Fredrik Backman

A "poignant, charming novel about a forgotten town fractured by scandal, and the amateur hockey team that might just change everything ... Fredrik Backman knows that we are forever shaped by the places we call home, and ... explores what can happen when we carry the heavy weight of other people's dreams on our shoulders"--

Taken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety-prone strangers -- including a redemption-seeking bank director, two couples who would fix their marriages, and a plucky octogenarian -- discover their unexpected common traits. Viewing an apartment normally doesn't turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that: a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment...

A small community tucked deep in the forest, Beartown is home to tough, hardworking people who don't expect life to be easy or fair. No matter how difficult times get, they've always been able to take pride in their local ice hockey team. So it's a cruel blow when they hear that Beartown ice hockey might soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in the neighboring...

Grandpa and Noah are sitting on a bench in a square that keeps getting smaller every day. The square is strange but also familiar, full of the odds and ends that have made up their lives: Grandpa's work desk, the stuffed dragon that Grandpa once gave to Noah, the sweet-smelling hyacinths that Grandma loved to grow in her garden. As they wait together on the bench, they tell jokes and discuss their shared love of mathematics. Grandpa recalls what it...

Ove, a grumpy, isolated retiree who spends his days enforcing block association rules and visiting his wife's grave, decides to give up on life until an unlikely friendship develops with a boisterous young family that moves in next door. Ill-tempered widower Ove spends his days enforcing the neighborhood association rules and making clumsy attempts at suicide until he forms an unlikely friendship with a boisterous young immigrant family who has moved...