Bowline
by Gudlaugur Arason
A young boy’s buring ambition to be a proper fisherman becomes an unexpected reality one summer as Logi Kristinsson gets to spend a summer season following the herring with the crew of a Dalvík purse boat.
Set in the 1950s at the height of the herring boom in Iceland, Bowline captures the spirit of an era that came to an end a few years later when the herring disappeared.
Cage
by Lilja Sigurdardóttir
Drugs, smuggling, big money and political intrigue in Iceland rally with love, passion, murder and betrayal until the winner takes all … in the masterful, explosive conclusion to the award-winning Reykjavík Noir trilogy…
The prison doors slam shut behind Agla, when her sentence ends, but her lover Sonja is not there to meet her.
Lilja Sigurðardóttir’s Reykjavík Noir trilogy of Snare, Trap and Cage, standalone novel Betrayal and the Áróra series, staring with Cold as Hell, also published by Orenda Books.
Storm Birds
by Einar Kárason
In February 1959, several Icelandic trawlers were caught in a storm off Newfoundland’s Grand Banks. What happened there is the inspiration for this novel.
Not since The Perfect Storm has there been a book which captures the sheer drama and terror of a crisis at sea. Karason is an exceptional storyteller, an Icelandic Erskine Caldwell or William Faulkner.
The side trawler Mafurinn is hit by a major storm just as they prepare to turn for home. Thirty-two men aboard, and a hold full of redfish. The sea is cold enough to kill a man in minutes, and the trawler quickly ices up in the biting frost and violent tempest.
Cage 79
by Indriði G Thorsteinsson
A young man from the countryside comes to Reykjavik to work as a taxi driver, and strikes up an acquaintaintance with a wealthy young woman.
The gulf between their very different backgrounds inevitably leads to a turbulent relationship and to tragedy, against a backdrop of a nation finding its way in a new age.
Silenced
by Sólveig Pálsdóttir
As a police team is called in to investigate a woman’s suicide at the Hólmsheiði prison outside Reykjavík, to detective Guðgeir Fransson it looks like a tragic but straightforward case.
It’s only afterwards that the pieces begin to fall into place and he takes a deeper interest in Kristín Kjarr’s troubled background, and why she had found herself in prison.
Sólveig Pálsdóttir’s novels The Fox and Silenced and The Commandments by Óskar Guðmundsson, published by Corylus Books.
Oh, Karítas
by Emil Hjörvar Pedersen
When burned out master chef Bragi Hannesson uproots his troubled family and heads for a new life in the rural west of Iceland, he expects life to be simpler and slower. But it turns out to be anything but…
He’s captivated by the enigmatic Karítas, mystified by the increasingly strange goings-on in the village of Búðardalur and a collective loss of memory when it comes to inexplicably spooky occurrences in the district. By turns mysterious and terrifying, Bragi and children are forced to face up to the challenges of the past as well as the future as they take on forces more sinister than they could ever have imagined…
Emil Hjörvar Pedersen’s wonderfully spooky Oh, Karítas, published by Storytel.
Whiteout
by Ragnar Jónasson
When the body of a young woman is found dead beneath the cliffs of the deserted Icelandic village of Kálfshamarvík, police officer Ari Thór Arason uncovers a startling and terrifying connection to an earlier series of deaths, as the killer remains on the loose…
Two days before Christmas, a young woman is found dead beneath the cliffs of the deserted village of Kálfshamarvík. Did she jump, or did something more sinister take place beneath the lighthouse and the abandoned old house on the remote rocky outcrop?
Just one of Ragnar Jónasson’s series of five Dark Iceland novels for the mighty Orenda Books.