Skip to main content

Editorial Content for Death of a Nightingale: A Nina Borg Novel

Contributors

Joe Hartlaub

Reviewer (text)

Joe Hartlaub

It is difficult enough to write a book by yourself, and it would seem doubly so with two in the mix. Think about it for a moment, and you will understand what I mean. That is but one element that makes the novels in the Nina Borg series so remarkable. Nina Borg is the creation of authors Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, and the books that form their canon --- THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE, INVISIBLE MURDER, and now DEATH OF A NIGHTINGALE, newly published in the United States --- are smooth and seamless collaborations from which a complex and prickly character has emerged. Read More

Teaser

When Natasha Doroshenko, a Ukrainian woman convicted of the attempted murder of her abusive boyfriend, escapes from police custody and desperately tries to locate her daughter in a refugee camp, Nina Borg, a big-hearted Red Cross nurse, comes to her aid. DEATH OF A NIGHTINGALE is a chilling tale filled with the dark memories of the Stalinist era.

Promo

Danish Red Cross nurse Nina Borg has been following Natasha Doroshenko's case for years now. Nina, who had tried to help Natasha leave her abusive Danish fiancé more than once, can't see the young Ukrainian mother as a vicious killer. But in her effort to protect Natasha's daughter and discover the truth, Nina realizes there is much she didn't know about this woman and her past.

About the Book

From the Nordic noir duo who brought you The New York Times bestseller THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE comes a chilling new thriller with a mystery 70 years in the making.

Nina. Natasha. Olga. Three women united by one terrifying secret. But only one of them has killed to keep it.

Natasha Doroshenko, a Ukrainian woman who has been convicted of the attempted murder of her Danish fiancé, escapes police custody on her way to an interrogation in Copenhagen's police headquarters. That night, the frozen, tortured body of Michael, the ex-fiancé, is found in a car, and the manhunt for Natasha escalates. It isn't the first time the young Ukrainian woman has lost a partner to violent ends: her first husband was also murdered, three years earlier in Kiev, and in the same manner: tortured to death in a car.
 
Danish Red Cross nurse Nina Borg has been following Natasha's case for several years now, since Natasha first took refuge at a crisis center where Nina works. Nina, who had tried to help Natasha leave her abusive fiancé more than once, just can't see the young Ukrainian mother as a vicious killer. But in her effort to protect Natasha's daughter and discover the truth, Nina realizes there is much she didn't know about this woman and her past. The mystery has long and bloody roots, going back to a terrible famine that devastated Stalinist Ukraine in 1934, when a 10-year-old girl with the voice of a nightingale sang her family into shallow graves.

Bob Brier

Read more »

The Returned

Links to http://jasonmottauthor.com/.

Longbourn

Links to http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/231492/longbourn/.

The Returned by Jason Mott

In their old age, Harold and Lucille have settled comfortably into life without their son, who died tragically at his eighth birthday party in 1966. But then one day, Jacob mysteriously appears on their doorstep --- still eight years old. All over the world, people's loved ones are returning from beyond. The Hargraves are forced to navigate a mysterious new reality and a conflict that threatens to unravel the very meaning of what it is to be human.

Read more »

The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles by Katherine Pancol

When her chronically unemployed husband runs off to start a crocodile farm in Kenya with his mistress, Joséphine Cortès is forced to maintain a stable family life while making ends meet on her meager salary as a medieval history scholar. When Joséphine’s sister, Iris, charms a famous publisher into offering her a lucrative deal for a 12th-century romance, she offers Joséphine a deal of her own: Joséphine will write the novel and pocket all the proceeds, but the book will be published under Iris’s name. All is well --- that is, until the book becomes the literary sensation of the season.

Read more »

The Lost Art of Mixing by Erica Bauermeister

Lillian and her restaurant have a way of drawing people together. Among the cast of characters are Al, the accountant who finds meaning in numbers and ritual; Chloe, a budding chef who hasn’t learned to trust after heartbreak; Louise, Al’s wife, whose anger simmers just below the boiling point; and Isabelle, whose memories are slowly slipping from her grasp. And there’s Lillian herself, whose life has taken a turn she didn’t expect.

Read more »

—

: Antoinette van Heugten, author of The Tulip Eaters

Nov 4, 2013

Question: Where did you find your inspiration for writing THE TULIP EATERS?

Antoinette van Heugten: My parents were Dutch and fought in the Dutch resistance during World War II. Although they did not speak of it often, as children we heard stories of how our grandmother hid a Jewish boy in the cellar, how my mother transported microfiche on her bicycle and how my father had blown up munitions depots. We also were made well aware of the hardships their families and others suffered during the five years of Nazi occupation, particularly the starvation conditions during the “Hongerwinter” toward the end of the war. As such, I have always had a personal as well as an historical fascination with that time period. My parents’ heroism, demonstrated when they were only teenagers, was my initial inspiration. Reading the diaries and letters of so many Dutch people during the war inspired me further.

—