About the series
Three winters in Harbin, where the city carves a metropolis out of the frozen Songhua each January. Every book opens with a young woman found flawless in the ice — kept, not killed — and ends with a name returned to the family that waited for it.
At a glance
- Genre
- Crime fiction, literary mystery
- Mood
- Atmospheric, haunting, wintry
- Setting and era
- Present day, China
- Pace
- Medium
- Point of view
- Third person
- Reading order
- Read in order
- Heat
- Not applicable
The books in order
3 books
Book 1Start here
In the middle of the Harbin festival a sculptor’s chisel finds a young woman sealed in a flawless block of river ice. Detective Bai Rong has a thaw coming, an official silence, and a city that calls her missing women the river’s.
Book 2
The Ice and Snow Festival is back in Harbin, and a sealed wall gives up another young woman, flawless in the ice. Someone has already chosen the next girl, and Bai Rong has only days to get her out alive.
Book 3
A pressure ridge heaves up the river ice, and a block rises with a young woman inside it. Bai Rong must go off the river she knows, onto ice she cannot read, for a living girl who no longer wants rescuing.
Where are you in the series?
Each stop is its own page. Bookmark yours; we save nothing.
- Nothing yet: start with Book 1
Book 1
What the Cold Keeps
In the middle of the Harbin festival a sculptor’s chisel finds a young woman sealed in a flawless block of river ice. Detective Bai Rong has a thaw coming, an official silence, and a city that calls her missing women the river’s.
Book 2
What the Cold Inherits
The Ice and Snow Festival is back in Harbin, and a sealed wall gives up another young woman, flawless in the ice. Someone has already chosen the next girl, and Bai Rong has only days to get her out alive.
Book 3
What the Cold Returns
A pressure ridge heaves up the river ice, and a block rises with a young woman inside it. Bai Rong must go off the river she knows, onto ice she cannot read, for a living girl who no longer wants rescuing.
Your companion
Names and roles that are safe before you start.
Get the series
Book 1What the Cold Keeps
E-book
Paperback
Book 2What the Cold Inherits
E-book
Paperback
Book 3What the Cold Returns
E-book
Paperback
Questions
Do I have to read the books in order?
Yes. Each book gives away how the earlier ones end, so read them in the order they are listed.
Where do I start?
With Book 1, What the Cold Keeps.
How many books are there?
The series has 3 books. It is complete.
About Cara Lindqvist
Cara Lindqvist writes crime novels about cold places and the things they preserve. Her books begin with a body in a landscape that should not have kept it. A woman sealed flawless inside a festival ice sculpture on a frozen Chinese river. A scientist murdered in the world’s northernmost town, where burial is forbidden because the ground will not let the dead decompose.
