A burnt-out writers’ retreat at a grand hotel is interrupted by a murder mystery in this metafictional, meticulously crafted whodunit from internationally bestselling author Joël Dicker. One night in December, a corpse is discovered in Room 622 of the Hotel Verbier, a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps. The murder is never solved. Years later, Joël Dicker, Switzerland’s most famous writer, flees to Verbier to recover from a breakup, mourn the death of his longtime publisher, and begin his next novel. Little does Joël know that his page-turning expertise will prove essential when he assumes a new role: detective. Meanwhile, Macaire Ebezner is set to succeed as president of the largest private bank in Switzerland. The succession captivates the media, but the bank’s board, including a certain Lev Levovitch “Geneva’s Gatsby” are not as charmed by the heir apparent, and Macaire’s race to the top soon becomes a race against time…A European phenomenon, The Enigma of Room 622 is a matryoshka doll of intrigue, built with the precision of a Swiss watch. Joël Dicker presents a diabolically addictive thriller whose twists and turns no reader will see coming.
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Olga
Abandoned by her parents, Olga is raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village around the turn of the 20th century. Smart and precocious, endearing but uncompromising, she fights against the prejudices of the time to find her place in a world that sees women as second-best. When Olga falls in love with Herbert, a local aristocrat obsessed with gaining all the power, glory and greatness the modern age can provide, her life is irremediably changed. Their love goes against all odds and encounters many obstacles, entwined with the twisting paths of German history, leading us from the late 19th to the early 21st century, from Germany to Africa and the Arctic, from the Baltic Sea to the German south-west. Unfolding across centuries, Olga is an epic romance, and a wrenching tale of devotion to a restless man in a fateful moment of great rebellion. Though Olga lives her life within the margins of others, her magnetic presence breathes vivid life into these pages. Told in three distinct parts—which brilliantly shift from different points of view to the epistolary form—Schlink paints a full portrait of a singular woman’s complex life.
The Teller of Secrets
In this stunning debut novel—a tale of self-discovery and feminist awakening—a feisty Nigerian-Ghanaian girl growing up amid the political upheaval of late 1960s postcolonial Ghana begins to question the hypocrisy of her patriarchal society, and the restrictions and unrealistic expectations placed on women.