Arctic Chill

In this new extraordinary thriller from Gold Dagger Award winner Arnaldur Indridason, the Reykjavik police are called on an icy January day to a garden where a body has been found: a young, dark-skinned boy is frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood. Erlendur and his team embark on their investigation and soon unearth tensions simmering beneath the surface of Iceland's outwardly liberal, multicultural society. Meanwhile, the boy's murder forces Erlendur to confront the tragedy in his own past. Soon, facts are emerging from the snow-filled darkness that are more chilling even than the Arctic night.

On an icy January day, the Reykjavik police are called to a block of flats where a body has been found in the garden: a young, dark-skinned boy, frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood. The discovery of a stab wound in his stomach extinguishes any hope that this was a tragic accident. Erlendur and his team embark on their investigation with little to go on but the news that the boy’s Thai half-brother is missing. Is he implicated, or simply afraid for his own life? The investigation soon unearths tensions simmering beneath the surface of Iceland’s outwardly liberal, multicultural society. The boy’s murder forces Erlendur to confront a tragedy in his own past. Soon, facts are emerging from the snow-filled darkness that are more chilling even than the Arctic night.

Murder in the workplace. A malcontented, hateful ex-employee wearing a black ski-mask crashes the offices of a high-tech electronics firm and murders his ex-manager in front of a group of shocked employees. He disappears into the early morning September arctic chill of Fairbanks, Alaska. The CEO brings in San Francisco private investigators Brandon Harrison and Tina Wolffe to investigate the senseless murder and apprehend the killer. The PIs’ initial investigation finds that witnesses of the shooting believe the killer is a Russian named Ivanov, laid-off a month earlier by the victim. A further investigation reveals that the Russian is innocent, but implicates several employees as the victim’s enemies…suspects in murder. Tina Wolffe and Brandon Harrison unveil a complex web of rage, jealousy, and tortured secrets as they close in on the murderer…who is desperately trying to escape their detection. He must stop the PIs at any cost, including murder…and Tina is his next victim.

Brrrr! Spend some time in the polar circle and learn how walruses stay warm, how seal pups survive on their own, and how some bears can sleep all winter! Each Groovy Tube comes with 15 miniature animals, 24 page fun fact book and a game! Readers will dig these books! Groovy Tubes offer more than just a book-they allow children to learn on many levels through reading and playing. An educational book, with fascinating facts, zany illustrations, and photographs or realistic art, provides the base of this three-tiered package. Activities at the back of the book and a game board folded into the box with fact-filled quiz cards will provide hours of fun. The play creatures in the spine tube extend the learning in a tactile way, as all components work together to familiarize children with the subject matter.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2018 The first instalment in the thrilling new crime series from worldwide bestseller Arnaldur Indridason THE PAST In wartime Reykjavík, a young woman is found strangled in a dangerous area known as ‘the shadow district’. An Icelandic detective and a member of the American military police are on the trail of a brutal killer. THE PRESENT An elderly man is discovered dead on his bed, smothered with his own pillow. Konrád, a retired detective, finds old newspaper cuttings in the man’s home reporting the shadow district murder. It’s a crime Konrád remembers, having grown up in the same neighbourhood. A MISSING LINK Why, after all this time, would an old crime resurface? How are these events connected across the decades? And will Konrád’s link to the past help him solve the case and finally lay the ghosts of wartime Reykjavík to rest? ‘Arnaldur Indridason introduces a new hero... Beautifully told’ The Times ‘An international literary phenomenon’ Harlan Coben

How the far North offered a different kind of terra incognita for the Renaissance imagination. European narratives of the Atlantic New World tell stories of people and things: strange flora, wondrous animals, sun-drenched populations for Europeans to mythologize or exploit. Yet, as Christopher Heuer explains, between 1500 and 1700, one region upended all of these conventions in travel writing, science, and, most unexpectedly, art: the Arctic. Icy, unpopulated, visually and temporally “abstract,” the far North—a different kind of terra incognita for the Renaissance imagination—offered more than new stuff to be mapped, plundered, or even seen. Neither a continent, an ocean, nor a meteorological circumstance, the Arctic forced visitors from England, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, to grapple with what we would now call a “non-site,” spurring dozens of previously unknown works, objects, and texts—and this all in an intellectual and political milieu crackling with Reformation debates over art's very legitimacy. In Into the White, Heuer uses five case studies to probe how the early modern Arctic (as site, myth, and ecology) affected contemporary debates over perception and matter, representation, discovery, and the time of the earth—long before the nineteenth century Romanticized the polar landscape. In the far North, he argues, the Renaissance exotic became something far stranger than the marvelous or the curious, something darkly material and impossible to be mastered, something beyond the idea of image itself.

Retired detective Konrad returns to a haunting cold case in The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason, the "undisputed King of the Icelandic thriller." —The Guardian (UK) A frozen body is discovered in the icy depths of Langjökull glacier, apparently that of a businessman who disappeared thirty years before. At the time, an extensive search and police investigation yielded no results—one of the missing man’s business associates was briefly held in custody, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him. Now the associate is arrested again and Konrad, the retired policeman who originally investigated the disappearance, is called back to reopen the case that has weighed on his mind for decades. When a woman approaches him with new information that she obtained from her deceased brother, progress can finally be made in solving this long-cold case. In The Darkness Knows, the master of Icelandic crime writing reunites readers with Konrad, the unforgettable retired detective from The Shadow District. This is a powerful and haunting story about the poisonous secrets and cruel truths that time eventually uncovers.

This volume identifies the main drivers of the current Sino-Russian relationship, assesses whether-and under what conditions-China and Russia would cooperate more extensively and effectively against American interests, and recommends U.S. policies that could prevent such an outcome. Most experts argue that economic interdependence, nuclear weapons, and the U.S. contribution to maintaining the global commons mean that China and Russia will generally accept U.S. military superiority and U.S. political supremacy in managing global affairs. An agreement between these two powerful countries to work against the United States, however, would greatly increase its vulnerabilities. Relations between the governments of China and Russia with the U.S. have worsened in past years. Identifying the various pathways, events, and political, economic, and military drivers that could shape the dynamics of the China-Russia relationship is of critical importance to U.S. security. This book examines the sources, nuances, and manifestations of the ongoing Sino-Russian relationship in order to recommend strategy and policy that could work to U.S. advantage. Written by an author who traveled extensively in both countries in order to conduct research and expert interviews for the work, the book covers the latest developments to include the major changes in Chinese foreign policy under President Xi Jinping and ongoing relations with Russian president Vladimir Putin.