THE BOOKS
The critically acclaimed Roy & Castells series, including BLOCK 46, KEEPER and BLOOD SONG, has won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards, and is now published in more than twenty countries.
A TV adaptation is currently underway in a French, Swedish and UK co-production.
L'île de Yule
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ISBN-978-2-7021-8177-5
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Le coeur battant, Emma Lindahl cogne à la porte du manoir dressé sur une petite île au large de Stockholm. Experte en art, elle doit procéder à l’inventaire des biens de la famille Gussman, quatrième plus grande fortune de Suède. L’île et son manoir ont une réputation sulfureuse depuis que, neuf ans plus tôt, une adolescente a été découverte pendue à un arbre du domaine, tuée dans des conditions affreuses.
Son assassin n’a jamais été retrouvé.
Emma se rend vite compte que son travail va lui prendre des mois, seule dans ces immenses pièces où elle ne croise jamais personne, car les Gussman ont expressément refusé de la voir et lui imposent des horaires stricts. Bien qu’elle ne soit pas impressionnable, l’ambiance ici lui glace le sang.
C’est alors qu’une nouvelle jeune fille est découverte, morte, dans la mer gelée, et tout laisse penser qu’elle a été victime du même tueur…
THE BLEEDING
New book available in September 2022!
Published by Orenda Books and translated by David Warriner
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Queen of French Noir, Johana Gustawsson returns with the first in a startling new series – a dark, horrifying, powerful historical thriller with an extraordinary mystery at its heart and three women pushed so far beyond breaking point, they have only one way out…
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1899, Belle Époque Paris. Lucienne’s two daughters are believed dead when her mansion burns to the ground, but she is certain that her girls are still alive and embarks on a journey into the depths of the spiritualist community to find them.
1949, Post-War Québec. Teenager Lina’s father has died in the French Resistance, and as she struggles to fit in at school, her mother introduces her to an elderly woman at the asylum where she works, changing Lina’s life in the darkest way imaginable.
2002, Quebec. A former schoolteacher is accused of brutally stabbing her husband – a famous university professor – to death. Detective Maxine Grant, who has recently lost her own husband and is parenting a teenager and a new baby single-handedly, takes on the investigation.
Under enormous personal pressure, Maxine makes a series of macabre discoveries that link directly to historical cases involving black magic and murder, secret societies and spiritism … and women at breaking point, who will stop at nothing to protect the ones they love…
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Blood Song
Roy & Castells III
ISBN-978-1-912374-81-6
A terrifying, vivid and riveting serial-killer thriller that sweeps from modern-day London to Sweden, and back into the past, to the shocking atrocities of Franco's dictatorship in Spain . . .
Spain 1938: The country is wracked by civil war, and as Valencia falls to Franco's brutal dictatorship, Republican Teresa witnesses the murders of her family. Captured and sent to the notorious Las Ventas women's prison, Teresa gives birth to a daughter who is forcibly taken from her.
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Falkenberg, Sweden, 2016: A wealthy family is found savagely murdered in their luxurious home. Discovering that her parents have been slaughtered, Alienor Lindbergh, a new recruit to the UK's Scotland Yard, rushes back to Sweden and finds her hometown rocked by the massacre. Profiler Emily Roy joins forces with Alienor and her colleague, true-crime writer Alexis Castells, and they soon find themselves on the trail of a monstrous and prolific killer, in an investigation that takes them from the Swedish fertility clinics of the present day back to the terror of Franco's rule, and the horrifying events that took place in Spanish orphanages under its rule...
Keeper
Roy & Castells II
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ISBN-978-1-912374-05-2​
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A breathless new thriller from the Queen of French Noir, sequel to the international bestseller BLOCK 46 and next in the award-winning Roy & Castells series.
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Murders in London and Sweden lead the team back to Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel . . .
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Whitechapel, 1888: London is bowed under Jack the Ripper's reign of terror.
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London 2015: A woman's body is found mutilated in a forest, her wounds identical to those of the Tower Hamlets victims. With the man arrested for the Tower Hamlets crimes already locked up, do the new killings mean he has a dangerous accomplice, or is a copy-cat serial killer on the loose.
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Profiler Emily Roy and true-crime writer Alexis Castells again find themselves drawn into an intriguing case, with personal links that turn their world upside down...
Block 46
Roy & Castells I
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ISBN-978-2-8112-1829-4
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A multi-layered, sweeping and evocative thriller that heralds a stunning new voice in French Noir.
WINNER of Balai de la Découverte 2016 and Nouvelle Plume D'Argent 2016
First in the award winning Roy & Castells series
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Falkenberg. Sweden. The mutilated body of talented young jewellery designer, Linnea Blix, is found in a snow-swept marina.
Hampstead Heath, London. The body of a young boy is discovered with similar wounds.
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Buchenwald concentration camp, 1944. In the midst of the hell of the Holocaust, Erich Ebner will do anything to see himself as a human again.
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Are the two murders the work of a serial killer, and how are they connected to shocking events at Buchenwald?
​Emily Roy, a profiler on loan to Scotland Yard from the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, joins up with Linnea's friend, French true crime writer Alexis Castells, to investigate the puzzling case. They travel between Sweden and London, and then deep into the past, as a startling and terrifying connection comes to light.