Missing by Karen Alvtgen

Karen Alvtgen is another terrific mystery writer from Scandinavia. Sibylla Forestenstrom,
32 years old, has been an invisible person for 15 years. All her belongings fit into her rucksack and she spends her days foraging for food and finding safe shelter. The daughter of well-to-do
parents, she has disappeared from the world.

Suddenly she becomes the most wanted person in Sweden when one of her schemes to find a
place to sleep goes awry and is she found in the wrong place at the wrong time. She is accused
of a brutal murder. When a second similar murder takes place, she finds herself in a desperate
situation. Staying alive and well in the streets of Stockholm is a challenge for a homeless
person at the best of times, but for Sibylla, it becomes an overwhelming task. Seemingly friendless, she meets a surprising ally. As Sybilla struggles to extricate herself, using money she has hoarded for a sanctuary for herself, we learn of the events of her life that lead to her estrangement with her family.. She finds she must take on the almost impossible task of solving the murders. And therein lies the danger. Great read.

Sun Storm by Asa Larsson

Asa Larsson, winner of Sweden's Best First Crime Novel, has written a spell-binding mystery set in the Lapland village of Kiruna. Sanna Strandgard finds her brother's mutilated body in
'Source of All Our Struggles Church', a revivalist church he helped to create. When Sanna is identified as a suspect, she calls her friend Rebecka Martensson, a tax attorney in Stockholm.
Rebecka left Kiruna years before under a cloud and dreads having to face her past. To save her
friend, Sanna, Rebecka returns and works through a conspiracy of deceit to confront a devious killer. The winter landscape, the aurora borealis, the village and it's people come alive in this intriguing mystery.

Son of Kahunsha by Anosh Irani

Ten year old Chamdi has spent his life in in orphanage in Bombay. He loves the smell of the rain, the red of the bougainvilleas and the statue of Jesus in the orphange prayer room.
He clings to a fantasy of Kahunsha "the city of no sadness" which is his Bombay. When he hears that the orphange will close, he decides go off on his own to explore the city of his dreams and to search for his long-lost father.

The Bombay he finds is dirty and mean. Desperate with hunger, Chamdi is taken in by two street children, Guddi and Sumdi, who lead him into the brutal life of the city's homeless and into the web of Bhai, the don who takes money the children earn.

When the three young people make a plan to escape the streets, the find themselves caught up
Hindu Muslim violence that engulfs the city. This is a story of the terrible reality of children in the streets in Bombay and the ways they find to cope with impossible circumstances.

By A Slow River Philippe Claudel

Retired French gendarme, Dadais, is haunted by the events that took place in a
small unnamed village in th winter of 1917. Close to the Western Front battlefields of World War , a ten year old girl is found in an icy river "slow river", strangled. The town's residents, curiously unmoved by the victims of the war that pass through their community, are stunned by the death of the beautiful child. Many years later, Dadais spends his days going over three deaths that occured at the same time: the little girl, Dadais wife, who died in childbirth and the suicide of the enchanting school mistress from the north. Was the right person convicted in the death of the little girl? What was the motivation for the school mistress' death? As Dadais struggles to make senses of it all, the circle of sadness widens. This is a dark beautifully written novel that has at it's heart, man's humanity to other men.