Lost Village
*BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER FOR THE YEAR* for NPR
"Come for the mounting horror and scares, but stay for a devastating examination of the nature of family secrets." - New York Times book review
"[A] scary, highly entertaining debut...that pays homage to Shirley Jackson." - South Florida Sun Sentinel
A Most Anticipated Book Goodreads * Publishers Weekly * Crime Reads * Popsugar * Bookish * #1 Loanstar Pick in Canada
An Indie Next pick!
A Library Reads Pick!
The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense.
Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.
But there will be no turning back.
Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice:
They are not alone.
They’re looking for the truth…
But what if it finds them first?
Come find out.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *Lost Village* by Camilla Sten is a gripping, atmospheric thriller with a haunting setting and a tense, eerie mood that keeps many turning...
The Swedish writer Camilla Sten wrote The Lost Village: A Novel about a former mining village in remote rural Sweden, where the population was found to have vanished in August 1959. In August 1959, Swedish police found a baby in the abandoned school, and a woman was stoned to death at a lamppost. The rest of the village population seems to vanish. The former mining village is named Silvertjärn. The book was translated from Swedish by Alex Fleming. The novel appears to be setting up the premise of a “found footage” horror movie (Cateridge 109). The main character of the novel, Alice Lindstedt, is a filmmaker who is leading a film crew to create a project based on the abandoned village of Silvertjärn in the early 21st century. The novel has several chapters set in the 1950s. Lindstedt’s grandmother was from Silvertjärn. Lindstedt’s grandmother’s mother, father, and sister vanished with the rest of the village. Lindstedt’s great-grandmother is the main character of the section of the novel set in the 1950s. Lindstedt’s girlfriend also has a connection with Silvertjärn. The film crew believes they are alone in Silvertjärn, but they are not alone. Sten’s novel, The Lost Village, is a well-crafted and haunting horror novel about the impact of a desperate community's quest for meaning and its effects on future generations.
Works Cited:
Cateridge, James. 2015. Film Studies for Dummies. Chichester, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Kindle.
Good solid thriller. Nothing earth shattering or to remake the genre, but entertaining with the right amount of spooky.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.