In this enthralling modern fairy tale from the acclaimed author of The Devil’s Grip, two orphaned sisters grapple with the dark side of their Swedish village and the possibility of escape.

After losing their parents in a car accident as toddlers, Jolly and Peggy grow up with a foster family in a strange corner of southern Sweden. According to village gossip, it’s a cursed place full of perverts and pedophiles, marked by a history of violence and madness. Its one resident of note, an ill-fated 19th-century writer, declared it a dump not even good enough to die in—though her spirit ironically returned to haunt it.

Now in their teens, the girls’ lives begin to change and, for the first time, separate, as Peggy dreams of the larger world outside. New arrivals shake up the community—an antiquarian bookseller with a volume allegedly bound in human skin, refugees from Chile who went through hell and learned the art of death—and the mysterious, brutal murder of 7-year-old twins sets Jolly and Peggy’s foster mother on a path of retribution that will affect them all.

At once unsettling and oddly heartwarming, Lina Wolff’s coming-of-age tale speaks to the singular bond between sisters and how we live with our skeletons, finding beauty and hope alongside horror.