THE WATER RITUALS

Already a major bestseller in Spain and Latin America, the sensational Trilogy of the White City returns with a second installment in which Inspector López de Ayala investigates a set of ritualistic murders that target pregnant women--and, among them, his childhood girlfriend. Kraken''s first girlfriend, Ana Belén Liaño, has been murdered as part of a ritual not seen for 2,600 years. She has been burned, hung, and then placed upside down in a Bronze Age cauldron. But she is not the only one. Pregnant women all over the region are dying at the hands of a psychopath who imitates "the water rituals" in sacred places in the Basque country and Cantabria. There is no time to waste, because Deputy Superintendent Díaz de Salvatierra is also waiting for a child. And the father could very well be Kraken himself.