himself with an impossible choice: leave her to die, or walk into the trap set by the only man he ever feared.

A man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat. There are no obvious clues apart from a cryptic note left on the body and a photograph of a young girl's grave. Delving into the dead man's life Detective Erlendur discovers that 40 years ago he was accused of an appalling crime, but never convicted. Had his past come back to haunt him? As Erlendur struggles to build a relationship with his unhappy daughter, his investigation takes him to Iceland's Genetic Research Centre, where he uncovers disturbing secrets that are even darker than the murder of an old man.

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. One man escapes. In the wood in the country land 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.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Darkness by Ragnar Jonasson. A young woman, an asylum seeker from Russia, is found murdered on the seaweed-covered rocks of the Vatnsleysuströnd in Iceland. Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir of the Reykjavik Police is called to investigate this - the final case in her career before she is forced into retirement. When Hulda starts to ask questions, it isn't long before she realises that no-one can be trusted and that no-one is telling the whole truth.

Left to her own devices, Detective Sergeant Charlie West struggles with the responsibility of a full-blown murder investigation when a man is pushed off a cliff. Not ready to have her apron strings severed so soon, West finds Munro who reluctantly agrees to shed light on the Ayrshire detectives' most challenging case yet. Once the police have discovered the identity of the dead man, and established his demise was the result of foul play, the race is on to hunt down the murderer.

Roger Brown has it all. He's the country's most successful headhunter. He has a beautiful wife and a magnificent house. And to maintain this lifestyle, he's also a highly accomplished art thief. At a gallery opening, his wife introduces him to Clas Greve. Not only is Greve the perfect candidate for a position with one of Roger's high-profile clients, he is also in possession of 'The Calydonian Boar Hunt' by Rubens, one of the most sought-after paintings in the world.

Summer 1983: four-year-old Billy chases a rabbit in the fields behind his house. But when his mother goes to call him in, Billy has disappeared. Never to be seen again. Today: Veronica is a bereavement counsellor. She's never fully come to terms with her mother's suicide after her brother Billy's disappearance. When a young man walks into her group, he looks familiar and talks about the trauma of his friend's disappearance in 1983. Could Billy still be alive after all this time?

When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. They very quickly establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her complex landlady, Esther de Laurenti. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist - and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she's writing, the link between fiction and real life grows more urgent.

What do you do when there are no more challenges in your life? For Stavin Ne'Aniston Zel'Andral, the thrill of being a prince had rapidly paled. He was a prince of Evandia, but would never sit on the throne. He was the first person to earn the four hollowed stars of a Senior Warmaster, but was forbidden to participate in a war. He was a scribe who would never teach anyone but his own children. He was a scholar who didn't have time to research anything but trade. All his hopes and dreams, his plans for the future, had fallen aside when King Kalin had adopted him.

DI Jamie Johansson is trying to find normality in Kurrajakk when she gets the chance to sit in on the Interpol interview linked to her last case. A pattern of mutilation and beheading on the Finnish border has Jamie's full attention, but Interpol seem more interested in the Russian connection. Begrudgingly, they let her follow up, and as usual, Jamie's nose for trouble doesn't steer her wrong.

In the middle of an unusually hot Swedish summer, a young woman studying at the Vaxjo Police Academy is brutally murdered. Police Inspector Evert Bäckström is unwillingly drafted in from Stockholm to head up the investigation. Egotistical, vain and utterly prejudiced against everything, Bäckström is a man who has no sense of duty or responsibility, thinks everyone with the exception of himself is an imbecile and is only really capable of warm feelings towards his pet goldfish and the nearest bottle of liquor.