Set in the idyllic countryside during a short-lived Swedish summer, this page-turner gets under the skin, creating an atmosphere of foreboding in which even the aroma of freshly picked vegetables roasting in the kitchen becomes ominous. Marina has left behind her stalled relationship and floundering academic career in Stockholm and travels to rural Skåne to visit her sister, Stella. They haven’t seen each other in some time, and Stella now lives with a much older, quite famous author, Gabriel. The couple resides in a beautiful old house full of books, gorgeous flowers and, as Marina soon learns, plenty of secrets. Despite herself, Marina becomes more and more enthralled by the enigmatic and unpredictable Gabriel, even as she becomes convinced that something isn’t right about her sister’s new love. Nothing is as it seems in this spellbinding novel of psychological suspense that combines hothouse sensuality with ice-cold fear on every page. More than a mere thriller, it delves deep into the feminine soul and at the same time exposes the continuing oppression of women in Sweden’s supposedly egalitarian society.
Marlaine Delargy Book order






- 2024
- 2018
Eventide
- 190 pages
- 7 hours of reading
“Eventide is full of damn fine writing, but it’s the novel’s irreverent attitude toward feminism that makes it necessary to read.” —Los Angeles Review of Books In her forties, childless, and living alone, Karolina Andersson feels adrift after the breakup of a long relationship. An art history professor, she finds fulfillment in her work, and when she starts advising a new postgraduate student, she is struck by his confidence. He claims to have discovered new materials from a female artist working around 1900 that could change the history of Swedish visual arts. Karolina soon finds herself embroiled in a complex game with both emotional and professional consequences. Eventide is a perceptive novel of ideas about love, art, and solitude in our time, and the distorted standards to which women are held in their relationships and careers.
- 2016
From the author of Drowned, a passionate psychological drama where questions of power and sexuality are brought to a head. She works at Norrköping Hospital, at the very bottom of the hierarchy: in the cafeteria, below the doctors, the nurses, and the nursing assistants. But she dreams of one day becoming a writer, of moving away and reinventing herself. Carl Malmberg, an older, married doctor at the hospital, catches her eye. She begins an intense affair with him, though struggling with the knowledge that he may never be hers. At the same time, she realizes that their attraction to each other is governed by their differences in social status. As her doubts increase, the revelation of a secret no one could have predicted forces her to take her own destiny in hand.
- 2014
The Asylum
- 496 pages
- 18 hours of reading
FROM THE WINNER OF THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2010 FOR THE DARKEST ROOM 'A compelling and scary psychological thriller' - Sunday Mirror Who amongst us can really say theyâe(tm)re sane? Jan has just started working at the Dell nursery. But this is no normal nursery. Itâe(tm)s linked to a high-security asylum by a dimly-lit underground tunnel, which is used for the children to visit their parents. Who are some of the most dangerous psychopaths in the country. And Jan has complicated reasons for being here. Thereâe(tm)s something heâe(tm)s not telling people about his past. And thereâe(tm)s someone in the asylum who he really wants to see . . .
- 2011
The quarry
- 480 pages
- 17 hours of reading
"Old Jerry Morner lives quietly in an isolated house, deep in a Swedish forest, hurting no one. Or that's what he wants people to believe. It takes one spark and a can of petrol to expose the truth. The fire is deadly, Not for Jerry, but for the two strangers found burnt to death inside. His sons starts to search for answers. But he soon realises that some secrets are better left to the dead"--Page 4 of cover.
- 2008
The Black Path
- 395 pages
- 14 hours of reading
One of The Times' "Best Crime Novels by Women since 2000" "Rebecka Martinsson: the new Scandi-noir heroine to rival Saga Noren and Sarah Lund" iNews "In a television world now awash in female coppers, there aren't many as interesting and human as Rebecka" Wall Street Journal The frozen body of a woman is found in a fishing ark on the ice near Torneträsk in northern Sweden. She has been brutally tortured, but the killing blow was clumsy, almost amateur. The body is quickly identified, raising hopes of an open-and-shut solution. But when a six-month-old suicide is disinterred, Rebecka Martinsson and Anna-Maria Mella find themselves investigating shocking corruption at the heart of one of Sweden's most successful mining companies. One that has powerful enemies of its own.