European Literature Night 2026

Add Cyanide to Taste is a collection of fourteen playful stories where the menu comes with a twist. From cursed cakes to food influencers and dangerous dinner-table secrets, these tales explore human nature through desire and appetite. Publishers Weekly described them as ‘well-crafted culinary noir stories’ that food-loving crime readers will relish. Winner of the 2022 IndieReader Discovery Award and featured on LeVar Burton Reads, this book is a feast.
 

Based in America 2029, Tereza, the star researcher on discovering the key to immortality, is overjoyed to reunite with her mother. But before she can find a cure, her mother dies mysteriously and is whisked away to a mass grave for undocumented immigrants in the swampy Florida wastelands. Distraught, Tereza travels to the Czech Republic to convince Roman, the brother she’s never met, to defy the authoritarian America and the odds and return their mother’s remains to Czech soil

Mom was a force of nature, unyielding to the complaints of delicate girls. She disinfected our wounds with 90° alcohol, deeming Mercurochrome for the spoiled. Then there was ether in a cerulean blue bottle, her signature color. This novel explores the unconditional love between a mother and her daughters, revealing the flaws and failures underlying their bond. Violaine Huisman’s poetic prose captures a woman’s relentless pursuit of her dreamed life and freedom.

Hildur Rúnarsdottir is the only police detective working on the isolated west coast of Iceland. She is desperate to forget her traumatic past by burying herself in her cases alongside her new trainee, Jakob Johanson. But Jakob's life has its own complications, and it soon becomes clear that neither can run from their pasts for long.

When a local man is found with his throat slit, underneath an avalanche that has buried much of the evidence, Hildur and Jakob must set their own problems aside and unravel the dark secrets to expose a killer . . .

Fleeing stay-at-home oders in the big city, Dora and her dog move to the countryside to sit out the pandemic. She knows that Bracken, a village in the middle of nowhere, isn't the idyll most city dwellers dream of, but she's desperate for space and a change of scene. The quaint old house she's saved up for needs work, weeds have taken over the yard, and her skinhead neighbor fits all the stereotypes. Just what is DOra really looking for?

Satantango, written by 2025 Nobel laureate László Krasznahorkai, proves that the devil has all the good times. The novel that inspired Béla Tarr’s classic film unfolds in an isolated hamlet over a few rain-soaked days. Only a dozen inhabitants remain in the bleak village, rank with failed schemes, betrayals, infidelity, hopes, and aborted dreams. “Their world,” says translator George Szirtes, “is rough and ready, lost between the cosmic and tragic, in one small corner of the cosmos. Theirs is the dance of death.” Into this world comes, it seems, a messiah…

An ancient crater filled with water becomes refuge and battleground for Gaia, growing up on the shores of Lake Bracciano. Raised by a fierce, uncompromising mother, she learns endurance, silence, and defiance. When injustice strikes, a sudden, unsettling violence emerges. Giulia Caminito’s novel traces a raw coming-of-age shaped by poverty, rage, and fragile hope, where the lake mirrors both danger and desire.

The Barnes family are in trouble.
Until recently they ran the biggest business in town, now they're teetering on the brink of bankruptcy - and that's just the start of their problems. Dickie and Imelda's marriage is hanging by a thread; straight-A student Cass is careening off the rails; PJ is hopelessly in debt to the school bully.
Meanwhile the ghosts of old mistakes are rising out of the past to meet them, but everyone's too wrapped up in the present to see the danger looming . . .

"The Grand Hotel Europa is Europe in miniature: a baroque monument to fading grandeur where Dutch writer Ilja holes up to dissect his collapsed affair with tempestuous Italian art historian Clio, only to find the ""European dream"" itself under renovation by Chinese tycoon Mr. Wang—plastic orchids in crystal vases, busloads of tourists where princes once dined, and the aching question of whether heritage is being preserved or liquidated for international consumption.

Reina Roja by Juan Gómez-Jurado follows Antonia Scott, a brilliant woman with a genius-level IQ who is part of a secret police project. After a personal tragedy, she retires, but is drawn back by inspector Jon Gutiérrez to solve a series of gruesome murders and kidnappings involving Spain’s elite. The thriller follows their high-stakes, fast-paced investigation to stop a mastermind holding the city in fear.

Invisible is a heartfelt novel inspired by the author’s own experience with Tourette’s syndrome. It follows Adam, a 26-year-old freelance designer, who steps out of years of self-imposed hiding by joining a support group. Through their shared journey, the story explores the courage it takes to embrace visibility in family, work, and love, while celebrating inclusiveness, self-acceptance, and the power of being truly seen and loved despite - or because of - our differences.