Collection: Books

One family. Five books. Two languages.

101 Very Finnish Problems is the book that started all this, the record of a Brit who moved to Helsinki in 2002 and has been failing to understand the place ever since. Its sequel, More Very Finnish Problems, is back in print in a new 2026 edition with 29 brand-new problems, illustrations throughout and every fact brought up to date, from the strength of the supermarket beer to the laundry room you book three weeks ahead. The original edition is also an audiobook on BookBeat, read by Joel himself, so you can hear the accent his Finnish is still hiding behind. For fiction there is Spellbound, his collection of prize-winning short stories.

Then the Charlotta books, Anna Kurkijärvi-Willans's Finnish-language children's novels about a girl called Charlotta, her teddy bears and the occasional rescue mission. Both are signed hardbacks for ages six to ten, which includes anyone raising a Finnish speaker a long way from Finland. The newest, Charlotta ja Seikkailu Nallemaassa, sends her to Teddyland to find out why the bears are helping to knock it down.

Two digital guides sit alongside, one to Finnish happiness and one to Helsinki, both instant PDFs. Everything else goes in the post and the postage is free worldwide. Six thousand orders in, we have decided to keep it that way.