Adult Fiction Autumn 2025 Catalogue

Rights & Brands

Adult Fiction

Catalogue

Autumn 2025

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About Rights & Brands

Rights & Brands is a Scandinavian agency promoting art, literature, and design brands that aim to inspire a global audience with stories and a vision for a better world.

Starting from a strategic base in literature, art and design, R&B’s platform is built on knowledge, passion and people. Using all aspects of character representation and branding, from publishing and PR to licensing, merchandising and digital development, with a worldwide network of sub-agents and over 800 clients, R&B’s international insight and business capacity is unique.

Rights & Brands represents iconic Nordic brands, artists and authors and is the worldwide master agent on behalf of Moomin Characters. Other representation includes Sofie Sarenbrant & Carina Bergfeldt, Arne Dahl & Jonas Moström, Jenny Rogneby, Olli Jalonen, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Asko Sahlberg, Mads Peder Nordbo, Cristina Sandu, Petra Rautiainen, Arto Paasilinna (Estate), and Tove Jansson (Estate).

With its headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden and local branches in Helsinki, Oslo, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong, R&B was founded in 2016 by Moomin Characters and Bulls, combining over 70 years of licensing experience.

Rights & Brands Stockholm

Rosenlundsgatan 31 118 63 Stockholm Sweden

Rights & Brands Helsinki

Salmisaarenranta 7 L 00180 Helsinki Finland

Historical Fiction (1600s) Blanka, Daughter of the Baltic Sea by Ulla Rask p. 4

Historical Fiction (1700s) Persecution by Jenni Räinä p. 6

Historical Fiction (early 1900s) The Tree Killers by Petra Rautiainen p. 5

New Releases p. 4-13

Crime & Thriller p. 14-18

Commercial Fiction p. 19

Upmarket Fiction p. 20-21

Literary Fiction p. 22-23

Classic Fiction p. 24-28

ULLA RASK studied Finnish literature, history, and creative writing before forging a career in law and, subsequently, as a communications executive in the sustainable energy sector. The author of a non-fiction title, The Career Dresser’s Guide (Urapukeutujan opas, No Tofu Publishing, 2018) Rask’s debut novel, Blanka, Daughter of the Baltic Sea (WSOY, 2025) quickly became a critical and commercial success on publication. She is currently working on the second book in the series for release in 2026. She lives and works in Helsinki.

Blanka, Daughter of the Baltic Sea

The Cold Sea series (1) (Blanka, Itämeren tytär)

First published in Finnish by WSOY / 2025 / 375 pp.

“A woman cannot afford to pity herself for longer than a single prayer.”

“Rask’s debut novel is a believable and captivating armchair journey to the 17th-century Baltic Sea. [...] A new star in the genre is being born”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

“In addition to a cool plot, the skilfully portrayed 1600s atmosphere and believable millieus are captivating.”

SEURA MAGAZINE

“Fresh and realistic.”

TURUN SANOMAT

“An absorbing historical adventure”

ME NAISET MAGAZINE

Reval (Tallinn), 1606, and the wedding celebrations of Hanseatic merchant Matthias Berger’s eldest daughter, Dorothea, are in full swing. But the bride looks unusually pallid, and she succumbs to a fatal fever on her wedding night. To uphold their father’s arrangement, Dorothea’s eighteen-year-old younger sister, Blanka, is expected to step into her sister’s shoes as the second wife of Karl Johann Krause, their upper-class merchant father’s business associate in the North German city of Lübeck.

The following spring, Blanka and her maid Margo depart for their new life in Lübeck, but their journey takes an unexpected turn when they are kidnapped for ransom. After stowing themselves away on a ship bound for Lübeck, Blanka and Margo are discovered and Blanka uses her late mother’s emerald ring to secure their safe passage to their final destination. Settling into her new home in Lübeck, Blanka, who has entered a marriage of convenience, finally finds stability in her life—but only for a moment as both domestic and external events put her courage and intuition to the test.

Blanka, Daughter of the Baltic Sea marks the beginning of a captivating, historical fiction series. Akin to Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks with a female gaze, the novel will appeal to fans of Tracy Chevalier, Ken Follett, Philippa Gregory, and acclaimed Finnish historical fiction writer, Kaari Utrio.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 135 pp.

Synopsis

Series outline Books 1-3

RIGHTS SOLD

Dutch (Mozaiek, 3 books).

Estonian (tk)

German (Rowohlt, 3 books)

Norwegian (tk)

“Ulla Rask is on her way to becoming one of Finland’s top authors of historical novels”

MTV AFTER FIVE

“Picturing a time when the Baltic Sea was both the main source of a livelihood and also a threat, Blanka, Daughter of the Baltic Sea makes you want to read with a map open in front of you.”

KULTTUURITOIMITUS

PETRA RAUTIAINEN (b. 1988) comes from a small town in eastern Finland. She has a Master’s degree in History and Cultural Studies and is currently working on her doctoral thesis on representations of the Sámi people in the Finnish media. She has also worked as a journalist and studied creative writing. Rautiainen’s debut, Land of Snow and Ashes, was awarded the Savonia Prize in 2020 and shortlisted for the Petrona Award in 2023.

Tree Killers

(Puuntappajat)

First published in Finnish by Otava / October 2025 / 350 pp.

A gripping historical novel about women marked by a war that divided a nation, by the author of the acclaimed Land of Snow and Ashes.

A young woman is brought to the hospital as an orderly straight from a Red prisoner camp. She proves to be the best medic in the place and stays alongside the talented surgeon Ulpu to help those who have given birth and those wounded in the war.

When Ulpu, a new life advocate, begins to teach a Red prisoner who stinks of death, both their lives take on a new meaning. But soon Ulpu begins to question herself about who she really is, where she has come from. And what is Ulpu’s motive for helping women in trouble?

Sixteen years later, these questions are answered by a special detective. What is the truth in a case where the heart also matters?

PUBLISHED IN 11 LANGUAGES

OPTION PUBLISHERS

Dutch (Meridiaan)

Italian (Marsilio)

Danish (Modtryk)

French (Seuil)

Norwegian (Gyldendal Norsk)

Swedish (Norstedts)

Memory of Ocean

(Meren muisti)

Otava / 2022 / 300 pp.

An unknow narrator aboard an icebreaker examines the changes caused by global warming in the Artic Ocean for a documentary and reveals that the biggest players of the oil industry were already in 1959 aware of their dangerous impact on nature and climate change. Instead of acting, the industry opted for a strong counter narrative.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 50 pp. Synopsis

Land of Snow and Ashes

(Tuhkaan piirretty maa)

Otava / 2020 / 229 pp.

In the middle of the Arctic wilderness in North-Eastern Lapland, in 1944: A young Finnish soldier, Väinö, works as a translator at a German-led prison camp where extreme cruelty is part of daily life. The crimes committed are buried deep in human mind, but later omitted with complete silence in the official history.

JENNI RÄINÄ (b. 1980) is an acclaimed non-fiction writer and journalist. In 2019, she and her co-authors won the Finlandia Non-Fiction Prize for The Forest After Us (Metsä meidän jälkeeme, Like, 2019) and Räinä’s debut novel, Marsh Memories (Suo muistaa, Gummerus, 2022) was nominated for the Bothnia Prize. Räinä’s family roots are in the small hamlet of Hyry (pop. 200) just north of Oulu, where she currently lives.

Persecution (Vaino)

First published in Finnish by Otava / 2025 / 256 pp.

What is a person willing to do in order to survive?

“A horrific but poetic ode about the Great Wrath.”

SAVON SANOMAT

“Jenni Räinä skillfully portrays the horrors and human tragedies of the Great Wrath in North Ostrobothnia. The strengths of the novel lie in its linguistic style, the rhythm of the text and the descriptions of nature.”

KALEVA

“Jenni Räinä’s Persecution is a terrifying but poetic hymn about the Great Wrath of the 18th century. The author compiles the suffering of civilians into an ode in which the harsh and brutal reality meets the beauty of mires and forests.

ETELÄ-SUOMEN SANOMAT

Northern Ostrobothnia, 1715. Valpuri, a young woman from the small town of Ii, and her two brothers flee from the Russian troops of Peter the Great, who leave behind smoking villages and mutilated bodies. Valpuri’s only refuge are the hyperborean forests and waterways that offer solace and refuge, and the hope that her brothers will survive.

Meanwhile, a teenage boy returns to the region with the Cossacks on a mission to uncover their hiding place and destroy them all. Valpuri realises that the boy is all too familiar to her - the son of the now-expelled rural police chief of Ii, Gustaf Lillbäck - whose three sons had been kidnapped by the Russians.

A masterly novel that grips the reader in its hold, Persecution transports the reader to the darkest moments of the Great Wrath, a time when nature was still untouched, but human lives were cheaper than ever. An unforgettably powerful novel about escape and survival in the midst of destruction that gets under the reader’s skin and stays with you long after the last page.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 80 pp. Synopsis

HISTORICAL NOTE

In 1715, during the period known as The Great Wrath, Peter the Great commanded that northern Finland be reduced to scorched earth in the final years of The Great Northern War. The sparsely populated region was raped and pillaged with six thousand civilians murdered and thousands of children kidnapped and taken to Russia. Those who remained were tortured or forced to flee to the safety of the surrounding mires and forests. Little of it was documented as the Swedish correspondents of the Crown had fled across the border to Sweden.

“Jenni Räinä’s description of the violence of 1715 reads like a contemporarynovel. [...] Räinä brings her characters to life with astonishing sensitivity.”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

“Jenni Räinä compiles the suffering of civilians into an ode where the harsh reality meets the beauty of swamps and forests.”

KESKISUOMALAINEN

ELLI SALO is a Finnish writer, playwright and translator. She has studied dramaturgy and Slavonic languages and is currently writer-in-residence at the Finnish National Theatre. Her debut novel, The Gatherers is based on her play of the same name, which opened in 2024 at Kajaani City Theatre and was awarded the 2025 Lea Prize for Drama by the Finnish Playwrights and Scriptwriters Association.

The Gatherers

(Keräilijät)

First published in Finnish by Otava / 2025 / 206 pp.

A tragicomic novel about gathering and gatherers where three women and a retired dog find themselves randomly convened at a deserted border patrol station at the Finnish-Russian border.

“The secret to Finnish happiness lies within this compelling debut novel.”

SATAKUNNAN KANSA

“Elli Salo’s debut novel gathers the physical and mental scars of World War II near the eastern border.”

SAVON SANOMAT

“Elli Salo’s The Gatherers is this spring’s literary highlight, and with good reason.”

TURUN SANOMAT

Taciturn Ani, once an award-winning wildlife-photographer, runs a declining bear-watching business for tourists in the remote outpost of Lääte, where she lives on the local campsite with her German Shepherd Friend, a retired border patrol dog.

Librarian Ljudmila, born and raised in the Soviet gulags and having endured marriage to a Finn, now gets by on her own foraging berries and mushrooms for a living and residing in a worn-out caravan filled with herbs, potions and stories.

Then, Heini, a Finnish archeologist bereaved by the death of her younger brother, temporarily moves into a nearby cabin to map out mass graves from the renowned battles on Raate Road in 1940, to gather ghosts on the map, and to face the big questions in life.

A bond grows between the three women, and as far as they may seem from everything, as close to the core of almost everything they get. Suddenly, the peripheral Lääte turns into the navel of the world: history that seems to be catching up with us, human knowledge of civilization and the disappearance of the untamed nature come together in this touching yet comic novel about life, not death. The embodiment of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Elli Salo tells the story not of those who hunt or conquer, but those who stay behind to cook, wash dishes, boil potatoes - the gatherers - even in the midst of crisis and catastrophe. Cheryl Strayed’s Wild meets Lyudmila Ulitskaya in the wilds of eastern Finland.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 62 pp. Synopsis

“The Gatherers is an innovative debut novel that stands out from the crowd. The combination of tragedy and comedy creates a balanced entity. It will make you cry and laugh.”

UUSI SUOMI

“A feast of literary delights. [...] Salo weaves together her bold ingredients into an original, joyful and greater- than-the-sum-of-its-parts whole, which plays, teases, and hits the mark by channeling through laughter and tragedy.”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

TRAN (b. 1989) grew up in Jakobstad, Finland and now lives in Malmö, Sweden. His debut, Shade and Breeze (Skugga och svalka, Norstedts, 2021) won the Borås Tidnings Debut Prize, the Runeberg Prize, and the Swedish Yle Literature Prize. It has been translated into six languages to date.

PUBLISHERS OF ‘SHADE & BREEZE’

Danish (Turbine)

English (Lolli Editions)

Finnish (Teos)

French (Le Castor Astral)

German (Residenz)

Norwegian (Oktober)

“The sharp psychological portraits make the novel a page-turner-proof of a mature authorship.”

SMÅLANDSPOSTEN

“Quynh Tran is a writer of moods, where soft chords are occasionally broken by violent outbursts in what could be an ordinary youth novel, but is not.”

DAGENS NYHETER

“Quynh Tran is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting authors in the Nordic countries right now.”

VASABLADET

Other People’s Pleasure

(När andra njuter)

First published in Swedish by Albert Bonniers (SE) and Förlaget (FI) / 2025 / 287 pp.

Other People’s Pleasure is a novel about a mother and a daughter, about violence and desire, and about the longing for the unknown that waits around the corner.

“He knew nothing and she knew everything; she could already see it in her mind, how she would break his heart, but not yet.”.

Lana hasn’t had a boyfriend in six months. The memory of that spring night, when she and her friends were stalked, throbs in her head, and a raw anger sweeps over her. Now she’s wary of everyone. Even her mum, Maggiewhat kind of name is that?

Maggie is preoccupied with her work at the Japanese salon in Lund, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. She and Lana are about to move to a bigger apartment - Maggie struggles to afford the deposit, while old memories come flooding back: the Vietnamese rainy season and the first lover, the sugar cane leaves that scratched her skin; the man she married instead, who brought her to Sweden. The dreams of a nice little life.

“A pleasurable experience to once again enter Quynh Tran’s literary world.”

HUVUDSTADSBLADET

READING MATERIAL

Swedish edition & PDF

Sample translation 30 pp. Synopsis

“He has skilfully avoided the clichés and drawn contradictory portraits that challenge the reader’s expectations and expose the limitations of our ability to see.”

SYDSVENSKAN

“Tran more than succeeds in portraying the thoughts and traumas of two different generations. Not only through the flowing and stylistically dense prose, but also by putting the reader in a trance by depicting the everyday mood.”

ÖSTERBOTTENS TIDNING

“It is with astonishing accuracy that he appropriates the idioms of both the mother and the sixteen-year-old daughter, with extra plus for having channelled a teenager’s taste in music.”

JÖNKÖPINGS-POSTEN

Why the Sun

(Auringon syy)

First published in Finnish by Like/Otava / 2025 / 203 pp.

A gripping and unruly coming-of-age novel, from Rwanda to the suburbs of Helsinki.

“An immigrant boy’s journey turns into a flowing debut novel.”

SAVON SANOMAT

“A promising debut.”

TURUN SANOMAT NEWSPAPER

“An important book in terms of its subject matter alone –pioneering work, in fact.”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

Moses’ uncle David knows how to make money out of human misery. He rescues Moses from the Rwandan civil war and redeems his ticket to Finland. Overnight, Moses becomes David’s son, Elias. In their new homeland, they pretend to be a family, and no one suspects a thing.

Thanks to Finnish rap, Elias learns the language, and a field trip to a pig farm seals a fragile sense of togetherness. But there is another reality in the background, that of a mother and sister left behind in Rwanda. How can one reconcile two different worlds and find harmony between the new and old selves? Who should he become, and why?

Why the Sun tells a story of the fragility of identity and the incredible journey between two realities. A moving and gritty debut about finding one’s true identity in a layered and immediate narrative leavened with humour and heart. Ideal for readers of Gael Faye’s Small Country and Pajtim Statovci’s A Cow Gives Birth at Night.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 30 pp.

Synopsis

“Fascinating - worth checking out.”

KIRJAVINKIT

“Sensitive topics are discussed in beautiful language and with humor, which make the book feel lighter and, despite its content, not as heavy as one might imagine. The book contains amusing observations about Finland and living as a Black person, and I often laughed out loud while reading Elias’s thoughts.”

POC BOOKCLUB, FINLAND

EMMI-LIIA SJÖHOLM, is a Helsinkibased author and film screenwriter. Her previous novels, Like Me (Paperilla toinen, Kosmos, 2020) and Hippos (Virtahevot, Kosmos, 2022), have been critical successes.

“In many ways, the rhythm of The Cicadas’ narrative is irresistible. It is frenetic and bizarre, at times pounding and suddenly halting, its temporal shifts are surprising and effective, its language moves with a shimmering motion like a suffocating heat that has settled over the island. Where Emmi-Liia’s previous two works, Like Me and Hippos, were fairly straightforward, this is a structure that unfolds more slowly and in multiple dimensions.”

AUTHOR HELMI KEKKONEN

The Cicadas

(Kaskaat)

First published in Finnish by Kosmos / 2025 / 248 pp.

A touching and suspenseful novel about the friendship between two girls, and a heated depiction of a holiday that changes everything.

Lilli and Taika are best friends, or so Lilli thinks. The girls embark on a holiday together to a Greek island, and while the sun and freedom are glowing on their skin, a sense of threat looms in the air. Twenty years later, Lilli still doesn’t know what happened. Is she guilty, and if so, of what? Could a return to the holiday island solve something? Could Vasia help fill in the gaps in the story?

At the heart of the moving story is the relationship between the girls and the dark side of friendship, the thirst for intimacy and the power of a glance. The novel reveals how girls struggling on the threshold of adulthood are shaken by tenderness, vulnerability and cruelty, and the dark shadows that some fleeting decisions can cast over a life.

Emmi-Liia Sjöholm’s The Cicadas is a cinematic novel about friendship, desire and guilt. It explores how the friendships of youth and the mistakes made can have an impact throughout life. Sjöholm depicts the balance between insecurity and desire with a human touch.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 30 pp. Synopsis

Hippos (Virtahevot)

Kosmos / 2022 / 255 pp.

In the atmospheric stillness of a summer evening, Eevis and Touko, two Helsinkibased 30-somethings, encounter and reveal the mundane as well as their deepest thoughts to one another. An intense discussion of what it means to be human awakens a reader’s senses into the present moment.

Like

Me

(Paperilla toinen)

Kosmos / 2020 / 188 pp.

In her ravishing autofictional debut, author Emmi-Liia Sjöholm writes about her life, sex, the need to please others, love, lust and desire. The story resonates on many levels, and the book is a brutally honest description of real life where one’s past is always present in searching for a woman’s place in the world.

The Book of Samael

(Samaelin kirja)

First published in Finnish by Tammi / 2025 / 253 pp.

Set against the brutal landscape of the 1930s Finnish west coast, The Book of Samael plunges readers into a harrowing tale of survival.

Ramiel doesn’t speak, but he sees everything — even when others see nothing at all. When a professor arrives from the city to a small coastal village, Ramiel’s stepfather promises to take him on a winter seal hunting expedition across the frozen Baltic Sea. They hire an experienced hunter who knows the treacherous ways of ice and seals, but nothing can prepare them for what awaits.

Hautala’s story Pale Toes was nominated for the 2020 Shirley Jackson Award. In his native Finland he has received the Tiiliskivi Prize, Kalevi Jäntti Literary Prize and was nominated for the Young Aleksis Kivi Prize in 2013.

PUBLISHERS OF RECORD

Czech (Euromedia; Knižní Klub, Golden Dog)

German (dtv)

English (AmazonCrossing)

Italian (Newton Compton)

On the ice, merciless conditions quickly bring the expedition to its knees. As tensions mount between the men and survival becomes uncertain, Ramiel must choose sides. When the threat of violence looms, his only protection is a mystical tome inherited from his father — the Book of Samael itself.

Marko Hautala, the master of Finnish literary horror, masterfully weaves supernatural elements into a gripping, atmospheric thriller of endurance and survival. A Nordic answer to Dan Simmons’ The Terror with considerable brevity.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 30 pp.

Synopsis

Author letter

“Marko Hautala’s latest novel proves that the comparisons to Stephen King are not unjust.”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

ARNDÍS ÞÓRARINSDÓTTIR (b. 1982) has an undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature and a postgraduate degree in Creative Writing from the University of Iceland, and another one in Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths College, University of London.

HULDA SIGRÚN BJARNADÓTTIR (b. 1971) studied library science and psychology at the University of Iceland and University of Copenhagen. She has been writing children’s and YA fiction since 2007.

Murder After High Mass

(Morð og messufall)

First published in Icelandic by Forlagið / 2025 / 304 pp.

How many commandments can you actually break in the same church?

“Briskly plotted and full of humour [...] a very entertaining story.”

REV. HREINN S. HÁKONARSON, KIRKUJUBLADID

“A criminally funny novel, featuring unforgettable characters. Unputdownable.”

JÓNÍNA LEÓSDÓTTIR, AUTHOR

Sif has simple goals in life. She just wants to keep her wayward parents out of trouble and get a priest’s job so she can guarantee her son a secure future. However, her first job interview after graduating from theology ends in disaster when she and her interviewer, Reverend Reynir discover a dead body on the altar steps.

In the chaos that follows, Sif is hired as a temporary churchwarden and is determined to prove herself so that she can be ordained as a priest. But the organist has left, the accounting is in disarray, and to top it all off, a young man from youth work seems to have disappeared without a trace. What on earth was the deceased, Kormákur Austfjörð, Reynir’s special assistant, doing at the neighbourhood retirement home?

Murder After High Mass is a light-hearted, cosy-crime novel, full of memorable characters and unparalleled events. Arndís and Hulda are established children’s book authors - both jointly as well as individually - and have received numerous awards for their work both domestically and internationally. This is their first work of adult fiction.

READING MATERIAL

Icelandic edition & PDF

English sample translation 38 pp. Synopsis

“Can’t help but laugh out loud [...] There are lovely characters, hilarious puns and wonderful humour here, but also tension and an interesting and complex plot where there are many surprises at the end.”

LIFÐU NÚNA

“The narrative starts out light-hearted but after midpoint things get more serious and we end up with a gritty thriller.”

MORGUNBLAÐIÐ

JENNY ROGNEBY (b. 1974) is an Ethiopian born Swedish writer and criminologist. During her years as a criminal investigator for the Stockholm City Police, she has worked with a broad spectrum of crime cases. Her debut Leona series was a commercial success that was translated into 14 languages and optioned for film & tv. Her series featuring mediator Angela Lans was published by Ordfront Förlag.

The Marked Children

The Interrogators series (1)

(De märkta barnen)

First published in Swedish by Bookmark / November 2025 / 450 pp.

What price are you willing to pay to fulfill your dreams? Acclaimed criminologist and crime writer Jenny Rogneby returns with a pacy, new series focused on a new police unit of interrogators solving serious crime.

On a hot summer’s day, a bomb threat at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm is called in. Police secure the scene around a black bag outside the hospital, but when the bomb technician unzips it, there are no explosives. Instead, the bag contains an infant.

The little girl’s life hangs in the balance, and the doctors discover something on her arm that has them very worried. Who is she? And who has left her outside the hospital? When another child is found, media coverage reaches new heights, and a major investigation is launched. The clues lead the police to a shadowy world where anything can be bought for money, a corrupt industry with links reaching to the upper echelons of power.

The Marked Children is the first book in the series featuring police interrogators Annie Altin and Alexander Tilly.

READING MATERIAL

Swedish PDF

Sample translation 100 pp. (tk)

Synopsis

Author letter

“Jenny Rogneby also skilfully avoids ending up with clichés and manages to make the language genuine and striking.”

BTJ

“It is a difficult balancing act the author has set out on, but she not only manages to do so, but also with bravura. [...] With a sense of subtle nuances, Rogneby shows the consequences of the crime, both physically and mentally, as well as legally and criminally, while at the same time managing to keep the reader in an iron grip. [...] An extraordinary reading experience. 5/5”

BTJ, ON THE MEDIATOR

is a

writer from Funen who has previously lived in Sweden, Germany and Greenland. He holds degrees in literature, communications and philosophy from the University of Southern Denmark and the University of Stockholm. The author of nine novels, he is also co-author of two thrillers together with Sara Blædel and which are optioned for TV. Nordbo’s acclaimed Greenland series was translated into 20 languages.

Dog

The Praest Sisters series (1) (Hund)

First published in Danish by Gutkind / 2025 / 391 pp.

The gripping opener to a brand-new series by the bestselling author of the Greenland series. A Top 10 bestseller in Denmark and Bog & Idé booksellers’ Book of the Month.

“[...] a new fantastic crime series by Mads Peder Nordbo [...] The crime has all the ingredients that belong to a good and exciting crime novel that you just don’t want to put down [...] Nordbo manages to keep the suspense going right up until the last chapter.”

KRONVOLDS KULTUR KÅRNER

“It’s all tied together in a well-told story that gives a lot of thoughts and emotions free rein [...] The Praest sisters are an interesting and likeable couple that I look forward to getting to know better.”

RANDI GLENSBO BLOG

A naked, enfeebled man appears at a Christmas market at the dilapidated Hesbjerg Manor on the island of Funen. His body bears fresh bite marks of what appears to be a large dog, and the man seems mentally absent. JRT, the joint psychological unit between the Region of Southern Denmark and Odense Police, is called in and the work of establishing the man’s identity and the circumstances around his injuries begins.

When the nameless man is examined the next day, scans reveal a gruesome reality behind his behaviour and it turns out that he has been the victim of a serious crime. When a new victim with similar injuries turns up near Skanderborg, the case is turned on its head and the terms “killer” and “victim” begin to merge.

Police Inspector Line Præst and her sister Ragnhild, a psychologist at the regional psychiatric centre, have to work more closely together, much to Line’s annoyance, and a new department at Odense Police is born.

The case spreads its ripples and anxiety runs deep. People begin to fear big dogs, and for Line and Ragnhild, the case takes a tragic and all too personal turn. Death is suddenly as close as the warm breath of a wild dog. What is it like to see your own death?

Dog will be followed up by Cross in early 2026, and Stone in 2027, with a further three books planned in the series.

READING MATERIAL

Danish edition & PDF

Sample translation 80 pp.

Synopsis Books 1-3

Author letter

“[...] well-written, the story is good [...] We’re definitely ready for more from the Praest series - if we dare.”

BOGBOBLER

“The impact is devastating, and the plot expands widely [...] The different directions of the plot gradually converge and take an unexpected dramatic turn that will keep you reading in great, disturbing stretches. A promising start to the new series.”

DANSK BIBLIOTEKS CENTER

ARNE DAHL (b. 1963) is a writer, editor, and critic who has written nearly thirty books in a number of different series, in primarily the crime fiction genre. He has been awarded several prestigious awards such as the Deutscher Krimi Preis and the Ripper Award for his collected work. His books have been translated into 32 languages.

JONAS MOSTRÖM (b. 1973) is a writer and general practitioner. He is the author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling series that follows psychiatrist and criminal profiler Nathalie Svensson and inspector Johan Axberg. The books have been translated into 11 languages. In 2017, Jonas won the Big Audio Book Prize for the novel Midnight Girls (Midnattsflickor, Lind & Co, 2016).

The Creator

True Fiction series (1)

(Skaparen)

First published in Swedish by Bookmark / 2024 / 432 pp.

The opening instalment to new writing duo Arne Dahl and Jonas Moström’s True Fiction series. Shortlisted for the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Prize 2024 and a bestseller in Denmark.

Renowned crime novelist Tom Borg is grappling with a severe case of writer’s block, desperate to reignite his creative spark. In a bid for inspiration, he ventures into an underground club in central Stockholm, where he witnesses a murder eerily reminiscent of the plot he’s been struggling to pen.

Tom soon finds himself embroiled in a deadly game where the difference between fiction and reality is distorted. Where is the line between the two drawn? And is that something he really wants to find out?

Tom’s antagonist is the MMA-fighting Inspector Olivia Woolf. She carries her own twin inside her, has one blue eye and one green eye, and takes out her aggression on men who hurt women.

It is not long until Tom realizes that not only are the police after him, there is someone else closing in as well. A radical group with its own agenda seems to be behind the events that drove Tom on the run. Who really controls the narrative of the book Tom is working on, and who is to blame when real people get hurt?

“The Creator is a wild game of illusion at high speed.”

DAGENS NYHETER

“Arne Dahl is possibly the most thoughtful and playful contemporary Nordic crime writer. He also happens to be one of the most thrilling.”

IAN RANKIN

The Creator is the first part of the new ‘True Fiction’ series, written by two award-winning crime writers at the top of their game. It is a thriller in the spirit of the Coen brothers: an irresistible page-turner with nail-biting tension, dark humor, and unforgettable characters. Tom, and Olivia will return in a standalone sequel, The Betrayer, in spring 2026.

SHORTLISTED CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2024

READING MATERIAL

Swedish edition & PDF

Full ENG translation

Synopsis Book 1 & 2

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Danish (Lindhardt & Ringhof) 1-3

Finnish (Into)

German (Bastei Luebbe) 1-3

Greek (Metaixmio)

Polish (Labreto)

Portuguese (Dom Quixote)

“A skillfully packed detective story that highlights contemporary issues as threats to both climate and democracy. A top-notch page-turner with a cliffhanger that hints that now we have only scratched the surface - more has to come.”

ANETTE STOLT / BOOKSTAGRAM

SOFIE SARENBRANT (b. 1978) made her literary debut in 2010 and has since then become one of the biggest crime authors in the Nordics. She is best known for her modern and creative series following police detective Emma Sköld and her team in Stockholm. The series has sold 6,5 million copies worldwide and been translated into 17 languages to date.

The Emma Sköld series was Sweden’s bestselling domestic series of 2023. The Parasite was nominated Crime Novel of the Year award the same year. Sofie Sarenbrant has won Crime Writer of the Year in 2019, 2020 and 2022 for the series and also a hat-trick of the Nextory E-Book Award. She is currently nominated for Crime Writer of the Year 2025.

The Follower

Emma Sköld series (12) (Följeslagaren)

First published in Swedish by Bookmark / 2025 / 400 pp.

Nominated for Crime Novel of the Year 2025.

6,5 MILLION BOOKS SOLD

“A real page-turner.”

BOKNJUTAREN

“Enjoy Sofie Sarenbrant’s pace, the smart dialogue and the chills down your spine.”

FEMINA DENMARK

“When it comes to telling stories about the superficial present, there are few who can beat Sofie Sarenbrant.”

LOTTA OLSSON, DAGENS NYHETER

The bestselling Emma Sköld series continues with a nail-biting story that plunges readers into a case for Emma where the line between safety and danger becomes blurred.

A woman goes missing without a trace in the leafy suburb of Bromma. There are no leads or a body, but the question remains: why did her husband wait three days before reporting her missing? And then a macabre clue is found in a neighbouring garden.

Detective Inspector Emma Sköld gives the case her all. On her own initiative, Emma’s sister Josefin, on summer leave from the police academy, offers to help Emma with the investigation. Little does Josefin know what she has got herself into.

The Follower is the twelfth standalone book in Sweden’s most-sold series of 2023. Sofie Sarenbrant combines societal debate and sensitive topics together with her signature nailbiting intrigue.

2025 sees Sofie Sarenbrant celebrating 15 years as a published author. Next year she will be launching a brand-new series featuring a new protagonist and millieu as a lead title for Forum in autumn 2026.

“Are you being followed, or just paranoid? And do you dare to look in the mirror and face the truth?”

READING MATERIAL

Swedish edition & PDF

Sample translation

Synopsis

Author letter

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Danish (People’s)

Finnish (WSOY)

“The novel’s main strength is characterisation, which feels credible and multifaceted. 4 out of 5.”

BTJ

“As with all of Sofie Sarenbrant’s books, it is exciting, well written and nicely tied together at the end.”

SUNDSVALLS TIDNING

The Parasite (Parasiten)

Bookmark / 2024 / 400 pp.

It is a hot summer day when the burnt remains of a body are found by Drottningholm Palace, the private residence of the royal family, just outside of Stockholm. Next to the victim, the police find a death list with five names. The last one reads Emma Sköld.

An investigation is immediately started. At the same time, a twenty-year-old case unrolls where a mother went to the emergency room with her infant but ended up in detention. What does the past have to do with the victim found by Drottningholm? Now it is up to Emma and her colleagues to stop the killer before more names are crossed of the list. Including the final one, Emma herself.

The Parasite is the eleventh book in the bestselling series following detective Emma Sköld and her team in Stockholm. In her characteristic way, Sarenbrant portrays topical issues while at the same time creating suspense that keeps readers on their toes all the way to the end. The Parasite is about a life shattered overnight, revenge, hurtful sibling relationships and a family involved in a tragedy with catastrophic consequences.

The Soulmate (Själsfränden)

Bookmark / 2022 / 442 pp.

Stockholm is exploding in the warm colours of autumn. It is a striking view, but police detective Emma Sköld’s eyes fall on something else. A woman is balancing on the wrong side of the railing of a major bridge, holding a baby in her arms.

Emma must prevent the woman and infant from falling twenty-six meters down into the sea and a certain death. What has led her to this point? Emma Sköld and her colleagues face an intricate investigation in their most urgent case yet.

The Soulmate is the tenth book the popular crime series about police detective Emma Sköld. Sofie Sarenbrant uniquely weaves together current and sensitive contemporary issues into the plot, and explores topics such as human dignity, prejudice and gaslighting. With short chapters, a straightforward language and strong cliffhangers, Sarenbrant’s storytelling has a unique drive and urgency. The result is an equally important and thrilling crime story, impossible to put down.

The Guardian Angel (Skyddsängeln)

Bookmark / 2021 / 400 pp.

The cherry trees are in full bloom, but police detective Emma Sköld is having trouble enjoying the approaching Easter holiday. Seven months have passed since her close colleague, Krille, disappeared without a trace. She is determined to find him, dead or alive.

While police finally locate the debt collector who was the last one to see Krille alive, Emma is presented with a strange murder. An elderly man has been found dead in an abandoned mental institution. When his identity is revealed, Emma becomes obsessed with solving the case.

The Guardian Angel is the ninth book in the immensely popular detective series about Emma Sköld. As always, the story has a strong connection to current social issues. The Guardian Angel explores topics such as loneliness, addiction, and mental illness. It was the most listened to book of the year on Storytel in 2021.

“Sofie

Sarenbrant’s crime novel The Soulmate begins with a real sick-to-thestomach scene and the feverish pace is kept up throughout the novel.”

AFTONBLADET SÖNDAG

SOFIE SARENBRANT (b. 1978) is one of Sweden’s most beloved and successful authors. Her books have been translated into 17 languages and sold 6,5 million copies to date. She was awarded the prestigious Swedish Crime Writer of the Year award in 2019, 2020 and 2022, and the Emma Sköld series was Sweden’s bestselling series of 2023.

CARINA BERGFELDT (b. 1980) is an award-winning author, journalist, and one of the most popular TV hosts in Sweden. Today she is most known for her celebrated talk show, Carina Bergfeldt. She has also published both fiction and non-fiction books, with translation rights sold to 15 countries.

2024 SWEDISH CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR -NOMINEE

Good Friday

(Långfredagen)

Bookmark / 2024 / 400 pp.

It’s Good Friday and the season premiere of the popular talk show Frida-y. Spotlights fill the stage, the audience sits quietly in anticipation for what the evening has to offer. Backstage, a controversial guest is waiting, invited personally by the host Frida von Engen. She wants to make sure to get high ratings for her comeback on screen and to once and for all consolidate her role as the most intriguing host with the most exciting show.  But in the middle of the live broadcast, a masked person emerges from the shadows. A bomber vest is hidden under the hoodie. There is no doubt that the threat is real: ”The doors are locked, no one gets out of here. If you interrupt the broadcast, everyone dies.”

“There is certainly no shortage of spectacular ingredients in this exciting page-turner (...). Fast-paced with colourful characters and dark secrets that are revealed in the open. A thriller that is likely to end up high on the bestseller lists.”

INGALILL MOSANDER, AFTONBLADET

“An exciting thriller.”

BTJ

“A real pageturner.”

TV4 MORNING NEWS

Good Friday is the standalone sequel to The Birthday, which was released in September 2023 and topped the sales charts. With a focus on fast-paced suspense and complex relationships, Sofie Sarenbrant and Carina Bergfeldt have created another world-class thriller.

READING MATERIAL

Swedish edition & PDF

Sample translation

Synopsis

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SERIES SOLD

300,000 COPIES

The Birthday

(Födelsedagen)

Bokförlaget Forum / 2023 / 405 pp.

It’s a beautiful morning when Samuel’s mother, his father and his new stepmother gather to celebrate his seventh birthday. Together they arrange the cake, light the candles and head to Samuel’s room singing. But as the door opens, silence falls. Samuel’s bed is empty, the window wide open.

Police are quickly called and a heavily publicized search operation begins. But as the hours go by, questions and suspicions arise – the atmosphere between ex-wife, father and stepmother thickens. When the corpse of a family member is discovered, the situation escalates. All three would have an interest to get Samuel out of the way, but their stories just don’t add up. What really happened the night before?

Awarded Forum’s Platinum Book with over 200,000 copies sold within two years of publication.

READING MATERIAL

Swedish edition & PDF

Full ENG translation

Synopsis

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Danish (People’s)

Estonian (Pegasus)

Finnish (WSOY)

Norwegian (Cappelen Damm)

German (Saga Egmont)

Film & TV (Nordisk Film, option)

KRISTIN EMILSSON (b. 1973) is one of Sweden’s most popular feelgood writers. Her books have sold over 300,000 copies and have been translated into Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and German to date. She debuted in 2014 with Äta kakan och ha den kvar (Lind & Co, 2014) and has since published seven more novels in the same genre. A third book in the ‘Julia’ series, Spring According to Julia, was published in 2025.

PUBLISHERS OF THE ’JULIA GRAHN’ SERIES

Danish (Cicero)

Finnish (Karisto)

German (Fischer)

Norwegian (Cappelen Damm)

Spring Feelings on Gotland

(Vårkänslor på Gotländska)

Printz Publishing / 2025 / 325 pp.

Love - both old and new - is in the air as Julia and Petter look forward to their Easter getaway to Gotland.

The Tone-Deaf Musical Society Presents

(Tondövas riksförbund presenterar)

First published in Swedish by Printz Publishing / 2024 / 356 pp.

The Tone-Deaf Musical Society Presents is a standalone, feelgood novel about forgotten dreams, new friendships and the unique magic of creating something together.

When Magda Englund’s son leaves home she feels lonely again for the first time in a very long time. The nest is empty, her job as a secondary school teacher ticks along, and all her friends seem to be busy with their own lives.

To ward off the loneliness, Magda decides to realise one of her long-forgotten dreams: to stage a musical. Together with Joakim, the school’s secretive music teacher, Magda forms The ToneDeaf Musical Society, a motley crew of troubled souls who, at first glance, seem to have little in common with each other. But during rehearsals they find common ground and unlikely friendships begin to form.

As their opening night approaches, a new member joins the group and everything is suddenly turned upside-down, opening up old wounds. Can Magda face up to her past or will she be forced to let down her new friends?

READING MATERIAL

Swedish edition & PDF

“Feelgood at its best”

KULTURLADYN

Sample translation 50 pp. Synopsis

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Norwegian (Cappelen Damm)

“A carefully composed story that contains both humour and seriousness, and a large dose of warmth. The characters feel real, and nothing is as obvious or predictable as one might think. A really lovely feelgood!”

HYLLAN BLOG

July According to Julia

(Juli enligt Julia)

Printz Publishing / 2023 / 350 pp.

New couple Julia and Petter return to the place where they met but in the summer heat, mishaps arise and relationships are put to the test.

Christmas According to Julia (Julen enligt Julia)

Printz Publishing / 2021 / 291 pp.

An entertaining rom-com full of hilarity and finding love when you least expect it set in snowy Visby, Gotland.

(b. 1983) is a Finnish writer with Sámi heritage, and a semi-professional Thai boxer. She holds a MA in Comparative Literature and debuted in 2020 with her novel Shadow Boxer (Varjonyrkkeilijä, Like, 2020), about sexual abuse in the sporting world, which won Finland’s ‘Sports Book of the Year’ and received a nomination for the Torchbearer Prize.

One Half (Puolikas)

First published in Finnish by LIKE / 2024 / 283 pp.

“For me, Sámi was not just another language, it didn’t feel foreign in the same way as other languages, but it was foreign, wild as a river.”

Ibbá returns to her family’s ancestral home in Kuttura, where she begins to ask questions of her ageing parents, and why she never learned to speak Sámi. She begins unravelling the past, going back to the postwar years when Sámi children from remote villages were separated from their families by being forced into boarding schools for most of the year. As Ibbá uncovers her family’s secrets, she has to ask herself what Sámi means to her.

One Half is a moving novel about the postwar generations of Sámi children, today’s urban Sámi identity, and reconnecting to one’s own roots.

“One Half addresses the question of identity in a versatile and compelling way. For the majority population, the novel opens up on Sámi history and the overtly colonial role of Finnish boarding schools, and the multitudes of lived experiences within the borders of a single country.”

SUOMEN KUVALEHTI

“A beautiful novel about Ibbá’s personal journey into her family history and, at the same time, her own identity.”

KULTTUURITOIMITUS

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 50 pp.

Synopsis

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All rights available

”Works of literary merit and nuance, such as One Half, are necessary - and a joy to read.”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

(b. 1983) was born in St. Petersburg into a family of artists. At the age of eight, she moved to Turku, Finland, with her parents. Her long-standing love of reading and writing and the magic of languages influenced Soudakova to write fiction and her day-job teaching French, Russian and Finnish as a second language.

Wings of Sorrow

(Haikara levittää siipensä)

First published in Finnish by Atena / 2024 / 335 pp.

A moving novel about two siblings torn apart by a dictatorship.

“This is one of those novels which deals with terrible, difficult themes but despite - or perhaps, even because of this - you can but love it. The kind of book that is the reason for reading at all.”

KIRSIN KIRJANURKKA BLOG

“Every ambitious novel which seeks to increase our understanding of our neighbours to the east is essential at this time. As is this one.”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

1995. A town in Belarus. Andréi is ten when his sister Sveta is born into the torn family. The father’s prison sentence under the authoritarian regime drives Andréi’s mother and grandmother to drink and Andréi has to care for Sveta and himself, loving protecting and comforting his little sister.

When a Belarusian language teacher takes Andréi under her wing, to guide him towards a better future, he decides to leave his home country. After their grandmother passes away, Andréi makes sure that Sveta can live with their uncle, an opponent of the regime. There, Sveta does not receive love, but she learns to love Belarus, to speak the language and to fight for the freedom of their country. She graduates as a journalist and instead of writing propaganda, she creates an electronic news platform to provide people with the truth.

With the presidential elections in 2020, the turbulence in the country increases and protests against the regime end in violence and imprisonment of civilians. Sveta’s work becomes increasingly dangerous and she eventually has to flee and leave everything behind, just like her brother fifteen years before. As Sveta crosses the border, a flock of storks flies above her in the sky. She makes her way to Finland, where she will at last reunite with her beloved brother Andréi.

In Wings of Sorrow, Anna Soudakova renders a suspenseful family saga set against the backdrop of Belarus’ recent history. Skilfully intertwining the different character’s portraits spanning four generations, she recounts in equally beautiful and powerful language their suppression and eternal struggle, as well as the profound humanity of individuals and the loving relationship between the siblings and their shared aspiration for freedom.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition and PDF

Sample translation 45 pp.

Synopsis

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Hungarian (Europa Kiado)

“Interestingly, Soudakova uses the Belarusian language in her book as a kind of powerful tool, thereby contributing to the renaissance of the language. Hopefully, the book will also increase [Finnish] readers’ understanding of the situation in Belarus.”

KULTTUURITOIMITUS

The Golden Deer

(Kultainen peura)

Otava / 2024 / 416 pp.

Braiding superstition, language, and illicit love with a sprinkling of mystical fantasy, Miina Supinen delivers an absorbing and spirited narrative in her fifth novel.

Her adult fiction breakthrough novel, Jelly Control (Liha tottelee kuria, WSOY, 2007) earned her critical acclaim as an ’unwilling humourist’. Her works have previously been translated into Czech, Danish, German.

1880s Karelia: defying societal obligations to marry, Mathilda ‘Tilda’ Sommer instead leaves the comfort of her childhood home in Vyborg for a teacher’s seminary in a small town on the northern shores of the great Lake Ladoga. There, Tilda quickly befriends another trainee teacher, Jelena Päästäinen, a mysterious young Karelian woman who is a ward of her uncle, Kiril, a shadowy businessman alleged to associate with dark forces. As an illicit love between the two women begins to bud, they investigate the suspicious death of a local maid and are drawn into a bigger adventure that sets them on a course towards danger.

Abundant with mysticism, joyful humour, and spellbinding history, The Golden Deer reinvents the historical novel, with coiled motifs reminiscent of The Essex Serpent, the adventure of Madeleine’s Miller’s Kirke, and life and love under patriarchal limitations as in Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 72 pp.

“Pages that ooze with joy.”

KARJALAINEN NEWSPAPER

“The Golden Deer shows that Miina Supinen deserves the magic cloak of a revered storyteller. She is clearly of Karelian storyteller stock.”

SAVON SANOMAT NEWSPAPER

“Rich and rewarding…”

KIRJAVINKIT BLOG

“Skillful and vivid.”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT NEWSPAPER

Synopsis

Author Letter

“I’m quite sure that in the old days, women, too, used to have fun together. In Finnish novels, their lives are often portrayed as horrible,” Supinen says. [...] I jokingly invented a sort of genre of my own, ‘Karelian gothic’, she says, laughing. If a gothic novel can have lovely maidens and their very strange families and ghosts, why not a Karelian one, she muses.”

AUTHOR INTERVIEW, HELSINGIN SANOMAT

”A refreshing historical novel.”

MAASEUDEN TULEVAISUUS NEWSPAPER

JOEL HAAHTELA (b. 1972) is known as a master of novellas. His award-winning work spans 16 titles of fiction, in which the author creates a wondrous world that enchants its readers. Besides his career in writing, Haahtela also works as a psychiatrist and a deacon at the Finnish orthodox church in Helsinki.

Haahtela received the Pro Finlandia Media in 2024 in recognition of his cultural contributions to Finnish literature. His works have been translated into several languages, including Estonian, German, Hungarian, Lithuanian, and Russian.

“Seldom has loss been so beautifully portrayed as in Haahtela’s novel.”

YLE CULTURE

The Soul Painter’s Evening

(Sielunpiirtäjän ilta)

First published in Finnish by Otava / February 2025 / 237 pp.

A captivating, timeless novel that conjures up a painter’s inner life by the Finlandia- and Runeberg Prize-nominated author.

An unnamed, aging Master painter in Golden Age Holland works on a painting he forbids anyone from seeing before ascending in the evening up to his attic to record his thoughts in his diary. On the encouragement of his friends, the Master agrees to take on one last apprentice, Jacob, a promising young man who is commissioned to paint the portrait of a wealthy silk merchant. Supervising Jacob’s instinctive brushtrokes, the Master begins to feel the return of a long-lost spark of joy in his heart. But one fateful night, a devastating fire breaks out in the town and sets the course of everyone’s lives on a new course.

In this intimate and beautiful narrative that glows like a flame in the darkness, Joel Haahtela, in his pared-back style, renders a beautiful, succinct work in which the laws of light and the art of painting are most often found in the proximity of another person.

“A small story that grows bigger in Haahtela’s hands.”

KULTTUURITOIMITUS

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 45 pp.

Synopsis

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A

Yearning for Truth: A Trilogy

Otava / 2024 / 554 pp. / Finnish edition and PDF

A trilogy of novellas transports the reader to a monastery in the wintery Pyrenees, a Greek island inhabited by hermetic monks, and the ancient myths of Jerusalem.

It is the journey of a world-fumbling seeker deep into the core of humanity, to the boundaries of worlds and larger-than-life questions.

The volume includes Haahtela’s absorbing and acclaimed works, Adèle’s Question (2019), The Ability to Breathe (2020), and Jacob’s Ladder (2022).

CRISTINA SANDU (b. 1989) is a writer and translator, born in Helsinki to a Finnish-Romanian family. Sandu speaks seven languages and currently lives in the UK. Her first novel, The Whale Called Goliat (2017), was nominated for the Finlandia Prize. The Union of Synchronised Swimmers (2019) received the Toisinkoinen Literary Prize. Sandu’s novels have been translated into eight languages to date.

The Danish Expedition

(Tanskalainen retkikunta)

Otava / 2024 / 367 pp.

The much-awaited third novel by Finlandia Prize-nominee and author of The Union of Synchonrised Swimmers, Cristina Sandu.

The Union of Synchronised Swimmers

(Vesileikit)

Otava / 2019 / 128 pp.

READING MATERIAL

(THE DANISH EXPEDITION)

Finnish edition & PDF

English translation (unedited)

Synopsis

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(THE DANISH EXPEDITION)

Hungarian (Polar)

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(THE UNION OF SYNCHRONISED SWIMMERS)

English, World excl. CA (Scribe)

English, Canada (Book*hug)

Spanish, World (Twin Books)

Dutch (Orlando)

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(THE WHALE CALLED GOLIATH)

French (Robert Laffont)

Romanian (Cartea Romaneasca Ed.)

Catalan (Nits Blanques)

Spanish, World (Twin Brooks)

Nicaragua, 1923: A group of Danish emigrants embark on foot with their mules in the pouring rain on a trip across the mountains and the jungle to their promised land, Río Blanco, where they hope to grow coffee and make a better life for themselves.

But the soil proves impossible to cultivate, and with the sudden death of the Nicaraguan president, the community’s support from the state comes to an end. The colony’s founders walk off with the collective funds to build their own business, leaving a strained atmosphere behind. Mere months later, treachery, revenge, hunger, disease, and death have destroyed the community’s dream and, for some, the colony experiment ends up in tragedy.

The Danish community’s paths continue crossing throughout a civil war and World War II, spanning across decades and generations. Carefully drawn portraits of the families and their journeys tell a story of belonging, cultural ties, broken dreams, and the continued hope of finding a place to settle, told with Sandu’s distinctive powerful language wielded with a light touch.

Six girls grow up on a piece of land between two rivers, belonging to no state. Swimming is their passion, but also a way to reach out to the world. As a team of synchronised swimmers, they perform skilful tricks in and underwater.

Far away in Helsinki, Anita falls in love with Spiderman. In California, onboard a fishing boat, Paulina acquires the ingredients for her homeland’s traditional soup. On a Caribbean island, Betty gambles away all her money.

The stories of young rootless women, suffering from undefined feelings of longing, come together in a dazzling multifaceted novella, reaching across the world.

The Union of Synchronised Swimmers was awarded the Toisinkoinen Literature Prize for second novels.

“The writing is as graceful as the movements in the river they so elegantly swim in […] A small punchy, almost pocket-sized literary work of art, it’s somewhat offbeat from your regular novel. Read conscientiously to grasp unspoken atmospheres and clues between the lines.”

IRISH EXAMINER

Big Wet Secret

(Suuri Märkä Salaisuus)

my. He has spent three months in an artist’s residency program in London and performed in New York.

Hallikainen’s novels have been nominated for numerous literary prizes and he was made ‘Helsinki’s Writer of the Year 2023’. Big Wet Secret was awarded both Kalevi Jäntti Prize and Toisinkoinen Literary Award in 2023.

For his outstanding work, Hallikainen was received the Helsinki Artist Award 2024.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Synopsis

ENG sample translations: Big Wet Secret 60 pp. / Canyon 50 pp.

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All rights available

”Hallikainen’s debut was a linguistic delight, but this novelty takes richness even further. In the work colored by class sorrow, there is a certain joy: it is uncompromising in language, structurally sound yet free. The narrator is electric, a realm of imagination in a world of twigs, or as he puts it: ‘Imagination is all I have’. ”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

First published in Finnish by Otava / 2023 / 392 pp.

This coming-of-age story is a masterful depiction of class differences, adolescent intensities and insecurities, awakening homosexuality and devastating alcoholism.

The boy spends his nights watching age-inappropriate Hollywood movies from the 90’s, numbing his loneliness with candy. He is embarrassed by his situation and doesn’t want to share it with anyone. Instead, he prays.

The boy’s father passes away, he becomes a teenager and falls in love with one of his classmates, The Athlete, who, unlike him, comes from a wealthy family. The school is situated in eastern Helsinki and surrounded by suburbs with great inequality in income, only referred to with postal codes. The schoolkids, all anonymous and only known by epithets, come from very different backgrounds. Despite of his feeling of otherness among his well-off classmates, the boy makes friends and, with them, gets acquainted with alcohol and sex. He quickly develops an ever-growing interest in tobacco, booze, and men.

Hyper-realistic in its detail, the novel is an intense, violent, corporeal, and sensual story of growing up poor in the 1990’s eastern Helsinki. The anonymous narrators’ voice, merging the boy protagonist and the adult he later became, is stunningly achieved: natural, effortless, and believable.

Canyon

(Kanjoni)

First published in Finnish by Otava / 2020 / 185 pp.

A fiery, frenetic debut novel that turns into a literary hall of mirrors constantly surprising its reader.

A young man is desperately in love with his school bully. When an unstable relationship ends, the narrator escapes into an obsessive vortex of webcam sex. Through a miraculous coincidence, the videos open a heady gateway to a new life in the heat of Los Angeles. The narrator’s deep yearning for love takes the reader on an unpredictable journey filled with shadows and poetic expressiveness.

Simultaneously uninhibitedly physical, unabashedly funny and profoundly tragic, Canyon is a novel that creates an uncommonly passionate and irresistible relationship with the reader.

“Canyon may be seen as an exaggeration of zeitgeist: we lay all day at the computer, in search for others, obsessively pampering ourselves. Canyon convinces and impresses.”

SUOMEN KUVALEHTI

“Hallikainen builds a dizzying, downward spiral in which tragedy and comedy intertwine.”

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

ARTO PAASILINNA (1942-2018) worked as a lumberjack and journalist before becoming a full-time writer. He published thirty-five novels and twelve non-fiction works during his lifetime, cementing his authorship as one full of creative vision, humour, and uplifting portrayals of man’s relationship with nature. One of Finland’s most wellknown writers, his works have been translated into over 40 languages and have sold over 8 million copies worldwide.

The Year of the Hare

(Jäniksen vuosi)

First published in Finnish by Weilin+Göös / 1975 / 182 pp.

The internationally bestselling comic novel about a man who realises what’s important in life after he befriends an injured hare. Celebrating 50 years since its first publication in 2025.

“A change-your-life novel.”

NEW YORK MAGAZINE

DISCOVER MORE BY ARTO PAASILINNA

Journalist Vatanen is burned out and sick of the city. One summer evening he accidently hits a young hare on a country road. He tends to the hare’s leg, befriends the creature, and gradually sheds his former life.

The incident becomes a life-changing experience for Vatanen, who decides to quit his job, leave his wife, and sell his possessions to travel Finland with his new-found friend. Their adventures lead them to forest fires, pagan sacrifices, and killer bears before they settle down in a cosy cabin in the wilds of Lapland.

The Year of the Hare is a wildly entertaining mix of fable, farce, mid-life crisis, and travel book. It’s a tale of freedom, commitment, and survival that has been charming readers around the world for decades and is also credited with having inspired Jonas Jonasson’s The 100-YearOld Man Who Climbed Out the Window.

This award-winning book is widely considered Arto Paasilinna’s best work and a Finnish literary classic which will be reissued in a special anniversary edition by WSOY in 2025.

The Year of the Hare was adapted for film in France in 2006 (dir. Marc Rivière) and Finland in 1977 (dir. Risto Jarva). It has also been adapted for stage. The UNESCO Collection of Representative Works classified it as a masterpiece of world literature.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF (WSOY anniversary ed.)

French, German & Swedish PDF Synopsis

“Sums up the Finnish culture and people.”

NEW YORK MAGAZINE

”A fable of the joys of freedom... The hare proves to be a delightful, undemanding, and loyal companion, who can laugh, listen, and feel embarrassment.”

BOSTON GLOBE

“No wonder the French have made this book into a cult. Finnish wit as sharp as the Arctic weather.”

MAIL ON SUNDAY

The Forest of the Hanged Foxes

(Hirtettyjen kettujen metsä)

WSOY / 1982 / 234 pp.

Dark, macabre humour from Arto Paasilinna, the much-loved Kurt Vonnegut of the North.

Three small-time crooks grow tired of living in poverty and decide to steal a pretty hefty amount of gold. Unfortunately, things don’t quite go to plan and two of them end up getting caught.

Although they’re locked up in prison, the crooks remain unusually calm, comforted by the knowledge that their friend is keeping their gold safe and will share it with them upon their release. The problem is that Oiva Juntunen fancies the gold for himself. He becomes increasingly anxious as his friends’ release day approaches. Faced with the prospect of two tough guys coming to collect their dues, Juntunen decides to make a run for it.

Paasilinna seamlessly combines an action-packed narrative with strong characters and humorous, yet deep, philosophical musings in this situational comedy.

The Forest of Hanged Foxes was adapted for TV film in Finland in 1986 (dir. Jouko Suikkari).

The Howling Miller

(Ulvova mylläri)

WSOY / 1981 / 236 pp

A Happy Man

(Onnellinen mies)

WSOY / 1976 / 187 pp.

A dark fairytale of community, conformity and our place in the world set in backwoods Finland.

When Gunnar Huttunen turns up in a small village to restore its run-down mill, its inhabitants are wary. Gunnar is big. He’s a bit odd. And, strangest of all, he howls wildly at night.

If Gunnar is different, then he must be mad, the villagers decide. Hounded from his home, he must find a way to survive the wilds of nature and the greater savagery of civilization.

The Howling Miller is a fable of freedom and swimming against the societal current. The novel has been adapted for the stage and twice into a feature film, most recently in 2017.

“The Howling Miller has the feel of an ominous Hansel and Gretel-style bedtime story—part myth, part fable and part novel—a form that has a funny way of bypassing the head and directly affecting the animal instincts.”

LA TIMES

A wickedly funny satire about money, power, and the joys of small-town life.

Bridge engineer Akseli Jaatinen is tasked with replacing Kuusmäki’s rotten wooden bridge with a concrete one, on the very spot where, during the 1918 civil war, a bloody battle between the ‘whites’ and ‘reds’ took place – an episode whose memory continues to divide the residents of the village.

The parish council holds a grudge against Jaatinen and do everything they can to stop him completing the project on time. But the feisty Finn refuses to surrender.

“The author concocts situational comedy highlighted by dead-pan, sometimes black humour, the kind familiar in the American Middle West.”

NEW YORK TIMES

TOVE JANSSON (1914-2001)

Finnish-Swedish writer and artist, achieved worldwide fame as the creator of the Moomins. Already admired in Nordic art circles as a painter, cartoonist and illustrator, she would go on to write a series of classic novels and short stories. She remains Scandinavia’s best-loved author.

The True Deceiver

(Den ärliga bedragaren)

First published in Swedish 1982 / 208 pp.

Everybody’s talking about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives with her simpleminded brother and a dog she refuses to name. Anna, an elderly children’s book illustrator, ventures out from her large, empty house only in spring to paint exquisitely detailed forest scenes. Anna has something Katri wants – and by the time spring arrives, the two women are caught in a conflict that threatens the equilibrium of the whole village.

The Summer Book

(Sommarboken)

First published in Swedish 1972 / 160 pp.

An elderly artist and her six-yearold granddaughter Sophia spend the summer together on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. They wander the island, having philosophical conversations of all kinds, talking about death, or how best to dive into water. They fight. They curse. They have adventures, building things and breaking into the new summer house on a neighbouring island, outraged that the businessman who built it doesn’t leave the door open.  Written with clarity, brusque humour and wisdom, The Summer Book is a fresh, vivid and magical novel about seemingly endless summers of discovery.

The Summer Book feature film, starring Glenn Close in the lead, now showing in cinemas

The Listener

(Lyssnerskan)

First published in Swedish 1971 / 192 pp.

TRANSLATED INTO OVER 40 LANGUAGES TO DATE

The Listener was the first of Tove Jansson’s books to be published after the death of her mother, the point at which she declared the Moomin series over. This collection of short stories is different from Tove’s previous work; fragmentary, starting and stopping in the middle of things. Fascinatingly, the illustrator Edward Gorey appears in one of the stories saying: “It’s the unexpressed that interests me ... it’s a mistake to clarify everything.” This seems to aptly describe Tove’s writing.

The Field of Stones

(Stenåkern)

First published in Swedish 1984 / 108 pp.

A recently retired journalist leaves the city to spend the summer in the country with his two daughters. Tasked with writing the biography of the unpleasant ‘Y’, he soon finds his chronicle of this character’s life morphing into his own family’s troubled story. The darkness that surfaces is handled with Tove’s distinct humour and lightness of touch.

Fair Play

(Rent spel)

First published in Swedish 1989 / 152 pp.

Through a series of vignettes, we look in on the lives of two female artists, Mari and Jonna, who live on opposite sides of an apartment building, separated by an attic. They are each other’s closest friend, greatest critic, and lover. We encounter them lost in a fog, vacationing on a remote Finnish island, fishing, feeding the cat, or simply rearranging photos on a wall.

Tove’s whimsical yet philosophical prose about human generosity and respect perfectly echoes her signature subjects: work and love.

Sun City (Solstaden)

First published in Swedish 1974 / 160 pp.

This novella, about the inhabitants of a Florida retirement home, hints at the dark reality found behind a utopian vision. Alienation, abandonment and ageing foreshadow the spectre of death – with some people simply choosing to ignore it.

Letters from Klara (Brev från Klara)

First published in Swedish 1991 / 175 pp.

In this nimble, beautifully crafted yet disquieting collection of stories, Tove Jansson explores the complicated games and relationships between people, writing from the perspective of a bewildered young artist, a resilient child or an irascible elderly correspondent. Discomfiting encounters and periods of isolation can span decades, generations even. A simple letter can reveal as much of the sender as the receiver, and how easy it can be to misunderstand one another.

The Doll’s House (Dockskåpet)

First published in Swedish 1978 / 208 pp.

A collection of twelve short stories about obsession and ambition. Witty, sharp and often disquieting, these stories explore human nature and the way in which mysteries and uncertainty — even illness and danger — can have positive and magical potential. The stories share a recurring theme: what happens when artists and eccentrics, who hide away in the back corners of middle-class society, try to change their already difficult relationship with the world?

Messages: A selection of short

stories

(Meddelande)

First published in Swedish 1998 / 303 pp.

A marvellous collection of Tove Jansson’s prose, spanning most of the twentieth century and scattered with insights into beauty found in the everyday. Messages features several stories from A Sculptor’s Daughter as well as Tove’s later story collections.

Discover the new website, Instagram, and newsletter dedicated to the life and work of Tove Jansson at tovejansson.com

A

Sculptor’s Daughter

(Bildhuggarens dotter)

First published in Swedish 1968 / 192 pp.

Tove Jansson’s first book for adults captures her childhood memories, as she grew up in an early twentiethcentury Helsinki that was getting used to independence from Russian rule. This atmospheric book is filled with sharp observations on the mysteries of winter ice, the bonhomie of balaika parties, and the limitless excitement of Christmas viewed from beneath the tree. While Tove learns a lot from her father, her identity as a writer is formed partly in opposition to him — especially when it comes to the subject of women and art.

“Tove Jansson was one of the 20th century’s most brilliant, enigmatic prose writers.”

BOSTON GLOBE

Travelling Light

(Resa med lätt bagage)

First published in Swedish 1987 / 224 pp.

A collection of twelve short stories about journeys of different kinds: some inward, some outward, all with complicated, unpredictable characters observing their surroundings as travellers, or with the unfettered gaze of a child. Tove’s signature deftness of touch and imagination gives these stories a duality between light and darkness.

KAUKONEN (b. 1929 d. 1983) was a Finnish writer from a working class background. He worked as a warehouse assistant, construction worker, farmer, ironworker, and painter before becoming a writer. The author of three novels and various plays, dramatisations and novellas, Kaukonen received critical acclaim for his debut, The Clan, which won the Tampere City Literature Prize in 1963.

The Clan

(Klaani)

First published in Finnish by Weilin+Göös / 1963 / 397 pp.

Hailed as a timeless classic, The Clan is a Dostoyevskian novel about a working class family living on the margins of society where violence and deprivation overrule any attempts to forge a more virtuous path in life.

Following the Sammakko family, brothers Samuli, Benjamin and Leevi endure a hard-scrabble life where the Sammakkos and their loved ones balance their lives on the line between right and wrong. The counterforce is represented by the police - a clan of their own. Awakened to the intersection of society’s values and his own family’s choices, Aleksanteri Sammakko, the youngest son, realises the possibility of a better life. But the young hopeful of the family is drawn into fights and larceny.

Tauno Kaukonen received critical acclaim for a narrative power rarely seen in debuts, garnering him success and an immediate bestseller status in Finland at the time. In timelessly fresh and colourful language, coupled with its realistic narrative and expressive portrayal of humanity, The Clan remains as relevant as ever sixty years after its first publication.

“The Clan is not just any debut, but bold, cheerful and fantastic - and a surprisingly confident piece of work at that. The words flow and hurt; the subject matter and its handling is exceptional in its monstrous rogueishness.”

KAUPPALEHTI

“The Clan is a novel of skilful storytelling and expressive, vivid portrayal of humanity. It is a legend of the fringes, whose author has held an extraordinary breadth of imagination and skill in tying his rich material into a whole that is of interest and value.”

SUOMEN KUVALEHTI (1963)

“Tampere’s answer to Mark Twain.”

SOSIAALIDEMOKRAATTI (1963)

The novel was adapted into a feature film in 1984, directed by Mika Kaurismäki, with an award-winning original soundtrack composed by Anssi Tikanmäki. Most recently, it was adapted for the stage by Tampere Theatre in 2023. The novel has only ever been translated into Hungarian and Rights & Brands is pleased to be the first-ever foreign rights representation for the novel. A full English translation will be available soon.

READING MATERIAL

Finnish edition & PDF

Sample translation 50 pp. Synopsis

RIGHTS SOLD

All rights available

“... a very polished text and lively sentences.”

PEKKA PIIRTO, HELSINGIN SANOMAT (1963)

“What delights in Kaukonen’s novel, alongside the tremendous epic power development, is the author’s innate and unsentimental warmth, which creates a rare beautiful and luminous portrayal of young love as a wonderful adventure in the shadow of crime and danger and the foreboding of sad disappearances. It has also enabled Kaukonen, like Dostoyevsky, to bestow on bitter misery, on deep decay, on bad people, a piece of undeniable human dignity.”

CHRISTER KIHLMAN, DAGENS NYHETER (1964)

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