Introducing Ahlbäck Agency’s new authors Fall 2026!

Erkka Mikkonen

Erkka Mikkonen (b. 1982) is a Finnish foreign correspondent specializing in Russia. He worked for Yle, Finland's national public broadcasting company, in Moscow starting in 2012, working as a full-time correspondent from 2019 to 2022.

Photo credit: Otto Virtanen

illustrator Heikala

Heikala is an illustrator whose work, inspired by Japanese aesthetics, have gained great popularity around the world.

Katja Boxberg

Katja Boxberg is a Finnish non-fiction author and an award-winning business journalist. She has worked for Finland’s leading business media, the Financial Times, and as a foreign correspondent in several European countries. Boxberg has written several non-fiction books on business, entrepreneurship, and society. The Story of Wolt became a bestseller in Finland.

Co-author Merina Salminen is a highly regarded former business journalist who has covered the technology sector for many years.

Kirsti Runavik

Kirsti Runavik (b. 1981) is a writer, traditional tattoo artist and visual artist specialising in esotericism and Nordic Shamanism and runes. She was born in Lapland and has roots and relatives all over the Nordic countries. Her passion is to write general-purpose non-fiction books in which ancient Nordic history awakens to a living tradition.

Kirsti Runavik is also a practicing witch and shaman, and well trained in various esoteric traditions. She runs courses and workshops, appears in media and is a valued speaker in Finland and abroad and was, among other things, credited in the Sámi Lore docuseries on Swedish SVT. She has an art studio near Turku Castle, where she makes art and magic happen. In her free time, she focuses on charity and helping the poor by knitting woolen clothes and collecting hospital supplies for humanitarian aid.

Photo credit: Sabrina Bqain

Mikko Porvali

Mikko Porvali (b. 1980) is a Finnish police superintendent, author, and lawyer specializing in intelligence and security policy. His literary works include twelve nonfiction books and a historical novel trilogy. Porvali has also written screenplays for films, podcasts, and TV series.
Most of Porvali’s works deal with the history of intelligence and espionage, a subject he teaches and researches at the University of Jyväskylä. Porvali is a frequently cited expert on these topics in the media and an active participant in public discourse.
In particular, Porvali’s work focuses on relations between Finland and the Soviet Union, human intelligence, and counterintelligence.
In addition to his career in the police, Porvali has served in the Finnish Defense Forces, including as a peacekeeper in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, and holds the rank of major in the reserves.

Tuire Malmstedt

Tuire Malmstedt (b. 1974) is an author and language teacher from Pieksämäki.

The first book in Malmstedt’s new Arctic Danger series is called The Kingdom of Dead Souls.

Before becoming a writer, Malmstedt worked as a translator and technical writer. She began writing stories at a young age, but it wasn’t until later that it developed into a career.

In her own words, Malmstedt is a sensitive crime writer. She has chosen settings that are familiar and important to her, which bring her stories to life. For Jehki, she chose Berlevåg as the setting, a place that holds significance for her father, who suffers from memory loss, though her father no longer remembers it. The author hopes that her father’s lost memories will thus be brought back to life.

She strives to make her characters as multifaceted as possible, and she has been praised in particular for her character portrayals.

Malmstedt believes that books and writing allow her to connect with and touch readers, and that through books one can also find kindred spirits, even if one cannot always meet them in real life.

Malmstedt has published the Isa Karos trilogy, which includes the novels Pimeä jää,  Mykkä taivas, and Enkelimetsä (Myllylahti). The Finnish Crime Writers’ Association awarded her debut novel Pimeä jää (2018) the prize for Best Debut Crime Novel of the Year. Her next series, Metso & Vauramo, is a five-part crime series: Lasitarha, Lumihauta, Lyijysydän, Luusaari, and Lintusielu (Aula & Co). The central themes of the series are memory and trauma. Malmstedt has also written a non-fiction book about Finnish cults titled All Power on Earth: Religious Cults in Finland (2024).