Scandinavian Authors

Asle is an aging painter and widower who lives alone on the west coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbor, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers-two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life. Written in melodious and hypnotic "slow prose,"

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.

Even when the climate crisis escalates beyond our worst nightmares and people become refugees, the world keeps turning and life carries on as usual: teenaged love stories, marital collapses, identity crises and revolts against hopeless parents continue to play out. Through four inter-connected perspectives, Jens Liljestrand chronicles how the struggles of ordinary people go on even as the world as we know it is coming to an end.

In this slim memoir, Theodor Kallifatides explores the interplay of meaningful living and meaningful work, and the timeless question of how to reconcile oneself to aging. But he also comments on worrying trends in contemporary Europe - from religious intolerance and prejudice against immigrants to housing crises and gentrification - and his sadness at the battered state of his beloved Greece. Kallifatides offers an eloquent, thought-provoking meditation on the writing life, and an author’s place in a changing world.

When the oil and gas ran out, civilization collapsed. Now, centuries later, mankind is once again beginning to discover the secrets of the past...starting with clockwork.