Cabin fever

Set in Norway, this exceptional tale of obsession, guilt, and homicide from Dahl (The Heart Keeper) focuses on three best childhood friends. In the present, 36-year-old Oslo therapist Kristina Moss, who's wealthy and happily married, is the only one of them alive. In 2003, Trine Rickard was murdered while the three friends were traveling abroad. Elisabeth Eliassen, a talented artist, recently died in Kristina's guest room, an apparent suicide. One day, Kristina's troubled client Leah Iverson, the author of Nobody ("loosely based on her marriage in the popular Scandinavian trend of autofiction inspired by Karl-Ove Knausgaard"), arrives for a therapy session with a bruise on her face. Has her ex-husband beaten her again? Leah won't say, but she begs Kristina to come to her remote cabin so they both might heal from their respective traumas through "exposure therapy." Shifting nimbly among the viewpoints of Kristina, Leah, and Elisabeth and jumping between past and present, Dahl reveals deeply hidden motives for dark acts they've all tried to forget. This haunting novel deserves to be savored and pondered. Agent: Laura Longrigg, MBA Literary (U.K.). (July)