Ansuz by Malene Sølvsten

Part thriller, part fantasy, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the supernatural, murder mysteries, or Norse mythology.

For fans of The Raven Boys and American Gods.

Fantasy, crime, and Norse gods come together when it emerges that a series of bestial murders is connected with an ancient prophecy about the end of the world. Anne can see events from the past, and one night she glimpses an old and horrible murder: a red-haired girl is killed and a rune carved into her back. Shortly afterward someone begins killing red-haired girls in the same manner, and the rune is found on all of them. Suddenly the little town is full of strangers. They have mysterious powers, and are drawn to Anne, who isn’t used to being near other people. Several of the strangers want to help her, but it takes a long time before she knows which of them she can trust. Playing on such classic themes as good versus evil, the book is at once a fantasy, a thriller, and a coming-of-age story.

Malene Sølvsten made her debut in 2016 with the first volume of the fantasy trilogy 'Whisper of the Ravens' and was nominated for the Readers' Book Prize (Læsernes Bogpris) in the same year. The series quickly became a surprise success and bestseller in Denmark, for which the author received the Edvard Prisen, awarded annually by the Danish Library Association, in 2018. An economist by training, she lives with her family in Copenhagen, where she now works as a full-time author.

Translator Adrienne Alair is a literary translator working from Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish into English. She studied Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh and has lived in Sweden and Denmark. She is now based in Charlotte, North Carolina.