Sidetracked

Henning Mankell - Firewall
A ​body is found at an ATM the apparent victim of heart attack. Then two teenage girls are arrested for the brutal murder of a cab driver. The girls confess to the crime showing no remorse whatsoever. Two open and shut cases. At first these two incidents seem to have nothing in common, but as Wallander delves deeper into the mystery of why the girls murdered the cab driver he begins to unravel a plot much more involved complicated than he initially suspected. The two cases become one and lead to conspiracy that stretches to encompass a world larger than the borders of Sweden.

Henning Mankell - The ​White Lioness
Inspector ​Wallander investigates the execution of a Swedish housewife, which uncovers a plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela and leads him into a tangle with the South African secret service.

Henning Mankell - The ​Fifth Woman
Inspector ​Kurt Wallander is home from an idyllic holiday in Rome, full of energy and plans for the future. Autumn settles over the province of Skane, and Wallander prays the winter will be peaceful. But when he investigates the disappearance of an elderly bird-watcher he discovers a gruesome and meticulously planned murder - a body impaled in a trap of sharpened bamboo poles. Then another man is reported missing. And once again, Wallander's life is on hold as he and his close knit team work tirelessly to find a link between the series of viscous murders. Making progress not through revelation but through dogged police work, and forever battling to make sense of the violence of modern Sweden, Wallander will lead a massive investigation to find a killer whose crimes are the product of the new realities that make him despair.

Henning Mankell - The ​Man Who Smiled
A ​disillusioned Inspector Kurt Wallander is thrown back into the fray when he becomes both hunter and hunted in this adventure from the pen of Sweden's master of crime and mystery. Crestfallen, dejected and spiralling into an alcohol-fuelled depression after killing a man in the line of duty, Inspector Kurt Wallander has made up his mind to quit the police force for good. When an old acquaintance, a solicitor, seeks Wallander's help to investigate the suspicious circumstances in which his father has died, Kurt doesn't want to know. But when the solicitor also turns up dead, shot three times, Wallander realises that he was wrong not to listen. Against his better judgment, he returns to work to head what may now have become a double murder case. A rookie female detective has joined the force is his absence, and he adopts the role of mentor to her as they fight to unravel the mystery. An enigmatic big-business tycoon, who hides behind an entourage of brusque secretaries and tight security, seems to be the common denominator in the two deaths. But while Wallander is on the trail of the killer, somebody is on the trail of Wallander, and closing in fast.

Henning Mankell - One ​Step Behind
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. With a bullet each, all three are murdered. Soon afterwards, one of Inspector Wallander's colleagues is found murdered. Is this the same killer, and what could the connection be? In this investigation, Wallander is always, tantalisingly, One Step Behind.

Henning Mankell - The ​Dogs of Riga
Second ​in the Kurt Wallander series. On the Swedish coastline, two bodies, victims of grisly torture and cold execution, are discovered in a life raft. With no witnesses, no motives, and no crime scene, Detective Kurt Wallander is frustrated and uncertain he has the ability to solve a case as mysterious as it is heinous. But after the victims are traced to the Baltic state of Latvia, a country gripped by the upheaval of Soviet disintegration, Major Liepa of the Riga police takes over the investigation. Thinking his work done, Wallander slips into routine once more, until suddenly, he is called to Riga and plunged into an alien world where shadows are everywhere, everything is watched, and old regimes will do anything to stay alive.

Henning Mankell - Faceless ​Killers
One ​frozen January Morning at 5 am, Inspector Wallander responds to what he expects 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, victims of violence beyond reason. The woman supplies Wallander with his only clue: the perpetrators may have been foreign. When this is leaked to the press, racial hatred is unleashed. Kurt Wallander is a senior police officer at Ystad, a small town in the wind-lashed Swedish province of Skane. His life is a shambles. His wife has left him, his daughter refuses to speak to him, even his ageing father barely tolerates him. He works tirelessly, eats badly and drinks the nights away in a lonely, neglected flat. But now winter closes its grip on Ystad, and Wallander, his tenacious efforts closely monitored by the tough minded (and disarmingly attractive) district attorney Anette Brolin, must forget his trouble, and throw himself into a battle against time and xenophobia.

Henning Mankell - The ​Troubled Man
Every ​morning Håkan von Enke takes a walk in the forest near his home in Stockholm. However, one winter's day he fails to come home. It seems that the retired naval officer has vanished without trace. Detective Kurt Wallander is not officially involved in the investigation but he has personal reasons for involving himself in the case as Håkan's son is engaged to his daughter Linda. A few months earlier, at Håkan's 75th birthday party, Kurt noticed that the old man appeared uneasy and seemed eager to talk about a controversial incident from his past career that remained shrouded in mystery. Could this be connected to his disappearance? When Håkan's wife Louise also goes missing, Wallander is determined to uncover the truth. His search leads him down dark and unexpected avenues involving espionage, betrayal and new information about events during the Cold War that threatens to cause a political scandal on a scale unprecedented in Swedish history. The investigation also forces Kurt to look back over his own past and consider his hopes and regrets, as he comes to the unsettling realisation that even those we love the most can remain strangers to us. And then an even darker cloud appears on the horizon...

Lars Kepler - The ​Hypnotist
Prepare ​for The Hypnotist to cast its spell In the frigid clime of Tumba, Sweden, a gruesome triple homicide attracts the interest of Detective Inspector Joona Linna, who demands to investigate the murders. The killer is still at large, and there’s only one surviving witness—the boy whose family was killed before his eyes. Whoever committed the crimes wanted this boy to die: he’s suffered more than one hundred knife wounds and lapsed into a state of shock. Desperate for information, Linna sees only one option: hypnotism. He enlists Dr. Erik Maria Bark to mesmerize the boy, hoping to discover the killer through his eyes. It’s the sort of work that Bark has sworn he would never do again—ethically dubious and psychically scarring. When he breaks his promise and hypnotizes the victim, a long and terrifying chain of events begins to unfurl. An international sensation, The Hypnotist is set to appear in thirty-seven countries, and it has landed at the top of bestseller lists wherever it’s been published—in France, Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark. Now it’s America’s turn. Combining the addictive power of the Stieg Larsson trilogy with the storytelling drive of The Silence of the Lambs, this adrenaline-drenched thriller is spellbinding from its very first page.

Camilla Läckberg - The ​Hidden Child
Crime ​writer Erica Falck is shocked to discover a Nazi medal among her late mother's possessions. Haunted by a childhood of neglect, she resolves to dig deep into her family's past and finally uncover the reasons why. Her enquiries lead her to the home of a retired history teacher. He was among her mother's circle of friends during the Second World War but her questions are met with bizarre and evasive answers. Two days later he meets a violent death. Detective Patrik Hedström, Erica's husband, is on paternity leave but soon becomes embroiled in the murder investigation. Who would kill so ruthlessly to bury secrets so old? Reluctantly Erica must read her mother's wartime diaries. But within the pages is a painful revelation about Erica's past. Could what little knowledge she has be enough to endanger her husband and newborn baby? The dark past is coming to light, and no one will escape the truth of how they came to be…

Stieg Larsson - The ​Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Once ​you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back. This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo.

Stieg Larsson - The ​Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest
Salander ​is plotting her revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and against the government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life. But it is not going to be a straightforward campaign. After taking a bullet to the head, Salander is under close supervision in Intensive Care, and is set to face trial for three murders and one attempted murder on her eventual release. With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his researchers at Millennium magazine, Salander must not only prove her innocence, but identify and denounce the corrupt politicians that have allowed the vulnerable to become victims of abuse and violence. Once a victim herself, Salander is now ready to fight back.

Stieg Larsson - The ​Girl Who Played with Fire
The ​electrifying follow-up to the phenomenal best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and this time it is Lisbeth Salander, the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker, who is the focus and fierce heart of the story. Mikael Blomkvist - crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium - has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government. On the eve of publication, the two reporters responsible for the story are brutally murdered. But perhaps more shocking for Blomkvist: the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to Lisbeth Salander. Now, as Blomkvist - alone in his belief in her innocence - plunges into his own investigation of the slayings, Salander is drawn into a murderous hunt in which she is the prey, and which compels her to revisit her dark past in an effort to settle with it once and for all.

Mari Jungstedt - Unseen
The ​island of Gotland is in the middle of a busy tourist season and getting ready for Midsummer, the 4th of July of Swedish holidays, when a young woman and her dog are found brutally murdered. The dog has been beheaded and is missing a paw; the woman is naked, covered in gruesome axe wounds, and her panties have been stuffed in her mouth. What looks like a crime committed by the victim's jealous husband keeps the local police force on their toes. Then a second victim is found. A serial killer terrorizes tourists and locals alike, and Inspector Anders Knutas has to face additional pressure from the media and local politicians who are worried about bad PR for the island. In his quest for the murderer, he is aided by Johan Berg, an intrepid young journalist from Stockholm who has been sent to cover the incidents and who gets involved with Emma, one of the first victim's close friends. Three women die before Knutas and Berg, each approaching the case in their own way, finally close in on the killer, who has always, until now, been the one unseen by everybody.

Mari Jungstedt - The ​Dead of Summer
North ​of Gotland, Gotska Sandön is the most isolated island in the Baltic Sea, and the perfect setting for a crime story that plays on the hair-raising feeling that even when you are alone in an isolated spot, someone is watching you. The fifth installment in the Anders Knutas series begins with the murder of a father of small children, and is the first major case for assistant commissioner Karin Jacobsson to solve while Anders Knutas is on vacation. Reporter Johan Berg follows the investigation along with the police team, while at the same time doing everything in his power to win back his love, Emma Winarve.

Mari Jungstedt - The ​Inner Circle
The ​Inner Circle opens with an international group of young archeology students sweating on a dig on the island of Gotland, uncovering a Viking fortification dating back over a millennium. They are a fun-loving lot, partying together every night, but the good vibe turns to horror when one of them, twenty-one-year-old Martina Flochten, disappears. Her body is found a short while later, naked, bled out, and hanging from a tree. Her injuries indicate that she is the victim of a ritual killing. Inspector Anders Knutas investigates Martina’s acquaintances. Who was the mysterious lover she was supposed to have been meeting in secret and whom none of her fellow archaeologists have actually seen? What do the marks on Martina’s body signify? Is there possibly a connection between Martina’s death and the recent and unsolved brutal beheading of a Gotland pony? The pony was also bled out, and its head was missing---until it appears mounted on a stick outside the next victim’s house. Inspector Knutas and his team work feverishly to catch the killer, but before long there are more victims, all of whom have been killed and mutilated the same way.

Mari Jungstedt - The ​Killer's Art
It ​is a cold wintry morning in the picturesque port town of Visby when art dealer Egon Wallin's battered and naked body is found hanging from a gate in the town's old city walls. His was a very public death, but who killed him and why? As Inspector Knutas begins his investigation, Egon's secrets quickly begin to come to the surface. He died on the eve of leaving his wife. Is his death a spurned lover's revenge? And when a painting by a new cause-célèbre artist is stolen from his gallery, more questions are raised.Another theft and another death, this time in Stockholm, widens the search for the killer. As the police piece together the clues, one scandal is followed by another and Inspector Knutas will discover that beneath the patina of glamour, the high-society world of art collecting hides many secrets - some worth killing for.

Anne Holt - Death ​in Oslo
When ​Helen Barclay becomes the first female US president, the whole world takes notice. And unfortunately for President Barclay, one man takes very particular notice. He knows her dark secret, buried for over twenty years. And not only does he have the power to destroy everything she’s worked for, but he also has the ultimate motive. Revenge. Unfortunately for the FBI and the Norwegian police, nobody knows about this when Helen Barclay chooses to visit Norway for her first state visit. But when she goes missing from a locked, heavily secured bedroom, they are forced - unwillingly - to work together to find her. Has she been kidnapped? Murdered? Can the US president really just disappear into thin air…? Taut, gripping and chillingly convincing, Death in Oslo is a brilliant new thriller from one of the world’s most popular crime writers.

Kerry Greenwood - Ruddy ​Gore
The ​glorious Phryne Fisher returns to the spotlight in her seventh adventure. Running late to the Hinkler gala performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, Phryne Fisher meets some thugs in dark alley and handles them convincingly before they can ruin her silver dress. Phryne then finds that she has rescued a gorgeous Chinese, Lin Chung, and his grandmother, and is briefly mistaken for a deity. Denying divinity but accepting cognac, she later continues safely to the theatre. But it's an unexpected evening as her night is again interrupted by a most bizarre death onstage. What links can Phryne possibly find between the ridiculously entertaining plot of Ruddigore, the Chinese community of Little Bourke St or the actors treading the boards of His Majesty's Theatre? Drawn backstage and onstage, Phryne must solve an old murder and find a new murderer - and, of course, banish the theatre's ghost, who seems likely to kill again.

Kerry Greenwood - Death ​at Victoria Dock
Driving ​home late one night, Phryne Fisher is surprised when someone shoots out her windscreen. When she alights she finds a pretty young man with an anarchist tattoo dying on the tarmac just outside the dock gates. He bleeds to death in her arms, and all over her silk shirt. Enraged by the loss of the clothing, the damage to her car, and this senseless waste of human life, Phryne promises to find out who is responsible. But she doesn't yet know how deeply into the mire she'll have to go: bank robbery, tattoo parlours, pubs, spiritualist halls, and anarchists. Along this path, Phryne meets Peter, a scarred but delectable wharfie who begins to unfold the mystery of who would need a machine gun in Melbourne. But when someone kidnaps her cherished companion, Dot, Phryne will stop at nothing to retrieve her.