Materials from Sweden
Anon is a twelve-year-old loner. Zarah is a beautiful seventeen-year-old caught up in a sexual relationship. Nils is a twenty-year-old college student searching for the meaning of life and death. Each character’s obsessive fantasy overwhelms their everyday lives.These three are catalysts in each others’ lives and when they finally meet, each begins to draw the others into the real world, but things are still left uncertain at the end of the novel.
A cruel and greedy king prizes a pearl necklace above all, but the kind-hearted young woman who becomes his wife gives the pearls away one by one to help the poor.
12-year-old Joel lives with his father in the cold northern part of Sweden. At night he often sneaks out of the house to look for a lonely dog he has seen from his window. On the bridge across the icy river he starts a secret society and has adventures. But one night he discovers that his father’s bed is also empty, and so he will have to come to terms with his father’s newfound love.
Joel will soon be 12, and he thinks nothing is going on in the small community where he lives. But he’s wrong. One day, an incident that could easily have been a catastrophe turns into a miracle. Now Joel believes he owes the world a good deed, to prove that he deserved what might have been divine intervention. He thinks up an elaborate scheme, but it doesn’t go as anticipated. Even though his heart is in the right place, feelings are hurt. If he confesses what he’s done and why, will things be put right again?
Readers who met Joel Gustafson, his father, and their friends in A Bridge to the Stars will follow, with appreciation, Henning Mankell’s shrewd depiction, in this companion novel, of the surprising changes in Joel’s existence. Mankell deftly explores Joel’s self-discovery, his realization that lives can be altered in a single moment, and his new understanding that a choice between telling the truth and keeping silent can make all the difference.
Will’s uncle has sent him a mysterious and gigantic package! All Will’s friends help him to carry it home, and stay to find out what’s inside.
Junk is the world’s best free stuff. Anybody who’s part detective and part collector can put together a collection in no time. Jake really knows his junk. His house is filled with the most amazing collections of it. Andy wants a collection of his own, which is why he goes to Jake’s Junk Collector School.
Mini Mia loves her Uncle Tommy. They hang out in coffee bars, go for walks, swim and do other fun stuff. But one day Fergus appears in her uncle’s kitchen. Mini Mia does not want to share Tommy with his new boyfriend. She thinks Fergus should go back to where he came from in Scotland. But Fergus doesn’t disappear that easily.
It’s a quiet evening at Hedgehog’s house, until there’s a squeak at the gate. Someone’s outside who wants to come in. It’s dark and the hour is late. It’s someone who’s lost and wants to go home, someone who can’t find the way. “Come in,” invites Hedgehog, “come in and sit down. Tomorrow will be a new day.”
Deep in the middle of Africa, at the river’s edge where the hippos live, life is pleasant. The big hippos like to relax at the beach, while the little hippos love diving. Mrs. Hippopotamus enjoys having quiet time all to herself, especially when bathing. She even has her beach, where she takes a bath in peace. But then a monkey shows up and disturbs her solitude. What is Mrs. Hippopotamus to do? She comes up with a fantastic solution, one, as it turns out, that all the hippos like.
One ordinary Monday morning in May, Hilmer Eriksson walks into his high school classroom and discovers that he has become invisible. No one can see him, no one can hear him. In fact, a police detective named Harald Fors arrives at school that very morning to investigate Hilmer’s disappearance. The boy has no idea what’s going on, but he’s frightened, and he’s starting to forget things – including what happened to him a few nights earlier. Detective Fors suspects foul play, and those suspicions lead him – trailed by the ghostlike presence of Hilmer – to a group of skinheads. These unpopular, disaffected kids are vocal about their Nazi sympathies. But how does Hilmer’s life intersect with theirs? As Fors scours the village and interviews area residents for clues, he begins to piece together the puzzle of Hilmer’s disappearance. Meanwhile Hilmer waits, silently, to discover what has happened to him.