by Abby Geni
First published 2026
Liv tends her beehives in Haven, Michigan, building a quiet existence with her brother Finn twenty years after an FBI raid shattered their childhood. Their father Ulf had raised them as modern Vikings in rural Iowa, forcing them to speak Swedish, practice swordplay, and participate in blood sacrifices to Norse gods. Now adults with changed surnames, Liv and Finn have learned to live normal lives. Through her beekeeping work, Liv meets Penny, an enigmatic woman who draws her toward new possibilities. But when Liv notices men disappearing around Haven, old fears resurface. She counts the missing and remembers Ulf's violent obsessions, his claims of descent from Erik the Red, and the terror of his arrest when she was fourteen. As the pattern of vanished men grows clearer, Liv faces an impossible choice. She can ignore her suspicions, protect her loved ones by staying silent, or confront the same kind of violence she spent decades trying to escape.
Genres: domestic-fiction, crime, contemporary, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller, mystery-thriller
Vibes: dark, intimate, psychological, suspenseful, tense, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, moral-dilemma, past-trauma, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Haven, Michigan, Iowa
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
320 pages · Hardcover · Ballantine Books
Content warnings: abuse, child-abuse, violence