Bargain @ $1.99 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the US only (couponable/VIP-eligible at Kobo, price should otherwise be the same at other retailers):
Two titles by the late Polish author Stanisław Lem (
Wikipedia), usually known for his award-winning science fiction, but he also wrote literary and mystery:
The Chain of Chance, a vacation murder mystery set in Italy, investigated by a former astronaut.
An ex-astronaut investigates a string of potential murders in this novel by the Kafka Prize–winning author of Solaris.
Vacation is supposed to be relaxing. But while traveling in Naples, several American tourists die in a most macabre and unusual way: committing suicide in a fit of madness. The cases are too similar to be coincidental, and the prevailing theory soon assumes that a serial poisoner is on the loose.
Called in to investigate, and stem the rash of death before it becomes an epidemic, is a former astronaut from the States. As he follows the path of the last victim, he is confronted with a mystery that proves the truth is always stranger than fiction—and that we are all casualties of fortune in the end.
Called “a Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age, who plays in earnest with every concept of philosophy and physics, from free will to probability theory,” Stanislaw Lem now tackles the suspense genre with his famed intensity and intelligence, weaving a taut and enigmatic tale as only a great novelist can (The New York Times Book Review).
Hospital of the Transfiguration a semi-autobiographical literary psychological thriller taking place in an insane asylum in Nazi-occupied Poland.
As the Nazis occupy Poland, a young doctor joins the staff of an insane asylum only to find a world of pain and absurdity to match the horrors outside.
It is 1939. The Nazis have just begun their occupation of Poland. Stefan Trzyniecki, a young doctor, alienated from his family and unsettled by the fate of his country, accepts an invitation to join the staff of a hospital for the mentally disturbed.
The mayhem inside the walls of the institution is matched only by the chaos outside. Stefan’s colleagues are hardly less deranged than their patients: surgeons obsessed with death, doctors haunted by the past, and nurses infected with cruelty. By the time the horrors of the war creep past the doors of Stefan’s supposed sanctuary, he is forced to confront uncomfortable truths about the state of his profession—and face inevitable consequences about his own part in the madness.