‘The Mire’ published in Sweden
Stenträsk, 1990
A note left on the kitchen table.
Love, I’ve gone to pick some cloudberries. Gotta get out of the apartment. Markus is at Karin’s.
And then the star at the bottom right corner, the one that looked like the scar from her c-section. Helena’s signature.
Darkness fell, but Helena and the baby never came home.
It was the sound of the insects that guided the rescue team, the dull hum of thousands of blood-sucking mosquitoes.
The baby girl had since long stopped screaming. Ants crawled in and out of her mouth. They took her for dead, everything else seemed inconceivable, but when dog handler Petterson lifted her up, she let out a tiny whimper. The child survived, but not Helena. She was and remained missing. Her body was never recovered. She was never heard from again. The cold mire became her grave.
Wiking Stormberg never got over the loss of his wife. He lived only for his children and his job at the Stenträsk police force, and became obsessed with mires.
Decades pass by. Half a life.
But then one Friday afternoon, in August 2020, a letter lands in the mailbox of Markus, Wiking and Helena’s son. A threat, or perhaps a warning, written in Helena’s handwriting and signed with her symbol: the star.
Wiking must ask himself if he’s going crazy, if he’s seeing ghosts, or if some external force is threatening him and his family – and if so, who or what.
The Mire is a standalone sequel to The Polar Circle, Liza Marklund’s critically acclaimed and best-selling return to the crime genre.
‘The Devil’s Grip’ No. 5 in Sweden
Lina Wolff’s just published The Devil’s Grip enters the official Swedish bestseller list for hardcover fiction at No. 5 this week.
Michelle Yeoh, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander and more join the cast of the ‘The Electric State’
Actors Michelle Yeoh, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander, Brian Cox and Jenny Slate are set to join the already impressive cast of the Russo Brother’s adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s The Electric State, starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.
Production is set to start this fall.
Read the full article in Deadline by clicking “Read More” below.
Anders de la Motte and Måns Nilsson No. 1 in Sweden
Anders de la Motte and Måns Nilsson’s Death Goes Antiquing, the second installment of the bestselling Österlen Murders, comes in at No. 1 on the official Swedish bestseller list for hardcover fiction for the month of July. The first installment, A House to Die For, grabs the No. 1 spot on the paperback list.
New Title: ‘The Devil’s Grip’
“At what time does everything derail? A few weeks later, she will try to map the course of events, try to understand at what moment the compass loses its northern position.”
A woman arrives in Florence where everything seems strange and overwhelming to her. The tile roofs, the church towers, all the loving couples. The man she has met. She thinks that she herself comes from a very barren area, has a lot to learn, and that he may be the one who thaws the solid-frozen soil within her. This is the story of the two, of their bodies and minds. About her grip on him, and his increasingly tight grip on her. The devil’s grip.
‘The Hanging Sun’ to close Venice International Film Festival
The Hanging Sun, a Sky Original film adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s novel Midnight Sun, will close the 79th Venice International Film Festival on 10th September.
The story follows hitman Jon, who is on the run after betraying Oslo’s biggest crime lord: the Fisherman. Fleeing to an isolated corner of Norway so far north that the sun never sets, Jon hopes to find sanctuary hiding out in a shepherd’s cabin in the wilderness. But the midnight sun is slowly driving Jon to insanity. And then he discovers that the Fisherman’s men are getting closer…
Directed by Francesco Carrozzini and written by Stefano Bises, the film features performances from Alessandro Borghi (Devils), Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey), Sam Spruell (The North Water), Frederick Schmidt (Angel Has Fallen), Raphael Vicas (Grantchester), with Peter Mullan (My Name is Joe) and Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) and will air on Sky Cinema later this year.
New Title: ‘Lucid Dreams: A User’s Manual’
There is something disturbing lurking in the periphery in Johanna Holmström’s short stories. Silja hides a morbid secret in her freezer, Desiré secretly wishes that she would turn into a jellyfish and Julia arrives at Barnträdgården when the last birds fall from the sky.
The human destinies are skillfully intertwined. Time ticks relentlessly. Finland is on the brink of societal change, climate crises and pandemics in the 21st century – but in the 22nd century, artificial intelligence has almost taken over and built artificial cities to protect humanity. Man’s capacity for goodness is sadly limited – new life forms may cope better.
Johanna Holmström’s Lucid Dreams: A User’s Manual is a collection of short stories about fear, human relationships, evil and the surprising love that leads you to the light.
Anders de la Motte and Måns Nilsson on the Swedish bestseller lists
Anders de la Motte and Måns Nilsson’s Death Goes Antiquing, the second installment of the bestselling Österlen Murders, comes in at No. 5 on the official Swedish bestseller list for hardcover fiction this week. The first installment, A House to Die For, grabs the No. 3 spot on the paperback list for the second consecutive week.
Netflix lands Russo brothers’ adaptation of Stålenhag’s ‘The Electric State’
Netflix has successfully acquired the rights to the film adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s graphic novel titled The Electric State, which will be directed by Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo. The screenplay is written by Endgame scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and leading the sci-fi drama film is Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, who has been attached to the project since 2020.
The film is set in a retro-futuristic past, where an orphaned teenager (Brown) traverses the American West with a sweet but mysterious robot and an eccentric drifter in search of her younger brother. Production is scheduled to begin this fall.
Photo: Jeffery Richt
Anders de la Motte’s ‘End of Summer’ becomes Viaplay Original drama
Viaplay will adapt the bestselling work of Swedish crime writer Anders de la Motte for the screen. The psychological thriller End of Summer, based on de la Motte’s hit novel of the same title, will premiere exclusively as a Viaplay Original in 2023 with an all-star cast to be revealed in due course. Written by Björn Carlström (Jägarna) and Stefan Thunberg (Wallander), End of Summer is directed by Jens Jonsson (Young Wallander) and Henrik Georgsson (The Bridge), and is produced by Harmonica Films with SF Studios and Film i Skåne as co-producers.
On a summer’s evening in 1984, a five-year-old boy vanishes in rural southern Sweden. The police investigation fails to find the truth, leaving behind rumours, suspicion and a grieving family. Twenty years later, the boy’s older sister Vera is leading a group therapy session in Stockholm, when a young man describes a strangely familiar childhood memory of a disappearance. A shaken Vera travels home to her fractured family to uncover, once and for all, what really happened in the summer that never ended.
Anders de la Motte: “It’s incredibly exciting that End of Summer will become a TV series. I’ve worked on this with Harmonica Films for a long time, and with Viaplay we’ve now made it happen. End of Summer is my first book to be filmed, and for personal reasons the story is very close to my heart. I’ve read the script and seen the cast list, and I’m very confident that this will be something really special.”
Filippa Wallestam, Viaplay Group Chief Content Officer: “Anders de la Motte’s novels have thrilled readers in more than 30 countries – and his compelling blend of suspense, psychology and character development will translate beautifully to the screen. The talents on both sides of the camera for this project are exceptional. Viewers across the Nordic region and internationally can already add End of Summer to their calendar as one of the highlights of Viaplay’s incredible slate for the coming years.”
Filming of the six-part series will begin shortly in and around Helsingborg in Sweden. End of Summer is produced by Harmonica Films’ Per Janérus, with Tim King at SF Studios and Helena Larand at Viaplay Group as executive producers. Worldwide sales are handled by Viaplay Content Distribution.