Harbour

On a winter trip home to the island of Domaro, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse at Gavasten. And Maja disappears. Leaving not even a footprint in the snow. Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to Domaro to confront his despair. He slowly realises that Maja's disappearance is not the first inexplicable tragedy to strike the islanders. Nor is everyone telling him all they know; even his own mother, it seems, is keeping secrets. And what is it about the sea? There's something very bad happening on Domaro. Something that involves the sea itself. Lindqvist serves up a masterful cocktail of suspense laced with bizarre humour. Harbour is also a heartbreaking study of loss and guilt and a novel whose epic climax pits the infinite force of nature against the implacable love of a father for his child.

John Ajvide Lindqvist is the author of Let the Right One In and Handling the Undead.