2020
Laline Pauli. The Ice February 21, 2020
An electrifying story of friendship, power and betrayal by the bestselling, Baileys-prize shortlisted author of The Bees.
‘A memorable eco-thriller. This is a world of arms dealers, heroic arctic adventurers and power crazed captains of industry. And that’s just the ladies’ The Times
A frozen corpse emerges from a melting glacier and after three years of uncertainty, Sean Cawson can finally put the past behind him. Tom Harding, Sean’s friend of thirty years was lost in an accident and Sean was the last person to see him alive. Tom’s body is not the only secret hidden in the ice. As global businesses and global powers jostle for territory in this new, lawless frontier there are big opportunities for those with the courage – or mendacity – to seize them. And equally big risks. For years Sean has navigated these dangerous waters, loving the glamour and influence they bring. But as the inquest into Tom's death begins, the choices made by both men – in love and in life – are put on the stand. Soon everything Sean has believed about his friends, his position and himself is thrown into question.
Just how deep do the lies go? (Amazon)
Wendy Swallow. Searching for Nora: After A Doll's House
At the end of Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House, Nora Helmer walks away from her family and comfortable life. It is 1879, late on a winter's night in Norway. She's alone, with little money and few legal rights. Guided by instinct and sustained by will, Nora sets off on a journey that impoverishes and radicalizes her, then strands her on the harsh Minnesota prairie. She's searching for love, purpose, and her true self, but struggles to be honest in a hostile world.
Meanwhile, in 1918, a young university student tries to escape her family's bourgeois conformity as she unravels her grandfather's hidden shame and the fate of a shadowy feminist who vanished years earlier.
With this inventive work of historical fiction, Swallow answers a question that has dogged theater audiences for A Doll's House: whatever happened to Nora Helmer? Masterfully crafted and painstakingly researched, the twin story lines of Searching for Nora combine to tell a powerful tale of redemption as they unfold over four decades in the fjords of Norway and the unforgiving American frontier (Amazon)
Check out the Video of Wendy talking to the lodge in our video page.
Karin Fossum The Whisperer June 16
In this tense and twisty latest from Norway’s maven of crime, time shifts between Inspector Sejer’s interrogation of the accused Ragna Reigel and the shocking events that led up to her arrest. How did this lonely, quiet woman come to kill a man—or did she?
How did a lonely, quiet woman come to kill a man—or did she?
Ragna Riegel is a soft-spoken woman of routines. She must have order in her life, and she does, until one day she finds a letter in her mailbox with her name on the envelope and a clear threat written in block capitals on the sheet inside. With the arrival of the letter, and eventually others like it, Ragna’s carefully constructed life begins to unravel into a nightmare—threatened by an unknown enemy, paranoid and unable to sleep, her isolation becomes all the more extreme. Ragna’s distress does culminate in a death, but she is the perpetrator rather than the victim. (Amazon)
Helene Uri Clearing Out October 20
Winner of the Nadia Christensen Prize for translation from the American-Scandinavian Foundation
In a masterful blend of fiction and autobiography, a Norwegian novelist sends her character to the far north to learn what she can about their Sami ancestry
Inspired by Helene Uri’s own journey into her family’s ancestry, Clearing Out, an emotionally resonant novel by one of Norway’s most celebrated authors, tells two intertwining stories. A novelist, named Helene, is living in Oslo with her husband and children and contemplating her new protagonist, Ellinor Smidt—a language researcher, divorced and in her late thirties, with a doctorate but no steady job.
Intricate and beautifully constructed, Clearing Out offers a solemn reflection on how identities, like families, are formed and fractured and recovered as stories are told. In its depiction of the forgotten and the fiercely held memories among the Sea (sjø) Sami of northern Norway, the novel is a powerful statement on what is lost, and what remains in reach, in the character and composition of contemporary life. (Amazon)
Liv Arnesen and Ann Bancroft, Horizon is So Far: Two Women and Their Historic Journey Across Antarctica December 14
The extraordinary story of the first two women to cross Antarctica
The fascinating chronicle of Liv Arnesen and Ann Bancroft’s dramatic journey as the first two women to cross Antarctica, No Horizon Is So Far follows the explorers from the planning of their expedition through their brutal trek from the Norwegian sector all the way to McMurdo Station as they walked, skied, and ice-sailed for almost three months in temperatures reaching as low as -35°F, all while towing their 250-pound supply sledges across 1,700 miles of ice full of dangerous crevasses. Through website transmissions and satellite phone calls, Ann and Liv, two former schoolteachers, were able to broadcast their expedition to more than three million students in sixty-five countries to teach geography, science, and the importance of following your dreams. (Amazon)
