These unforgettable stories grant insights into an impressive life, a writer’s work and aging, showing a very personal side of the ›Grande Dame‹ of German crime fiction – funny, affectionate, wicked.

The entire Ingrid Noll gamut in short-story form: her criminal wit, her warm-hearted life experience, her down-to-earth gift of observation. In this book, there’s a cherry on top: autobiographical writing, resonant and impressive. A letter to her deceased mother, the role of her father. How she fell in love with her first grandchild. The first years of her life in China. How she would like her last 24 hours to play out. What annoys her about getting old.

»I am made of two different dreams.«
Ingrid Noll

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.

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.

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.

There is a Spanish saying, »The tongue is like a dagger in the flesh.« But what happens when a mother and son speak in false tongues, deceiving each other at every turn? Ingrid Noll's Collected Short Stories relate the tales of unusual mothers and peculiar men. How did the virgin give birth to a child? The book begins with a retelling of the story of Christmas. A conservative dominatrix, an unhappy mother, an amorous dog, a carnival souvenir and an unusual half-sister narrate the joys and suffering of motherhood. The men too display unexpected talents, whether it be collecting autographs, fishing, knitting sweaters, inviting home their female students – or even bumping off their wives in elegant fashion. Malicious pleasures bring variety into everyday drudgery, and unexpected presents lead to an ill-fated Christmas…

Was there ever a closer women's friendship than that between Maja and Cora in ›Die Häupter meiner Lieben‹? Yet it is not only from men that the merrily murdering maidens emancipate themselves, but from each other too, when the fight for happiness begins... It was and is nothing new, the fact that men hardly look at me when Cora is by my side. How can my straight, light brown hair compete with her red lion's mane? My grey eyes with her green ones? People trying to be kind say I am small but fine, whereas Cora is described as a »dream woman« or a »thoroughbred«. From afar, probably nobody sees me at all. This is what Maja is thinking as she longs to escape from the shadow of her friend. And yet they are really so inseparable. After all, good girls go to heaven, and Maja and Cora can go anywhere they please if they stick together. It is not only in Tuscany that there are so many battles to be fought for villas and riches. Frankfurt am Main is another tough place: the two friends help some other women in their fight against a pimp and a lawyer with close associations with the red-light milieu. Maja impresses Cora by her spectacular actions; as in times gone by, they join forces and vanquish the enemy, thereby relieving other women of their burdens...

Maja and Cora have been friends ever since they were sixteen. They are not easily outdone by men when it comes to daring, and they do not draw too fine a line between trivial offences, murder and manslaughter. Woe betide anyone who gets in the way of their fun in Tuscany! ›Die Häupter meiner Lieben‹ is a dashing novel which describes how the two heroines solve their family problems in their own particular way. In the loveless environment in which she grew up, Maja was known as »elephant«, and the only way she could get what she needed was through petty theft - until she met the mysterious, unfathomable Cora through whose influence she gradually frees herself from her family ties. On the other hand Cora the artist works off her discomfiture on her pictures which are vaguely reminiscent of Judith and Holofernes. And it does not take long for real life to catch up with her paintings... ›Die Häupter meiner Lieben‹ is a fantastic story which is certainly not lacking in charm or chutzpah!