Doctor Death by Lene Kaaberbol Spotlight!

A Madeleine Karno mystery

BY new York times bestselling author

LENE Kaaberbøl

DOCTOR DEATH

By Lene Kaaberbøl

ISBN: 978-1-4767-3138-4

Format: Hardcover 304 pages

Price: $25.00 (US) | $29.00 (CAN)

On Sale: February 17, 2015

“It is snowing. The snow falls on the young girl’s face, on her cheeks, mouth, and nose, and on her eyes. She does not blink it away. Around her the city is living its nightlife… But here in the passageway where she lies, there is no life.”

Author Lene Kaaberbøl creates a mesmerizing world in her historical thriller DOCTOR DEATH: A MADELEINE KARNO MYSTERY (Atria Books, $25; February 17, 2014). As she did masterfully in the New York Times bestseller The Boy in the Suitcase, Kaaberbøl draws readers in from the very first sentence, thanks to her stunning talent for storytelling. This time the plot circles around the ambitious and strong-minded Madeleine Karno, a young woman eager to shatter the constraints of her provincial French upbringing.

Working as her father’s assistant, Madeleine dreams of following in his footsteps and becoming a   pathologist.  In 1894, though, autopsies are considered unseemly and ungodly, even when performed by a man. Hence, the idea of a young woman dissecting corpses is too scandalous for words.

But this all changes when seventeen-year-old Cecile Montaine is found dead in the snowy streets of Varbourg, France and her family refuses to permit a full autopsy. With no concrete cause of death, Madeleine and her father are left with a single perplexing clue: in the dead girl’s nostrils they discover a mysterious mite. 

Other bodies are soon discovered throughout the city, and Madeleine, her father, and the city commissioner must race against time to solve the series of suspicious deaths before they all become the next victims of a deadly disease—or of a heinous murderer.

Eloquently written and with powerful insight into human and animal nature, DOCTOR DEATH takes the reader on a captivating journey. At once a spellbinding mystery and a poignant coming-of-age story, DOCTOR DEATH depicts the struggle of a young woman grappling with what's expected of her as a female in the late 19th century while fearlessly trying to solve a chilling crime.

Lene Kaaberbøl has been a professional writer since the age of fifteen, with more than two million books sold worldwide. She has won several national and international awards for her fiction, and her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Kaaberbøl is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller The Boy in the Suitcase, which received rave reviews, was selected as a New York Times Book Review Notable Crime Book of 2011 as well as an Indie Next List November 2011 Pick,  and won the Harald Morgensen Award for Best Danish Thriller of the Year. Born in Copenhagen, she now lives on the small Channel Island of Sark.