Trolls

Spjut’s unsettling third supernatural thriller (after 2015’s The Shapeshifters) finds cryptozoologist Susso Myrén, who believes in the existence of malignant trolls (whom her nature photographer grandfather claimed to have photographed), living in self-imposed isolation. Meanwhile, cult leader Lennart Brösth, whom she helped apprehend years before, languishes in a psychiatric hospital, until he manages to sever his own arm, ensuring that he’s taken to a less secure area of the facility from which he’s able to escape. Brösth, who’s supposedly 100 years old and may not be human, was the head of the Jillesnåle Cult, whose members kidnapped children and raised them as their own. Susso suspects that the abducted children weren’t human by the time the cultists were done with them. Now, to end her isolation and save her own life, Susso must join the effort to end Brösth’s threat to society once again. Readers should be prepared for some creepy scenes—Brösth first appears sinking his teeth into the mangled stump of his arm­—but horror fans sated on zombies and vampires will be spellbound. (Oct.)