From the eerily outlandish (a man suffocated by countless snails) to the irrational and brutal (a child's revenge on his mother for cooking his pet turtle), ›The Snail Watcher‹ presents a gallery of bizarre characters, each driven by strange, unspoken urges.

Stories from The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder portray the murderously competitive desires of our most trusted companions. In this satirical reprise of Kafka, cats and dogs are no longer benign elements of a happy home but actually have the power to destroy it. 

In the darkly satiric, often mordantly hilarious sketches that make up Little Tales of Misogyny, Patricia Highsmith upsets our conventional notions of female character, revealing the devastating power of these once familiar creatures – The Dancer, The Female Novelist, The Prude – who destroy both themselves and the men around them.

Samson and his colleague Kholodnyi are supposed to be investigating the sale of illegal meat. Yet they have hardly even begun when Samson’s girlfriend Nadezhda is abducted by striking railroad workers. Samson, of course, sets about trying to free her.
But what are the railroad workers up to? And why has the shadowy Chekist Abyazov been assigned to the police? Samson must get to the bottom of it all if he wants to solve the case and rescue Nadezhda.

In the tumultuous wake of the Russian Revolution, the young, recently orphaned Samson finds himself almost accidentally signed up to the new Soviet police force in Kyiv. His first case is a perplexing mystery involving a severed ear, a bone made of pure silver and a decidedly unusual suit tailored from fine English cloth. Luckily, Samson meets the ingenious Nadezhda, who aids him in his investigation.

A young woman called Lina Verde is searching the craggy, steep cliffs of Capri for a rare orchid. Soon afterwards, Zeno the fisherman finds her lifeless body. He claims that he and Lina were a couple, but he doesn’t even know her address. Did he kill her? Zeno is a notorious liar who presents himself as a sociable Capri fisherman, at least to female tourists. The island police officers Enrico Rizzi and Antonia Cirillo believe him to be capable of anything, but a perfumer leads them onto a new trail. Was Lina really just looking for a flower?

Luisa, 15, who was adopted from Peru as a baby, has a sheltered upbringing with affluent parents. She has a special gift: Luisa can see in the dark. When she encounters a young homeless man in the nearby woods, she takes him to her heart. Tim relies on her help and her willingness to conceal him, because he has every reason to remain invisible. Luisa’s gift turns her into an accomplice, entangling her in a web of lies and crime that becomes harder and harder to escape.

Seven stories about travellers and seekers, about displaced and homeless persons in Greece, Turkey and Germany.
The stories are highly topical yet timeless.
Including two crime stories featuring Costas Haritos – proving once again that dark days can only be survived by means of humour and solidarity.

Petros Markaris brings back the myth of the Odyssey to our times. These stories are about people travelling in unfamiliar territory, like the ancient hero, constantly facing new tests, listening to the siren song of hope and at the mercy of brutal opponents. Many Greeks shared the same experiences when they left their country, fleeing the dictatorship of 1967 and poverty. But does that make them more welcoming to the strangers washing up on their shores today?

One sunny morning, island policeman Rizzi picks the first peaches of the season in his garden high above the sea, unaware of the events of the previous night. The body of Rosalinda, fashion designer, has just been found in the church’s confessional booth – murdered. Uproar ensues, not only in the village, but in Signora de Lulla’s villa too.
A frequent visitor there, Rosalinda recently looked at a valuable handbag made of salamander leather. Why did she have to die?

While private investigator Johann Friedrich von Allmen and his assistant Carlos are still celebrating the successful recovery of the valuable Dahlia picture, Carlos’ life partner Maria Moreno disappears. Not a lovers’ tiff, as Allmen’s factotum assumes at first, but the brutal revenge of those who feel they were robbed. Maria in exchange for the Dahlia picture – that is the kidnappers’ demand. But they did not reckon with old Dalia Gutbauer. For she is unwilling to hand over the picture, and has her own ideas about what she wants to do with it. This, of course, puts Allmen, Carlos and Maria in an extremely precarious situation. They need to act fast, and they all give their best in a dramatic race against time.

On the night of the 11th of July, two guardsmen from the Serbian elite unit are making their rounds in the Topcider military camp. The next morning, they are found dead. The military court issues an official report claiming that they were the victims of a dishonourable ritual suicide, and the investigation is promptly closed. Lawyer Sinisa Stojkovic is commissioned by the parents of the dead guardsmen to launch a private investigation. He asks his old friend, Milena Lukin, a specialist in international law, for her assistance. But her investigations start to irritate certain individuals, and her life ends up in grave danger. A dreadful suspicion begins to build: it seems that the guards saw something they shouldn't have seen. Could it have had something to do with the anniversary of the worst massacre in European history since World War II?

Friends Nina and Franziska live in the same building on the market square in a small town in southwest Germany. In a fit of champagne-induced enthusiasm, they and four other women found the ›Nutters’ Club‹, based on the idea that there is something odd about each one of them. 
When Nina loses her handbag, she makes the fateful acquaintance of Andreas Haase. Not satisfied with the usual finder’s fee, he wants more – and Nina will need to rely on her best friend more than ever before.

On the most beautiful island in the world, the lemons are ripening for the Bellinis' famous Limoncello. But then, the Constantinis suddenly stop supplying - they want to make the shift to organic fruits and crowd farming. When Elisa Constantini dies in a mysterious accident on Capri's serpentine roads, the island’s young detective Enrico Rizzi and his dynamic colleague Antonia Cirillo lead the investigation - and find themselves gazing into an abyss of old feuds and new disputes.

In his fifth case, Hunkeler is probing deep into Switzerland’s past. It’s the end of October and the city of Basel is as grey and wet as December. With his girlfriend Hedwig away in Paris for three months, Inspector Peter Hunkeler is back in his smoke-filled favourite pub nursing a few after work beers. It’s already the early hours of the morning when he sees old Hardy on his way home. Hunkeler sits down next to him and smokes a cigarette. But Hardy, usually so eager to chat, stays uncharacteristically silent. His throat is just a gaping wound. The media and city police are in agreement: a band of Albanian smugglers are behind the murder. But that’s too easy for Hunkeler, who decides to follow a hot lead using his own methods – and is promptly suspended. He clears out his office and puts his faith in his unmistakeable psychological intuition. It leads him to Basel’s red light district and to the dark, unknown depths of Swiss history.

It is high summer in Basel. After his early morning swim in the Rhine, Inspector Hunkeler witnesses a man jumping into the river from the Johanniter Bridge. At first glance it seems to be suicide. But Hunkeler has his doubts and soon he is on the trail of The Fluttering Man. It leads him to the very brink of legality and into the depths of his own past.

Mama's baby – papa's maybe? ›Cuckoo's Child‹ is a story about three paternity tests, a pregnancy test, a baby in a laundry basket, a few dead persons and unconventional family bliss in a nest which, though entirely unfamiliar, is nonetheless rather cosy. »A little house with a garden, a happy marriage and above all two children, those were my goals in life«, Anja, a teacher in her late thirties thinks to herself. Far from having reached her goals, she is stuck in a ›rat hole‹ as she calls the lodging into which she fled following her divorce. When her colleague Birgit becomes pregnant, Anja can't help suspecting the child was conceived by her own ex-husband. She persuades Birgit's husband secretly to undergo a paternity test. The side effects are potentially dangerous… With an equal portion of humour and insight into the slings and arrows of nest-building, ›Cuckoo's Child‹ depicts family constellations which are anything but boring and common. In the process she shows that the road to happiness is not always straight and smooth.