На уединенном, окруженном лесами хуторе совершается чудовищное по жестокости убийство старика – бывшего полицейского. В расследование по собственной инициативе включается Стефан Линдман, коллега убитого, ожидающий операции по удалению раковой опухоли. Но, пытаясь таким образом убежать от собственного страха и смятения, он неожиданно для себя открывает иной ужас: оказывается, совсем рядом с ним и убийца, мстящий за зло, совершенное полвека назад, и нынешние наследники этого зла.

Зима на початку XXI століття. Старший чоловік піднімається з ополонки й зауважує на кризі жінку з ходунцями. Хто вона? Як вона сюди потрапила?

Так починається історія про Фредріка та Гаррієт. Колись давно вони були безтямно закохані. А тепер Фредрік живе на невеликому острові на краю архіпелагу в оточенні тиші, пса, кота й мурашника у вітальні. Страшна таємниця, фатальна помилка перетворила його на відлюдкуватого самітника. Важко хвора Гаррієт вимагає, щоб Фредрік виконав дану їй колись обіцянку. Вони вирушають у спільну, подекуди приголомшливу подорож, у якій їм судилося зустріти чимало загадкових людей, які ховаються під поверхнею спокійної шведської реальності.

У романі «Італійські черевики» Геннінґа Манкелля смерть і біль тісно переплітаються з радістю й любов’ю до життя.

На исходе холодной январской ночи в шведской деревушке произошло кошмарное массовое убийство. Судья Биргитта Руслин, узнав, что среди погибших стариков были и приемные родители ее покойной матери, заинтересовалась расследованием, однако полицейские не принимают ее всерьез. Случайно Биргитте удалось напасть на «китайский след» в этом загадочном деле, а вскоре судьба привела ее в Пекин, где она мечтала побывать еще со времен своей бунтарской юности…

Археолог Луиза Кантор с раскопок в Греции возвращается в Стокгольм. Не дозвонившись сыну, она едет к нему домой и находит его мертвым. Все указывает на самоубийство, но Луиза и ее бывший муж Арон уверены, что Хенрик убит.Поиски приводят Луизу в запретный мир, где циничные дельцы в поисках наживы проводят опыты над зараженными СПИДом людьми. Вскоре Луиза понимает, что, как и Хенрик, она рискует жизнью.Для тех, кто пустился в это путешествие, нет пути назад...

Летней ночью накануне Иванова дня в Хагестадском национальном парке собирается группа молодежи. Две девушки и парень, нарядившиеся в костюмы восемнадцатого века, пьют вино и распевают старинные застольные песни. В разгар веселья кто-то методично расстреливает из-за кустов всех троих. Трупы молодых людей бесследно исчезают, а через два месяца вдруг обнаруживаются на месте убийства. Что это – выходка сумасшедшего или хладнокровный вызов, брошенный полиции, которая не в состоянии раскрыть преступление?

Лидер религиозной секты а Гайане провоцирует массовое самоубийство. Ему удается убить самого себя и всех своих последователей, кроме одного. Позже в лесу в Истаде полицейские обнаруживают отсеченную голову и кисти рук со сцепленными словно в молитве пальцами. Рядом они находят Библию, все страницы которой испещрены поправками. Взявшись за расследование этого преступления, Линда Валландер, дочь известного полицейского Курта Валландера, вступает в борьбу с группой религиозных фанатиков, возомнивших себя творцами Божьей воли на земле.

Застрелив при задержании человека, Курт Валландер впадает в депрессию и решает уйти из полиции. Когда давно знакомый ему адвокат просит Валландера разобраться в подозрительных обстоятельствах смерти его отца, тот категорически отказывается. Но вскоре самого адвоката убивают тремя выстрелами, и Валландер понимает, что совершил непростительную ошибку. Он возвращается к работе, чтобы расследовать уже двойное убийство. Однако начав охоту за преступником, инспектор сам становится объектом охоты.

Hanna Lundmark escapes the brutal poverty of rural Sweden for a job as a cook onboard a steamship headed for Australia. Jumping ship at the African port of Lourenço Marques, Hanna decides to begin her life afresh.

Stumbling across what she believes to be a down-at-heel hotel, Hanna becomes embroiled in a sequence of events that lead to her inheriting the most successful brothel in town. Uncomfortable with the attitudes of the white settlers, Hanna is determined to befriend the prostitutes working for her, and change life in the town for the better, but the distrust between blacks and whites, and the shadow of colonialism, lead to tragedy and murder.

Fredrik Welin is a seventy-year-old retired doctor. Years ago he retreated to the Swedish archipelago, where he lives alone on an island. He swims in the sea every day, cutting a hole in the ice if necessary. He lives a quiet life. Until he wakes up one night to find his house on fire.

Fredrik escapes just in time, wearing two left-footed wellies, as neighbouring islanders arrive to help douse the flames. All that remains in the morning is a stinking ruin and evidence of arson. The house that has been in his family for generations and all his worldly belongings are gone. He cannot think who would do such a thing, or why. Without a suspect, the police begin to think he started the fire himself.

In 1875 Hans Bengler, a young entomologist, leaves Sweden for the expedition of a lifetime to the Kalahari Desert where he hopes to find a previously undiscovered insect to name after himself and advance his career. Instead, after his long and arduous journey through the sands, he finds a small boy, whose tribe has been decimated by European raiders.

Accustomed to collecting specimens, Bengler decides to adopt the boy and names him Daniel. He takes the traumatised child home with him to Sweden and plans to ‘civilise’ him. But Daniel cannot slip into an alien culture, and a new life in the cold and snow, so easily. He yearns desperately for the desert and his real family, who visit him in his dreams. His only consolation comes from his friendship with a vulnerable young girl called Sanna, who is also an outsider in her community. But even this bond is destined to be violently broken, as Daniel’s isolation and increasing desperation lead to a chilling tragedy.

As well as an acute psychological depiction of the life of a child thrown into extraordinary circumstances, in Daniel the acclaimed writer Henning Mankell also gives us a compelling and disturbing story of the dangerous gaps and misunderstandings that can exist between individuals and cultures.

October 1914: the destroyer Svea emerges from the Stockholm archipelago bearing south-south-east. On board is Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, a naval engineer charged with making depth soundings to find a navigable channel for the Swedish navy. The engineer is fascinated by measurement, and his instinct for his profession is reflected in the comfortable domesticity he enjoys with his wife.

Close to the waters where soundings are taken Tobiasson-Svartman alights on a barren skerry, presumed uninhabited, and is surprised to discover there a young woman. Despite her almost feral appearance, something about her strikes him. The mission is a success and the Svea returns to Gothenburg. Tobiasson-Svartman, however, remains haunted by this chance encounter; his equilibrium has been disturbed, and he feels compelled to return.

In Depths Mankell confirms his status as a writer of great magnitude. By delving deep into the male psyche, he has produced a novel as tense and compelling as the Wallander series, but also powerful, moving and ultimately tragic.

Once a successful surgeon, Frederick Welin now lives in self-imposed exile on an island in the Swedish archipelago. Nearly twelve years have passed since he was disgraced for attempting to cover up a tragic mishap on the operating table. One morning in the depths of winter, he sees a hunched figure struggling towards him across the ice. His past is about to catch up with him.

The figure approaching in the freezing cold is Harriet, the only woman he has ever loved, the woman he abandoned in order to go and study in America forty years earlier. She has sought him out in the hope that he will honour a promise made many years ago. Now in the late stages of a terminal illness, she wants to visit a small lake in northern Sweden, a place Welin’s father took him once as a boy. He upholds his pledge and drives her to this beautiful pool hidden deep in the forest. On the journey through the desolate snow-covered landscape, Welin reflects on his impoverished childhood and the woman he later left behind. However, once there Welin discovers that Harriet has left the biggest surprise until last.

Hans Olofson is the son of a Swedish lumberjack. His childhood was unsettled: an alcoholic father, and a mother disappeared, only alive in old photographs. His adolescence was no easier as he lost both his best friend and his lover tragically. Alone and adrift, as a young man his only desire is to fulfil his lover’s dream and visit the grave of a legendary missionary who survived alone in the remote hills of Northern Zambia.

On reaching Africa, Olofson is struck by its beauty and mystery. After fulfilling his initial quest, an opportunity of employment in the region tempts him to stay. Time passes quickly. Though dismayed by the attitude of the white population to their adopted country, which is compounded by their vulnerability to alcohol and malaria, he is interested enough to take up sole responsibility for the farm he manages. For almost two decades Hans Olofson battles with a hostile environment and a placid, but resistant workforce.

Set in the 1970s and 1980s, The Eye of the Jeopard explores the relationship between the white farmers and their native workers. Through Olofson’s descent into near mental collapse it becomes clear that many years spent in a foreign land do not necessarily breed an understanding of its people: a handful of generations of white settlers cannot change a continent underpinned by myth and superstition. The Eye of Leopard is a first-rate and original psychological thriller delving deep into the mind of a man lost in an unknown world.

One cold January day the police are called to a sleepy little hamlet in the north of Sweden where they discover a savagely murdered man lying in the snow. As they begin their investigation they notice that the village seems eerily quiet and deserted. Going from house to house, looking for witnesses, they uncover a crime unprecedented in Swedish history.

When Judge Birgitta Roslin reads about the massacre, she realises that she has a family connection to one of the couples involved and decides to investigate. A nineteenth-century diary and a red silk ribbon found in the forest nearby are the only clues.

What Birgitta eventually uncovers leads her into an international web of corruption and a story of vengeance that stretches back over a hundred years, linking China and the USA of the 1860s with modern-day Beijing, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and coming to a shocking climax in London’s Chinatown.