Ah, Alabama, where the skies are blue, and Confederate flags still abound. It doesn’t seem the most likely place to set a mystery novel but Icelandic writer Hildur Sif Thorarensen decided to buck the trend and trade Scandinavia for the south-eastern U.S. state in her second novel, His Sweet. His Sweet is a riveting...

My first trip to Iceland was as a meat-eater and the only time I had any difficulty was deciding which of the plethora of daytrips to take. Returning several years later as a vegetarian, things became trickier. In downtown Reykjavik, there was Glo, a health food restaurant that, while serving one meat dish, was...