Jo Nesbø books in order

Roger Brown is a corporate headhunter, and he’s a master of his profession. But one career simply can’t support his luxurious lifestyle and his wife’s fledgling art gallery.

At an art opening one night he meets Clas Greve, who is not only the perfect candidate for a major CEO job, but also, perhaps, the answer to his financial woes: Greve just so happens to mention that he owns a priceless Peter Paul Rubens painting that’s been lost since World War II—and Roger Brown just so happens to dabble in art theft.

But when he breaks into Greve’s apartment, he finds more than just the painting. And Clas Greve may turn out to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to Roger Brown.

Sonny Lofthus has been in prison for almost half his life: serving time for crimes he didn't commit. In exchange, he gets an uninterrupted supply of heroin—and a stream of fellow prisoners seeking out his Buddha-like absolution. Years earlier Sonny’s father, a corrupt cop, took his own life rather than face exposure. Now Sonny is the center of a vortex of corruption: prison staff, police, lawyers, a desperate priest—all of them focused on keeping him stoned and jailed.

When Sonny discovers a shocking truth about his father’s suicide, he makes a brilliant escape and begins hunting down the people responsible for his and his father’s demise. But he's also being hunted, and by enemies too many to count. Two questions remain: who will get to him first, and what will he do when he’s cornered?

Roy and Carl, brothers from a small mountain town, have spent their whole lives hiding from the darkness in their pasts—Roy by staying put and staying quiet, and Carl by running far away. Roy believed his little brother was gone for good.

But Carl has big plans for his hometown. And when he returns with a mysterious new wife and a business opportunity that seems too good to be true, simmering tensions begin to surface and unexplained deaths in the town’s past come under new scrutiny.

Soon powerful players set their sights on taking the brothers down by exposing their role in the town’s sordid history. But Roy and Carl are survivors, and no strangers to violence. As the town’s long-buried past begins to surface, Roy will be forced to choose between his own flesh and blood and a future he had never dared to believe possible.

In the wake of his parents' tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne.

Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. 

He traces the number that Tom prank called from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the Black Mirror Wood. There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear . . .

You know who I am. She's going to burn. The one you love is going to burn. There's not a thing you can do about it.

When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence-and preserve his sanity-as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursuing his destruction.

Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story.

From the internationally acclaimed author of the Harry Hole novels—a fast, tight, darkly lyrical stand-alone novel that has at its center the perfectly sympathetic antihero: an Oslo contract killer who draws us into an unexpected meditation on death and love.

This is the story of Olav: an extremely talented “fixer” for one of Oslo’s most powerful crime bosses. But Olav is also an unusually complicated fixer.

He has a capacity for love that is as far-reaching as is his gift for murder. He is our straightforward, calm-in-the-face-of-crisis narrator with a storyteller’s hypnotic knack for fantasy. He has an “innate talent for subordination” but running through his veins is a “virus” born of the power over life and death.

And while his latest job puts him at the pinnacle of his trade, it may be mutating into his greatest mistake...

Ulf has one small problem—his former boss, Oslo's most notorious drug kingpin, wants him dead.

He was once the kingpin's fixer, but after betraying him, Ulf is now the one his former boss wants fixed. Hiding out at the end of the line in northern Norway, Ulf lives among the locals. A mother and son befriend him, and their companionship stirs something deep in him that he thought was long dead.

As he awaits the inevitable arrival of his murderous pursuers, he questions if redemption is at all possible or if, as he's always believed, “hope is a real bastard.”

Jo Nesbø is known the world over as a consummate mystery/thriller writer. Famed for his deft characterization, hair-raising suspense and shocking twists, Nesbø’s dexterity with the dark corners of the human heart is on full display in these inventive and enthralling stories.

A detective with a nose for jealousy is on the trail of a man suspected of murdering his twin; a bereaved father must decide whether vengeance has a place in the new world order after a pandemic brings about the collapse of society; a garbage man fresh off a bender tries to piece together what happened the night before; a hired assassin matches wits against his greatest adversary in a dangerous game for survival; and an instantly electric connection between passengers on a flight to London may spell romance, or something more sinister.

With Nesbø's characteristic gift for outstanding atmosphere and gut-wrenching revelations, The Jealousy Man confirms that he is at the peak of his abilities.

Eleven-year-old Nilly is new to the neighborhood, but he is quick to make friends: Doctor Proctor, an eccentric professor who invents wacky potions and powders; and brainy Lisa, who is always teased by the twin terrors Truls and Trym.

All is good farty fun when Nilly and Lisa help Doctor Proctor develop his latest invention, a powder that makes you fart. The powder makes Nilly and Lisa VERY popular at school when they sell it for 50 cents a bag. (And they get revenge on Truls and Trym by giving them an extra-strength dose of fart powder that shoots them up into a tree!)

But when Doctor Proctor creates an industrial-strength version that can send people to outer space, the kids must go to great lengths to protect the invention and keep it out of the hands of their neighbors, who want to use the powder for evil purposes.

The Fart Powder was such a successful invention that Doctor Proctor, Nilly, and Lisa couldn’t stop there. Next up: a time-travelling bathtub. You just hop in, lather up the Time Soap, and wish for where you’d like to go.

Doctor Proctor has plans for this new invention. You see, he lost his true love years ago, when Juliette Margarine married an evil count. The good Doctor has never quite gotten over this, and he's going back to change it. But when things go wrong, it's up to Nilly and Lisa to travel back in time to right all wrongs and reunite the two lovebirds.

Nothing is quite so simple in a Jo Nesbo book. Enter a herd of hippos, a scheming assistant, and Time Soap that keeps going awry, sending Nilly and Lisa to the storming of the Bastille! Fortunately, as in every Jo Nesbo book, the Fart Powder solves everything.

NB: This book is also known as Time-Travel Bath Bomb.

Doctor Proctor, the kids, and the famous fart powder are back for another wildly funny adventure Nilly, Lisa, and Doctor Proctor are too busy inventing things to watch TV. They're missing out on the hot singing competition. But then Nilly and Lisa notice that their friends and family are acting really weird. And the only people acting weird...are the ones watching TV.

What's going on is WAY bigger than a singing competition. It could mean the end of the world.

Or an SBD could save everything.

Let 'er rip.

NB: This book is also known as Who Cut the Cheese?

When a Russian billionaire robs the Norwegian Gold Reserve and melts the last remaining gold bar into the Premier Soccer League trophy, it’s up to Doctor Proctor, Nilly, and Lisa to recapture the precious prize. But after a failed break-in attempt at the billionaire’s subterranean gold-melting lab, and with the Norwegian Gold Reserve Inspection in just three days, the only way to retrieve the trophy is to win it back.

Hoping to prevent national panic and uproar, Nilly and Lisa join the Rotten Ham soccer team to try and lead the hopeless underdogs to victory before time runs out. And with the use of Fartonaut Powder, along with a handful of Doctor Proctor’s other wacky inventions, they just might have a chance!

NB: This book is also known as The Great Gold Robbery.

When the king of Norway sells the rights to Christmas to Mr. Thrane, it looks like the holidays aren’t going to be very merry. Mr. Thrane says that the only people who can celebrate are those who buy 10,000 crowns worth of presents from his department store. For anyone who doesn’t—or can’t—spend that much, it’s no tree, no presents, no carols, and no Christmas pudding.

Dr. Proctor, Nilly, and Lisa aren’t going to take this sitting down! They’re going to find Santa and save Christmas. All they need is a sleigh, flying reindeer, some time travel soap, and, of course, some fart powder!

NB: This book is also known as Can Doctor Proctor Save Christmas?

Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad is dispatched to Sydney to observe a murder case. Although Harry is free to offer assistance, he has firm instructions to stay out of trouble.

The victim is a twenty-three year old Norwegian woman who is a minor celebrity back home. Never one to sit on the sidelines, Harry befriends one of the lead detectives, and one of the witnesses, as he is drawn deeper into the case.

Together, they discover that this is only the latest in a string of unsolved murders, and the pattern points toward a psychopath working his way across the country.

As they circle closer and closer to the killer, Harry begins to fear that no one is safe, least of all those investigating the case.

When the Norwegian ambassador to Thailand is found dead in a Bangkok brothel, Inspector Harry Hole is dispatched from Oslo to help hush up the case. 

But once he arrives Harry discovers that this case is about much more than one random murder. There is something else, something more pervasive, scrabbling around behind the scenes. Or, put another way, for every cockroach you see in your hotel room, there are hundreds behind the walls.

Surrounded by round-the-clock traffic noise, Harry wanders the streets of Bangkok lined with go-go bars, temples, opium dens, and tourist traps, trying to piece together the story of the ambassador’s death even though no one asked him to, and no one wants him to—not even Harry himself.

Detective Harry Hole embarrassed the force, and for his sins he's been reassigned to mundane surveillance tasks. But while monitoring neo-Nazi activities in Oslo, Hole is inadvertently drawn into a mystery with deep roots in Norway's dark past—when members of the nation's government willingly collaborated with Nazi Germany.

More than sixty years later, this black mark won't wash away, and disgraced old soldiers who once survived a brutal Russian winter are being murdered, one by one. Now, with only a stained and guilty conscience to guide him, an angry, alcoholic, error-prone policeman must make his way safely past the traps and mirrors of a twisted criminal mind. For a hideous conspiracy is rapidly taking shape around Hole—and Norway's darkest hour may still be to come.

Captured on closed-circuit television: A man walks into an Oslo bank, puts a gun to a cashier's head, and tells her to count to twenty-five. When he doesn't get his money fast enough, he pulls the trigger. The young woman dies—and two million Norwegian kroner disappear without a trace.

After a drunken evening with former girlfriend Anna Bethsen, Police Detective Harry Hole wakes up at home with a headache, no cell phone, and no memory of the past twelve hours. The same day, Anna is found shot dead in her bedroom, making Hole a prime suspect in the investigation led by his hated adversary, Tom Waaler. 

Meanwhile, the bank robberies continue with unparalleled savagery, sending rogue detective Hole from the streets of Oslo to steaming Brazil in a race to close two cases and clear his name. But Waaler isn't finished with his longtime nemesis quite yet.

In the heat of a sweltering Oslo summer, a young woman is found murdered in her flat—with one of her fingers cut off and a tiny red star-shaped diamond placed under her eyelid. An off-the-rails alcoholic barely holding on to his job, Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with Tom Waaler, a hated colleague whom Harry believes is responsible for the murder of his partner.

When another woman is reported missing five days later, and her severed finger turns up adorned with a red star-shaped diamond ring, Harry fears a serial killer is at work.

But Hole's determination to capture a fiend and to expose Waaler's crimes is leading him into shadowy places where both investigations merge in unexpected ways, forcing him to make difficult decisions about a future he may not live to see.

Christmas shoppers stop to hear a Salvation Army concert on a crowded Oslo street. A gunshot cuts through the music and the bitter cold: one of the singers falls dead, shot in the head at point-blank range.

Harry Hole—the Oslo Police Department’s best investigator and worst civil servant—has little to work with: no suspect, no weapon, and no motive. But Harry’s troubles will multiply. As the search closes in, the killer becomes increasingly desperate, and Harry’s chase takes him to the most forbidden corners of the former Yugoslavia.

Yet it’s when he returns to Oslo that he encounters true darkness: among the homeless junkies and Salvationists, eagerly awaiting a savior to deliver them from misery—whether he brings new life or immediate death.

One night, after the first snowfall of the year, a boy named Jonas wakes up and discovers that his mother has disappeared. Only one trace of her remains: a pink scarf, his Christmas gift to her, now worn by the snowman that inexplicably appeared in their yard earlier that day.

Inspector Harry Hole suspects a link between the missing woman and a suspicious letter he’s received. The case deepens when a pattern emerges: over the past decade, eleven women have vanished—all on the day of the first snow.

But this is a killer who makes his own rules...and he’ll break his pattern just to keep the game interesting, as he draws Harry ever closer into his twisted web.

Inspector Harry Hole has retreated to Hong Kong, escaping the trauma of his last case in squalid opium dens, when two young women are found dead in Oslo, both drowned in their own blood. Media coverage quickly reaches a fever pitch. There are no clues, the police investigation is stalled, and Harry—the one man who might be able to help—can’t be found.

After he returns to Oslo, the killer strikes again, Harry’s instincts take over, and nothing can keep him from the investigation, though there is little to go on. Worse, he will soon come to understand that he is dealing with a psychopath who will put him to the test, both professionally and personally, as never before.

When Harry Hole moved to Hong Kong, he thought he was escaping the traumas of his life in Oslo and his career as a detective for good. But now, the unthinkable has happened—Oleg, the boy he helped raise, has been arrested for killing a man. Harry can't believe that Oleg is a murderer, so he returns to hunt down the real killer.

Although he's off the police force, he still has a case to solve that will send him into the depths of the city’s drug culture, where a shockingly deadly new street drug is gaining popularity. This most personal of investigations will force Harry to confront his past and the wrenching truth about Oleg and himself.

When a police officer is found murdered at the scene of an old unsolved murder case that he was involved in investigating, it can hardly be a coincidence.

When the same thing happens to two other officers in a matter of months the pattern is as clear as it is terrifying. None of the old cases were ever solved. The killings are extremely brutal and the police have no leads. What’s more, they’re missing their best investigator.

At the same time, a severely wounded man is in a coma and kept alive at a hospital in Oslo. The police guard the room and the identity of the patient is kept secret.

The murder victim, a self-declared Tinder addict. The one solid clue—fragments of rust and paint in her wounds—leaves the investigating team baffled.

Two days later, there’s a second murder: a woman of the same age, a Tinder user, an eerily similar scene.

The chief of police knows there’s only one man for this case. But Harry Hole is no longer with the force. He promised the woman he loves, and he promised himself, that he’d never go back: not after his last case, which put the people closest to him in grave danger.

But there’s something about these murders that catches his attention, something in the details that the investigators have missed. For Harry, it’s like hearing “the voice of a man he was trying not to remember.” Now, despite his promises, despite everything he risks, Harry throws himself back into the hunt for a figure who haunts him, the monster who got away.

Harry Hole is not in a good place. Rakel--the only woman he's ever loved--has ended it with him, permanently. He's been given a chance for a new start with the Oslo Police, but it's in the cold case office, when what he really wants is to be investigating cases he suspects have ties to Svein Finne, the serial rapist and murderer who Harry helped put behind bars. And now, Finne is free after a decade-plus in prison--free and, Harry is certain, unreformed and ready to take up where he left off.

But things will get worse. When Harry wakes up the morning after a drunken night with blood that's clearly not his own on his hands, it's only the very beginning of what will be a waking nightmare the likes of which even he could never have imagined.

THE HUNT IS ON AND THE POLICE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

Two young women are missing, their only connection a party they both attended, hosted by a notorious real-estate magnate. When one of the women is found murdered, the police discover an unusual signature left by the killer, giving them reason to suspect he will strike again.

THEY'RE FACING A KILLER UNLIKE ANY OTHER.

And exposing him calls for a detective like no other. But the legendary Harry Hole is gone—fired from the force, drinking himself to oblivion in Los Angeles. It seems that nothing can entice him back to Oslo. Until the woman who saved Harry's life is put in grave danger, and he has no choice but to return to the city that haunts him and track down the murderer.

CATCHING HIM WILL PUSH HARRY TO THE LIMIT.

He'll need to bring together a misfit team of former operatives to accomplish what he can't do alone: stop an unstoppable killer. But as the evidence mounts, it becomes clear that there is more to this case than meets the eye...

Set in the 1970s in a run-down, rainy industrial town, Jo Nesbo's Macbeth centers around a police force struggling to shed an incessant drug problem.

Duncan, chief of police, is idealistic and visionary, a dream to the townspeople but a nightmare for criminals. The drug trade is ruled by two drug lords, one of whom—a master of manipulation named Hecate—has connections with the highest in power, and plans to use them to get his way.

Hecate’s plot hinges on steadily, insidiously manipulating Inspector Macbeth: the head of SWAT and a man already susceptible to violent and paranoid tendencies. What follows is an unputdownable story of love and guilt, political ambition, and greed for more, exploring the darkest corners of human nature, and the aspirations of the criminal mind.

Here is a complete list of the Hogarth Shakespeare Series, written by various authors:

1. The Gap of Time (2015) by Jeanette Winterson

2. Shylock Is My Name (2016) by Howard Jacobson

3. Vinegar Girl (2016) by Anne Tyler

4. Hag-Seed (2016) by Margaret Atwood

5. New Boy (2017) by Tracy Chevalier

6. Dunbar (2017) by Edward St. Aubyn

7. Macbeth (2018) by Jo Nesbø

We meet a Greek detective who has become an expert on jealousy thanks to some hard-earned lessons from his private life. Far away, in another country, a taxi driver finds his wife's earring in a car belonging to his boss and sets out to discover how it ended up there.

High in the skies above, a woman is on board a plane headed to London, about to end her own life in the wake of her husband's affair with her best friend. But who is the man sitting next to her?

Nesbo also takes us to the near future, to a dystopian America, where the upper-class elite is waiting atop a skyscraper to be evacuated while the masses fight for survival in the streets below. 

We are introduced to two best friends on their way to the running of the bulls in Pamplona when they fall in love with the same girl and, in the epic and vicious finale, we meet a psychologist who also happens to be an assassin.

This laugh-out-loud boxed set contains three great reads—perfect for boys! This set includes paperback editions of Bad Unicorn, Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder, and Spy School packed in a gift-able box—it’s the ideal present for birthdays, holidays, or anytime you need a good laugh!

This collection of outrageously funny stories will leave you laughing:

Bad Unicorn:

It wasn’t Max Spencer’s idea to fight robots, lead an army, or save the world—it just so happens that he’s the only living person who can read the most fantastical (and powerful) book ever written: The Codex of Infinite Knowability. Now he’s stuck in another world with a carnivorous unicorn on his trail!

Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder:

Nilly’s neighbor, Dr. Proctor, is a wacky professor who invents things—usually things that don’t work. But his Fart Powder is another story! A little makes you fart and a little can send you up in the air! It’s fart-tastic fun until someone steals the powder.

Spy School:

Can an undercover nerd become a superstar secret agent? Because of his innate nerdiness, Ben is not surprised when he is recruited for a magnet school with a focus on science—but he’s entirely shocked to discover that the school is actually a front for a junior CIA academy. Could the CIA really want him?