I thought I’d offer you something a little different this week: a series of autumnal landscapes to inspire and delight us, but all of them in settings featured in the books we have published thus far at Corylus (because we do like to travel with our reading and crime fiction). Maybe even a few hints as to upcoming titles! N.B. Of course, autumn is not necessarily the season during which the action in each book takes place. Here we go, in order of publication:
- In Anamaria Ionescu’s Zodiac, four murders take place in four different locations, with four strange and different marks on the victims – and the only thing they have in common is that all of them were born in the little spa town of Voineasa in the Romanian Sub-Carpathians.
2. Bucharest is the setting for Teodora Matei’s police procedural Living Candles featuring the unlikely duo of Anton Iordan and Sorin Matache – a city of dark shadows, wet pavements and damp basements.
3. Snagov Lake to the north of Bucharest is the place where many Romanian politicians have their villas, and where they conspire with the media to cover up the politically embarrassing story of a vigilante killer in Sword by Bogdan Teodorescu.
4. We first meet Sólveig Pálsdóttir’s police officer Guðgeir Fransson in The Fox, far away in exile in the picturesque but isolated settlement of Höfn on the east coast of Iceland.
5. Guðgeir is back in Reykjavik in the next book in the series, Silenced, in a tense story about appearances and reality, class and gender differences.
Iceland’s capital is also the setting for the forthcoming book Deceit by our new Icelandic author Jónína Leósdóttir.
6. Although the ‘port town in the west of France’ is never explicitly named in Jérôme Leroy’s clever novella Little Rebel, it might resemble Le Havre a little bit…
7. Some of the key conspiracy scenes in Bogdan Hrib’s spy thriller Resilience take place in Iasi in the north-east of Romania (close to the border with the Republic of Moldova).
8. Óskar Guðmundsson’s hard-hitting tale of trauma and revenge The Commandments takes place in the supposedly tranquil north of Iceland in Akureyri. How can anything bad ever happen in this beautiful little town?
9. Harm, the third book featuring Guðgeir Fransson and his team of investigators alternates between Reykjavik and the breathtaking scenery of the Westman Islands – you know, the ones that often feature in wishlists of remote houses in inaccessible landscapes.
10. Bonus entry: in our novella Skin Deep, our first book to be translated from Spanish (estimated publication date spring 2023), we meet a group of cross-border investigators in the Basque region. The body, however, is found in Biarritz.
Phew! Ten books since we launched at the start of 2020. That’s not bad, is it? Wonder where our literary travels will take us next! Well, the clue might lie in what I’m currently translating… And the action does take place in autumn!
findingtimetowrite 
Great Marina, a nice change from the usual. As an old crime writing buff, much neglected these days, I must take a look at some of these in my new retirement space. Don’t forget to look at AuthorsElectric on Sunday where you have a paragraph in my blog, Buttercups and Rhizomes!!
Thank you, so lovely to hear, will check that out! Hope you get some time to recover your appetite for crime… writing.
This is the kind of marketing that makes me both happy and want to jump on the next Eurostar!
Yes, this is just about the level of marketing that I can cope with, for myself and others!
Wonderful post Marina Sofia! Autumn is such a lovely time of year, and some vicarious travels too – thank you!
I do love the autumn colours, and all of these settings are irresistible!
Such a visual feast, Marina Sofia! I love autumn – always have liked it the best of all the seasons – and those landscapes are gorgeous. The books sound very good, too, and now you’ve got me wanting to squeeze some room into my TBR for them!
It can be one of the most beautiful and bountiful times of the year. I hope you do find some room to read any of them – let me know if you are having trouble ordering them in the US and I can send them to you.
What beautiful landscapes, Marina! Autumn is possibly my favourite season and all of these images have given me itchy feet…
I’m not saying we select our book list on the basis of location, but we’ve been very lucky so far with stunning locations…
A double treat, thank you – stunning landscapes and tempting book blurbs. Plus an invitation to dip further into the Corylus lists!
Hope you like the Corylus water when you dip your toe in!
What a great theme for your post, Marina! I thoroughly enjoyed this virtual tour of Corylus literary locations. The first three are especially appealing, I have to admit!
I keep joking that we only consider books with fabulous locations… not true of course, but it DOES help (to keep me motivated, at least!)