Shadow

In a nondescript apartment block in Stockholm, most of the residents are elderly. Usually a death is a sad but straightforward event. But sometimes a resident will die and there are no friends or family to contact. This is when Marianne Folkesson arrives, employed by the state to close up a life with dignity and respect. Gerda Persson has lain dead in her apartment for three days before Marianne is called. When she arrives, she finds the apartment tidy and ordered. Gerda's life seems to have been quite ordinary. Until Marianne opens the freezer and finds it full of books, neatly stacked and wrapped in clingfilm, a thick layer of ice covering them. They are all by Axel Ragnerfeldt, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, with handwritten dedications to Gerda from the author. What story do these books have to tell, about Gerda, and more importantly about Ragnerfeldt, a man whose fame is without precedent in the nation's cultural life, but seldom gives interviews? Shadow is an utterly compelling novel about the lengths and depths people can be driven in order to achieve fame and acclaim, and the effect that this has on those closest to them. It is a story of dark family secrets, and the power of writing, involving murder, betrayal and the holocaust, which will keep readers gripped until its final thrilling revelations. As darkness falls on 10 May, 1975, a little boy stands alone on the steps of an amusement park. The park is about to close and everyone is leaving, except this child. He continues to stand there, not daring to move. He was been told to stay right where he is.Only no one is coming back for him. Why has he been abandoned, with only the briefest of notes to whoever finds him? And what connection do the events of this day have to the death of Gerda Persson thirty years later – a woman who leaves few clues to her life, apart from a freezer full of books? Shadow is an unputdownable story of dark secrets, murder and the depths to which the human mind will sink in order to protect its own . . . It is full of books, neatly stacked and wrapped in clingfilm, a thick layer of ice covering them - all by the same prize-winning author, all with handwritten dedications to Gerda.What story do these books have to tell?