Laurie Thompson

Born in Ghana, West Africa, with one deformed leg, he was dismissed by most people--but not by his mother, who taught him to reach for his dreams. As a boy, Emmanuel hopped to school more than two miles each way, learned to play soccer, left home at age thirteen to provide for his family, and, eventually, became a cyclist. He rode an astonishing four hundred miles across Ghana in 2001, spreading his powerful message: disability is not inability. Today,...

Features a collection of amazing facts about strange things around us--featuring two strange-but true stories accompanied by one fictionalized tale. Reveals which are true and how the false stories often have their foundation in reality. Includes maps and color photographs.

February, 1991. A life raft washes ashore in Skåne carrying two dead men in expensive suits, shot gangland-style. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team determine that the men were Eastern European criminals. But what appears in Sweden to be an open-and-shut case soon plunges Wallander into an alien world of police surveillance, thinly veiled threats, and life-endangering lies.
When another murder is committed, Wallander must travel to Riga,

...

"Assorted unbelievable stories about people, places and events--most of which are true, some of which are not"--Provided by publisher.

Cold and poverty define Hanna Renstrom's childhood in remote northern Sweden, and in 1905, at nineteen, she boards a ship for Australia in hope of a better life. But none of her hopes--or fears--prepares her for the life she will lead. After two brief marriages, she finds herself a widow twice over, and the owner of a bordello in Portuguese East Africa, a world where colonialism and white supremacy rule, where she is isolated within society by her...

Fredrik Welin is a reclusive ex-surgeon living alone on a tiny island in the north of Sweden. His only companions are a pair of aged pets, and the only society callers to his living room are ants that are transforming his table into an enormous anthill. Every morning, the loner goes out to the frozen lake, cuts a hole in the ice, and then plunges himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is still alive. Four women enter his life: Harriet,...

An ex-con is brutally murdered with an ax in Kaalbringen. Then the body of a wealthy real estate mogul is found, also the victim of a violent attack. There appears to be a serial killer on the loose, and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is called in to help the local police. As details surrounding the grisly murders are collected, Van Veeteren finds little to go on. But then there's another murder, and shortly thereafter one of Van Veeteren's colleagues,...

When a killer linked to a hit-and-run and a possible second murder proves increasingly unstable, a personally affected Van Veeteren comes out of retirement to face the greatest trial of his career.

A small-town murder leads to international intrigue in this "first-class thriller" from the New York Times–bestselling master of Scandinavian crime (The New York Times Book Review).

Inspector Kurt Wallander returns in the second of Henning Mankell's award-winning, internationally-bestselling detective novels, this time to investigate the execution-style killing of a Swedish housewife. The local police focus...

The story of the Swedish detective's beginnings, told in five gripping short mysteries: "An indispensable chapter to the saga" (Booklist Online).

Here are the stories that trace, chronologically, Kurt Wallander's growth from a rookie cop into a young father and then a middle-aged divorcé, illuminating how he became a first-rate detective and highlighting new facets of the character who "remains one of the most impressive...