On an icy Swedish archipelago, a girl is entangled in a dark mystery that only she holds the key to unraveling, in this fantasy thriller from the wondrous minds of Camilla Sten and Viveca Sten.
What happened out there in the woods?
Twelve-year-old Tuva couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than the Stockholm archipelago and her island home of Harö. Even if she mostly keeps to herself at her small school. Even if she sometimes gets kind of lonely.
But when a classmate goes missing, Tuva finds herself at the center of the mystery, along with Rasmus, the new boy at school. Neither one of them can understand what they saw that day in the woods near the water: Is something magical at work? Something evil?
And it’s not just their classmate who has gone missing. Other people around the islands have gone missing this fall, disappearing from their boats on the water, never to be heard from again. Can Tuva and Rasmus discover what secrets are lurking below…before it’s too late?
The series
The sea around the Stockholm archipelago holds more than cold water and shifting tides. In The Whispering Sea Mysteries, Camilla Sten and Viveca Sten turn the islands of Sweden into a place where old legends feel dangerously close to the surface and the natural world seems to be hiding secrets of its own.
Read full series description
At the center of the series is twelve-year-old Tuva, a girl whose connection to the sea draws her into mysteries that cannot be explained by ordinary logic. Disappearances, strange phenomena, and unsettling encounters gradually reveal a supernatural world woven into the familiar landscape of islands, forests, fog, and open water. What begins as curiosity soon becomes something far more personal as Tuva discovers that she may have a place in these mysteries herself.
The books blend middle-grade mystery, suspense, Scandinavian folklore, and supernatural fantasy without losing sight of the everyday uncertainties of growing up. Friendship, bullying, belonging, and feeling different sit alongside darker questions about what may be lurking beneath the water or concealed by the mist. The Stockholm archipelago is more than a backdrop: its isolation, unpredictable weather, and long relationship with the sea give the stories much of their eerie atmosphere.
Originally published in Sweden, the series found a substantial young readership there before reaching English-language readers. Its combination of Nordic mystery and supernatural adventure has helped it stand apart from more conventional middle-grade fantasy, offering a world in which ancient forces do not belong to some distant magical kingdom. They are already here, waiting among the islands, beneath the waves, and in the stories people have almost forgotten.
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