5 Nordic Thrillers to Read This Halloween

October 10, 2021

It’s the best time of year: spooky season!! The stretch of the year from Halloween through Christmas is always my favorite, and, coincidentally, I also think it’s the perfect time of year to dig into a great Scandinavian crime novel. While we may gravitate towards the chilling, snowy atmosphere of Scandinavian crime fiction during the winter months, the genre also has a lot to offer when it comes to sinister, supernatural-ish books that make for great Halloween reading! In today’s blog post, I wanted to combine two of my favorite things—Nordic Noir and Halloween—into one reading list perfect for spooky season. All the books featured in today’s blog post have an element of supernatural-ish chills to them, whether hints of ghosts and hauntings or elements of the occult and more. If you’re a fan of dark, brooding, slow-burning crime fiction and are looking for a book that ups the chill factor for your Halloween reading list, these books will be right up your alley. Read on for my picks for Nordic thrillers perfect for your spooky season to-read pile!

CBTB's Top 10 Crime Books of 2021 (So Far)

July 12, 2021

It’s hard to believe we are already more than halfway through 2021! This year has already delivered truly outstanding crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense books for us to devour, and today I wanted to round up a list of my favorite crime books published in the first half of the year! Whether you’re in the market for a chilling suspense story, a clever locked room mystery, or an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller, this list has a little something for you. From new releases by returning favorites (Riley Sager, C.J. Tudor, Ragnar Jonasson, and more!) to thrilling debuts and new-to-me authors, 2021 has given me some absolutely incredible crime books to sink my teeth into - and I hope that this list will help you find a new favorite crime book or two for yourself, too! As you can imagine it was very difficult to narrow this list down. When making my selections here, I focused on books that I haven’t been able to stop recommending to others and thinking about myself—books that have had the kind of staying power for me that we all look for in favorite reads. The books included on this list were published from January 1, 2021 through July 6, 2021; stay tuned, because I’ll be rounding up a list of my favorite crime books from the second half of 2021 - plus a definitive list of my favorite crime books of the whole year - when 2021 comes to a close. Without further ado, let’s dig into this rundown of my favorite crime books of 2021 so far!

Book Review: THE LOST VILLAGE by Camilla Sten

March 20, 2021

Camilla Sten’s outstanding debut thriller THE LOST VILLAGE has all the ingredients of a CBTB favorite. This chilling, horror-tinged story takes place in Sweden, following a compelling female protagonist as she embarks on a (possibly misguided) mission that feels like perfect fodder for your next favorite horror movie. THE LOST VILLAGE has been compared to films including The Blair Witch Project and Midsommar—high praise, to be sure, and praise that I actually felt this book completely deserved. In THE LOST VILLAGE, a documentary filmmaker travels with her crew to an abandoned mining town to begin gathering information and footage for her newest project. But as the group settles in and begins exploring, a series of bizarre and increasingly sinister events call into question just how abandoned the town really is… and whether they are actually welcome there. Blending the subtle sensibility of Scandinavian crime fiction with a plot that blends psychological thrills and horror to pitch-perfect effect, THE LOST VILLAGE is a thoroughly engrossing, read-with-all-the-lights-on book. I was fortunate enough to read a review copy of this stellar suspense novel back in January, and it became my first 5/5 star review of the new year. For readers who love sinister suspense stories with cinematic settings, and thrillers that incorporate elements of horror, THE LOST VILLAGE is a book you won’t want to miss.

CBTB's Most-Anticipated Early 2021 Crime Books

January 9, 2021

A new year is upon us, and it’s bringing with it some very exciting new crime, mystery, and thriller releases to devour! In today’s blog post, I’m rounding up my most-anticipated crime fiction releases publishing between January and March 2021. A few of these books I’ve already been fortunate enough to read, and the others are all on my TBR list as we head into the new year! From new psychological thrillers to suspense novels with horror movie-worthy plots to Nordic Noir and more, the first few months of 2021 have so many thrilling reads in store for us, and I hope this list will help you find a new book (or two, or three!) to look forward to in the coming months!

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