The Treasure

A parson's household murdered for its silver, the one girl who survives it, three Scottish mercenaries waiting on a frozen Swedish coast for a ship, and a dead girl who will not let the killers out of the country. Lagerlöf was lame from childhood, raised on Värmland folk tales, and in 1909 became the first woman to take the Nobel; this short novel of 1904 is her ghost story, and the ghost is not there to frighten anyone — she is there to prevent an escape.