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Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Northern Europe

• Scandinavia
• Great Britain
• Ireland

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  Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A bleak, quiet crime novel set in Reykjavik which is the first in Indridason's prize-winning Detective Erlendur series. Erlendur, another miserable yet determined crime fighter cut from the Wallandar mould, must uncover the story behind a corpse found in a Reykjavik flat.

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  Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason

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  Our favourite Icelandic crime writer brings us a thriller altogether more intriguing and pacy than most. Hidden beneath an Icelandic glacier is a German bomber plane and the US government will do anything to keep its original mission a secret.

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  Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

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  A masterpiece in subtlety and in expressing the heart-break of missed opportunities, a butler recalls his younger life working in an English stately house before the war, before the demise of the English aristocracy and recalls his housekeeper, Miss Kenton. A beautifully-written guide to English reserve.

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  Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen

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  Jacobsen's 1880 classic follows the aspiring poet of its title through various encounters with strong-willed women, as he grapples along the way with romanticism and realism, faith and reason. Revered by the likes of Rilke, Ibsen, Mann and Hesse, this is nothing short of a masterpiece.

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  The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

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  Funny yet devastating, this novel explores the ties between love and envy, friendship and betrayal, through the prism of Judaism.

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  Fair Play by Tove Jansson

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  A tender autobiographical love story, quiet but discreetly radical, that sings with the intricacies and intimacies of two lives lived together.

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  Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

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  Jerome's comic masterpiece describes the adventures of three Victorian men making their way along the river Thames.

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  The Dubliners by James Joyce

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  Fifteen short stories which are a gentle introduction to the work of James Joyce and an unflinching portrayal of middle-class Dublin life. We meet priests, schoolboys, students, criminals, alcoholics and socially mobile landladies in these finely crafted tales.

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  Unseen by Mari Jungstedt

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  Sweden's holiday island of Gotland is the scene of a grisly murder in this impressive debut. Jungstedt wields an icy dispassion reminiscent of Mankell at his best.

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  Unknown by Mari Jungstedt

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  Chilling fiction from another great Scandanavian crime writer. Inspector Knutas investigates the case of a missing archaeologist from a Viking site. When the decapitated body of a horse is found in a neighbouring field he begins to suspect ancient Viking rituals are behind the mystery.

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  The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberol

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  The life of a quiet, shy woman is thrown into turmoil when her estranged friend leaves her a key to a public locker in Copenhagen and begs her to take care of its contents. Inside a suitcase in the locker is a three-year-old boy: naked, drugged, but alive. Tight prose, believable characters and an urgent social conscience make this a must for fans of Scandinavian crime fiction.

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  The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

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  A coming-of-age novel based on Hanif Kureishi's own experiences growing up in suburban London in the 1980s. Funny, absurd and embarrassing as all tales of teenage angst should be and one of the first literary representations of a modern, multicultural London.

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  The Ice Princess by Camille Lackberg

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  Another bestselling crime novel from the unbeatable Scandinavians, it is the first of Lackberg's novels to be translated. A girl is found in a frozen bath with her wrists slashed; an apparent suicide. Her childhood friend and the local detective Hedstrom are unconvinced and start digging in the local community.

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  The Savage Altar by Asa Larsson

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  A disturbing sacrifice in a church in the wastes of Northern Sweden results in the victim's sister becoming the prime suspect. Larsson's thriller is gripping and rather terrifying too.

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  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

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  The late Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has been a colossal worldwide hit, and this first volume lives up to the hype. An absorbing and idiosyncratic thriller with a splendid heroine, this is a brilliantly written and compelling novel.,

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  Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

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  Written in 1928 but banned in the UK until 1960 due to the scandalous nature of its content, it tells the story of Constance Chatterley, her impotent husband and her passionate affair with the gamekeeper. D. H. Lawrence explores themes of physical and spiritual union, class and individualism.

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  Under The Glacier by Halldor Laxness

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  Another gem from Laxness, at once earthy and otherworldly, this novel tells of an eccentric Icelandic community that regards itself as the centre of the world. A luminous and hilarious tale of mythic profundity.

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  The Fish Can Sing by Halldor Laxness

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  A beautifully tender coming-of-age story of a boy and a nation dragged unwillingly into the modern world. Alfgrimur's idyllic fisherman's existence is challenged when he meets Iceland's most famous singer, Gardar Holm, who encourages him to aim for the 'one true note'.

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  The Atom Station by Halldor Laxness

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  First published in 1948, this is an astonishing and powerful satire inspired by the American attempt to establish a NATO airbase on Icelandic soil in the wake of WWII. Laxness's humble peasant narrator emerges as the one obstinate reality in an unreal climate of political posturing. Brilliant.

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  Independent People by Halldor Laxness

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  Truly one of the finest novels we have ever read, 'Independent People' justly earned Laxness the Nobel Prize. It tells of Bjartur, a stubborn sheepfarmer in the remote Icelandic north, determined to maintain his independence at any cost. Combining fierce social critique with lyrical pastoralism and a deeply moving family drama, this wonderful book cannot be recommended strongly enough.

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  Hash by Torgny Lindgren

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  'Hash' is that rare thing: a great Swedish novel that isn't a thriller. It is instead a bizarre and beguiling tale of two men in search of the finest hash - a culinary treat whipped up from an assortment of grains and entrails. Their adventures are narrated in a faux-naive style by a 107-year-old reporter in the midst of his own existential crisis... Unique and brilliant.

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  A Man of Parts by David Lodge

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  In his last biographical novel, Author! Author!, Lodge depicted Henry James as he struggled to address his legacy. Here he imagines the equally conflicted, though infinitely less repressed, H.G. Wells at the end of his life. A man who threw himself into socialist politics at a young age only to find the pull of fame and affluence irresistible, who believed wholeheartedly in free love and yet remained a staunch feminist; Wells is revealed as a fascinating, strangely likeable, bundle of contradictions. Thoroughly enjoyable.

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  Naive. Super by Erlend Loe

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  A charming, whimsical story of a young Norwegian man and his struggle to find meaning in life. Brief but delightfully unaffected.

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  Icelander by Dustin Long

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  A giddy fusion of self-conscious contemporary American fiction, classic murder mystery and Icelandic folklore that works surprisingly well.

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  West Highland Tales by Fitzroy Maclean

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  A native Highlander, Fitzroy Maclean collects together 26 of his favourite local tales from 'Deirdre of the Sorrows' to spine chilling ghost stories.