Breathtaking challenges, friendship, humor, and bizarre murders are some of the tidbits in this cozy yet thrilling mystery series!
When Raili and Ylva get into trouble, they don’t do it halfway!
AND HER EYES WERE BLUE (available in Swedish, paperback, ebook & audio; English, paperback and ebook; French, paperback; Polish, paperback & audio; and Danish, paperback & audio))
Despite her prosaic view of her involuntary single life and her weight problem, Raili, the head librarian of Valludden’s main library, is fascinated by the mysterious turmoil plaguing the six houses by the lake in Lövaren. Together with her neighbor, the oddball Olofsson, Raili begins an investigation that not only to Olofsson’s death, break-ins and an uncomfortable realization about the process of human decomposition, but also to her running for her life from a maniacal killer with dark powers.
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In this summer of evil, in which a madman shoots children on an island in the Norwegian archipelago, Raili is looking forward to six relaxing weeks in the country on the Swedish west coast.
Unaware of the old legend about a witch who once lived in the woods behind her cabin, Raili spends her time with the friendly elderly couple on the farm next door and befriends the oddball Olofsson who lives on the opposite shore. He tells her strange stories about the people on the lake, including one about a couple whose child has disappeared. The parents don’t seem to care, they act as if their child never existed. He also mentions a dog he is convinced he had that has disappeared without a trace – it has even vanished from his photo albums.
Raili is both fascinated and skeptical: is her new friend a fraud or a madman? But when Olofsson is found drowned in the lake, she remembers another thing he said. Evil lurks in these woods.
A DEBT TO THE DEVIL (available in Swedish, paperback & audio; English, paperback; and Danish, paperback)
Raili, who survived the hell of Lövaren with only a broken foot and six months of therapy, wanted nothing more than to enjoy her quiet single life and her job as head librarian in Valludden, and she would have if Ylva hadn’t gone mad.
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The Swedes are raging and Bohuslän is in flames. The year is 1612, and a man asks the devil for help to bring back his murdered wife. They flee up to the Blackwater on the windswept Broad Fjeld, but soon realize that the devil does nothing for free.
It’s 2012, Christmas is just around the corner and Ylva is lying delirious in a psychiatric ward. The doctors are at a loss and speak of psychosis or brain damage, but Raili’s investigations reveal that Ylva’s condition has something to do with some old siblings. Raili reluctantly expresses her fears to her uptight library colleague Solveig, and together they begin to unravel a tangle of lies, murder and secrets. On Christmas Eve, Ylva’s condition deteriorates drastically and they have no choice but to brave the roaring blizzard to reach the Blackwater and save her life.
Unaware of the sinister forces at work there, they stumble straight into a macabre event that plunges them inexorably into darkness.
THE ROOM (available in Swedish, paperback & audio)
When Ylva’s seventy-year-old mother puts her house up for sale and disappears, it doesn’t take Raili and Ylva long to track her to a religious sect in a godforsaken mansion deep in the forests of Bohuslän. When the two librarians infiltrate the sect, they discover that things there are much worse than they imagined, and that the saying “getting inside someone’s head” has a very different and rather dangerous meaning. If people get the chance to live out their biggest dreams and fantasies, you better stay away, Raili and Ylva realize – too late.
WHIRLWIND(available in Swedish, paperback & audio)
In the fourth book about the librarians Raili and Ylva, Raili’s earlier terrible experiences catch up with her, and in her fall she not only loses her mind, her purpose and her footing, but also almost loses her best friend Ylva.
Embittered, swallowing various psychotropic drugs and twenty anxiety-pounds lighter, Raili is forced off her sofa and into a hostel on an island on the Swedish west coast. Easter dinner and socializing are on the agenda, storms and murders are the order of the day. Raili, Ylva and Solveig find themselves isolated on a remote part of Skipö, where the rain drums against the windows and a warming fire burns in the stove. In the company of more or less sympathetic guests, love germinates under the threatening haze of jealousy. A strange death the summer before is discussed, and when one of the guests dies, Raili senses trouble. Are the two retired lecturers as meek as they seem, and what secrets are the couple running the inn really hiding? Was the woman who died on the beach last year murdered, and does that mean the guest was murdered too? Most likely, Raili concludes, and in her eagerness to prove her thesis, she sets a ball rolling that can no longer be stopped.
In Whirlwind, Raili and Ylva land in the middle of the macabre drama of a Whodunnit. They are stranded on a storm-tossed island, along with a corpse, a landlord and landlady, two lecturers and a bunch of librarians – and one of them is a murderer.