Xander acquires the Dutch rights to Martta Kaukonen’s Follow the Butterfly!

We are thrilled to tell that we’ve closed a Dutch deal for Martta Kaukonen’s FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLY! The rights to the Spiegel-bestselling thriller were acquired by Xander. The deal was closed by Martti Berner at Elina Ahlback Literary Agency.  

Stijn de Vries, Commissioning Editor, at Xander praised the title saying:

I fell in love with the dynamic between Ida (Ira) and Clarissa, as The Times already said it is a brilliant game of cat and mouse. Ida reminds me, in the best ways, of Lisbeth Salander, and the book as a whole does have a very Gillian Flynn vibe. The many twists and turns make it an absolute joy to read, and gradually piecing together who the real villain of the story is, is just expertly done. The characters are morally complex, it’s impossible to know who to trust, and that back and forth really, really works.

Martta Kaukonen’s internationally bestselling psychological thriller FOLLOW THE BUTTERLY has been sold to 17 territories  Film & TV rights acquired by Legendary Tobis!

Heyne Verlag published Therapiert in Germany in February 2023, where it became a Spiegel Bestseller with 30,000 copies sold. They have since acquired the full trilogy, with book #3, Free, set for Spring 2026. In Italy, Longanesi launched the book in January 2025, hitting the bestseller list for weeks and selling over 20,000 copies. Book #2, Meet Me in the Darkness, will follow in 2026.

Rights to this unique international bestseller are still available e.g. in France, Spain, Türkie, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden… etc.

English and German editions are available!

Follow the Butterfly

Martta Kaukonen

An addictive psychological thriller in the spirit of Gillian Flynn

Ira, 20, a serial killer who was abducted as a child, starts therapy with celebrity therapist Clarissa. Only one of them knows that they share a mutual secret from the past. Will the other one realize it before she gets murdered?

Clarissa is a middle-aged psychotherapist, the best in her field. She is familiar to everyone from her TV appearances and from glossy magazines. For her, every patient is a princess. And someone only she can save. Or can she? Clarissa already has one suicide to answer for; a teenage boy’s death never seizes to haunt her.

When Ira becomes Clarissa’s patient, a cat-and-mouse game begins in which rules are followed by no one. The kind of game that never ends well.