Vintage books Arctic Chill Indridason Arnaldur

Detective Sigurdur Oli is in trouble • After a school reunion exposes the chasm between his life and those of his much more successful contemporaries, leaving him bitter and resentful, one of his old friends asks him to pay an unofficial visit to a couple of blackmailers. He readily agrees, only to arrive to find one of the pair lying in a pool of blood. When the victim dies in hospital, Sigurdur Oli is faced with investigating a murder without revealing his own reasons for being present at the murder scene • Moving from the villas of Reykjavik's banking elite to a sordid basement flat, Black Skies is a superb story of greed, pride and murder from one of Europe's most successful crime writers

An old man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat • A cryptic note and a photograph of a young girl's grave are left behind • Did the dead man's past come back to haunt him? • Inspector Erlendur discovers that several decades ago the victim was accused, but not convicted, of an unsolved crime. As he follows a fascinating trail of strange forensic evidence, Inspector Erlendur uncovers secrets that are much larger than the murder of one man - dark secrets that have been carefully guarded for many, many years • 'A fascinating window on an unfamiliar world as well as an original and puzzling mystery' Val McDermid

The Living • Erlendur has recently joined the police force as a young officer and immediately sinks into the darkness of Reykjavik's underworld. Working nights, he discovers the city is full of car crashes, robberies, drinkers and fighters. And sometimes an unexplained death • The Lost • A homeless man Erlendur knows is found drowned. But few people care. Or when a young woman on her way home from a club vanishes. Both cases go cold • The Searcher • Two lost people from two different worlds. Erlendur is not an investigator, but his instincts tell him their fates are worth pursuing. How could they be linked? • In the Heart of the Night • Inexorably, he is drawn into the blackness of the city's underbelly, where everyone is in the dark or on the run

1945: a lost German bomber crashes on the Vatnajцkull glacier in Iceland • Inexplicably, in the midst of World War Two, there are both German and American officers on board. One of the senior German officers sets off, a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, never to be seen again • 1999, the US Army is secretively trying to remove an aeroplane from the Vatnajцkull glacier • Two young Icelanders become involved but end up paying with their lives. Before they are captured, one of the two contacts his sister, Kristin. Her quest to discover his fate takes her on a long and hazardous journey in search of the key to the riddle about Operation Napoleon

A missing woman. A missing boy. Detective Erlendur returns - for the last time • A young woman walks into the frozen fjords of Iceland, never to be seen again. But Matthildur leaves in her wake rumours of lies, betrayal and revenge • Decades later, somewhere in the same wilderness, Detective Erlendur is on the hunt. He is looking for Matthildur but also for a long-lost brother, whose disappearance in a snow-storm when they were children has coloured his entire life. He is looking for answers • Slowly, the past begins to surrender its secrets. But as Erlendur uncovers a story about the limits of human endurance, he realises that many people would prefer their crimes to stay buried

The author of Horizon's classic work explores the Arctic landscape and the hold it continues to exert on our imagination • Lopez's journey across our frozen planet is a celebration of the Arctic in all its guises. A hostile landscape of ice, freezing oceans and dazzling skyscapes. Home to millions of diverse animals and people. The stage to massive migrations by land, sea and air. The setting of epic exploratory voyages • In crystalline prose, Lopez captures the magic of the Arctic: the essential mystery and beauty of a continent that has enchanted man's imagination and ambition for centuries

One cold autumn night, a woman is found hanging from a beam at her holiday cottage. At first sight, it appears like a straightforward case of suicide; Maria had never recovered from the death of her mother two years previously and she had a history of depression. But then the friend who found her body approaches Detective Erlendur with a tape of a seance that Maria attended before her death and his curiosity is aroused • Driven by a need to find answers, Erlendur begins an unofficial investigation into Maria's death. But he is also haunted by another unsolved mystery - the disappearance of two young people thirty years ago - and by his own quest to find the body of his brother, who died in a blizzard when he was a boy. Hypothermia is Indridason's most compelling novel yet

From the author of the classic Arctic Dreams comes a vivid recollection of his travels around the world and the encounters that shaped an extraordinary life • Taking us nearly from pole to pole - from modern megacities to some of the earth's most remote regions - Barry Lopez gives us his most far-ranging and personal work. Spanning decades of travel, Horizon describes journeys to six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galapagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to finally, unforgettably, the ice shelves of Antarctica • Lopez also probes the history of humanity's quests and explorations, from prehistoric expeditions to today's ecotourism. He takes us to some of the hottest, coldest, and most desolate places on the globe, via friendships with scientists, archaeologists, artists and local residents, in a book that makes us see the world differently

A ground-breaking and beautifully written investigation into the Arctic Treeline with an urgent environmental message • The Arctic treeline is the frontline of climate change, where the trees have been creeping towards the pole for fifty years already • Scientists are only just beginning to understand the astonishing significance of these northern forests for all life on Earth. At the treeline, Rawlence witnesses the accelerating impact of climate change and the devastating legacies of colonialism and capitalism. But he also finds reasons for hope. Humans are creatures of the forest; we have always evolved with trees and The Treeline asks us where our co-evolution might take us next

Sherlock star Mark Gatiss selects and introduces chilling tales by the unsung master of the classic ghost story - E.F. Benson • There's nothing sinister about a London bus. Nothing supernatural could occur on a busy Tube platform. There's nothing terrifying about a little caterpillar. And a telephone, what could be scary about that? Don't be frightened of the dark corners of your room. Don't be alarmed by a sudden, inexplicable chill. There's no need for a ticking clock, a limping footstep, or a knock at the door to start you trembling. There's nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all

In the Caribbean, at the beginning of the last century, a poor rice-growing family struggle to exist. Four siblings pass their days in the ricefield, as does Ma. But Pa is an angry man ready to vent. It is the August rainy season and above their heads the black sky crackles with lightning • On the day that Pa nearly drowns Ma in a tub of washing water, the children and their mother escape into the cane fields to wait out Pa's rage. But eight-year-old Rama, catches a chill in the rain and falls ill. What follows is a tale of the inheritance of loss. It contains a heart-stopping intensity that places it as one of the greatest Caribbean novels ever written

Young pilot Donald Ross has little in common with the Oxford don who has employed him on an expedition to the Arctic - and still less with his beautiful but stubborn daughter, Alix.But once the three of them reach the treacherous shores of Greenland their destinies are inextricably bound by the events that unfold there