Based on true events, this is a story of intelligent resistance and civic courage in times of inhumanity, then and now.

Award-winning author Erich Hackl draws a vivid picture of Second World War Vienna – and of the fate of people leaving the city, to start new lives in Iran, Australia, China and other places.

How the taciturn Vienna craftsman and passionate mountaineer Reinhold Duschka came to save two Jewish lives during the Nazi reign of terror. How he managed to hide Regina Steinig and her daughter Lucia in his workshop over four years. How the three of them, tied by an invisible rope, survived thanks to good fortune and mutual trust. What happened afterwards. This meticulously researched story develops an incredible undertow, while affecting the reader deeply.

Featured in New Books in German.

Dr. Armand Gruber always played an imposing role in Swiss journalist Mario’s life. Gruber is a man of old school ways. A brilliant German teacher, Swiss Army captain, fervent anti-communist. And for decades, he had been leading a double life. No one suspected anything. Not his wife and not his daughter Bettina, who had rebelled against her father her entire life. Nor his former favourite student and son-in-law Mario, who had to break away from Gruber, in order to become a left-wing journalist. Nor Bettina’s best friend Karina, who, as a daughter of a custodian working for the Swiss secret service, grew up in close proximity to Gruber’s secret. For he was a member of the secret resistance organisation of the Swiss army, P-26. Now, two decades after the end of the Cold War, Gruber can finally break his silence.

Star business lawyer Urs Blank, forty-five years old, specialist for merger negotiations, has his feelings under control. He has learned not to leave himself wide open, but to make use of the openness of others. But then his life runs off the rails. A trip with hallucinogenic mushrooms leads to a dangerous change of personality, from which no-one succeeds in saving him. Blank flees into the forest. Until he finally comes to understand: there is only one way to free himself from this nightmare.

The far north of Iceland, around the turn of the nineteenth century. With his rope ferry, Jón Magnússon Ósmann transports people, animals and wares across the waters of the Skagafjord. He’s a fisherman and a seal hunter who sees ghosts and elves; a friend of all mankind who cares for and shelters those in need; and he’s also a God-fearing drinker and poet. Larger-than-life, strong and companionable, and yet so tormented by his own fate that the floods he has sailed for over forty years begin to lure him in. Bursting with life, this is an almost unbelievable story based on a real life.

What if Osama bin Laden had not been shot during the spectacular raid on his house in Pakistan? Exciting like a thriller by Frederick Forsyth, this novel blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy.
Geronimo was the code word that the men of seal Team 6 were to use if they located Osama bin Laden. The commandos astonished the world with their spectacular operation. But did it really unfold as the official version would have us believe? In this novel, Leon de Winter plays a masterful game with that question.
Geronimo is also the story of Apana, an Afghan girl who develops a passion for Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and the story of Jabbar, a Pakistani boy whose most precious possession is an old kitchen stool, a stool that could set the course of history off in a crucial new direction. Then there is the story of American excommander Tom Johnson, through whose compassionate eyes we view a world full of cunning and tragedy, a world that is at the same time magnificent.
Leon de Winter is the first author to call into question the entire official version of Operation Neptune Spear – in which Osama bin Laden was eliminated – in a high wire act of the imagination.
English sample translation and synopsis available.
Featured title in 10 Books from Holland (Dutch Foundation for Literature).

In what was meant to be the best summer of his life, Nicolas had a dream. He wanted to become a writer, like his uncle. Then life got in the way - as did his father’s company, responsibility, meetings and all sorts of obligations. When his uncle died, Nicolas lost the only person who believed in him. But then, in the most unlikely of places, he found the key which helped him to become who he really is.

»Why do so many of us stumble at the task which should actually be the most important one of our lives — to become who we are?«
Bas Kast

During the Nazi occupation of Poland, a captain of the German army is stationed in an occupied house. A fourteen-year-old boy whose father works in the underground against the fascists lives in the house with his aunt, who appears to be above suspicion. The captain brings his girlfriend, an actress called Rosemarie, to live with him. The boy is utterly fascinated by her. Teasingly, Rosemarie calls him Amor, but otherwise she hardly notices his adolescent passion. When an older boy asks Amor to help him stage an attack on the captain, the boy finds himself in deep conflict: If he takes part he will at last be taken seriously by the others, but Rosemarie might be killed in the attack… His Excellency is just trying on a new purple robe, and The Tailor involves him in a sophisticated discussion about »What is culture, what is nature?« A journeyman announces that the barbarians are coming. His Excellency is distraught, for the barbarians can only have one thing in mind: to overthrow him. The tailor wants to complete the fitting in peace, but sounds of a tumult issue from the next room, and the barbarians refuse to be put off with fashion journals any longer. His Excellency, who is afraid of being recognised and beheaded on the spot, manages at the last minute to disguise himself in a monk's habit before Socco, the barbarians' leader, bursts in. Dressed in a badly tanned loincloth and tennis shoes, and carrying a sword, he announces that he has come from the Caucasus to put an end to the decadent society and breathe new life into it with his ideas.

Ambitious Mara has two goals: power and money. Since there is no direct path to neither due to her lack of education, she has to achieve her goals indirectly through men. Madame Pompadour is her unequalled idol. But then she unexpectedly falls in love with a young musician who, however, only exploits her feelings. From then on she sells her own grandmother… Tokarjewa draws a psychologically sensitive and tragicomic picture of a modern Russian ›femme fatale‹.

All Blum really wants to do on Malta is sell his porno mags, but he suddenly finds himself in Frankfurt, in possession of five pounds of cocaine. His first thought is to sell it quickly, and open a beach bar on a Caribbean island. But then all sorts of things get in his way: his own naïveté, the captivating Cora, the dangerous Rossi, the inscrutable Mr. Haq, and the countless, cashless people interested in his snow.

»The frogs, too, only seemed to be croaking innocently in the swamps. In reality, everyone had a plan.«
Jörg Fauser

Charlie is fifteen years old and misses her father, especially since her mother’s new boyfriend came onto the scene. And as if that weren’t enough, her best friend has just kissed the boy she has a crush on. For a while now, it feels like there’s been a glass wall between Charlie and the world. Then, Pommes shows up, his real name is Kornelius — and he turns that glass wall into a car window that can be rolled down, so that Charlie can finally stretch her hand up toward the sky again.

The hunt for diamonds belonging to the drugs mafia is keeping Inspector Hunkeler on tenterhooks. A Lebanese courier gets rid of his wares before the police can seize him. The diamonds are found by a canal worker, who is determined to keep his lucky find. But the courier will do anything to get them back. With this, his first case, Inspector Peter Hunkeler from Basel makes his literary debut.

- A book of comfort for times of loss. - Strikingly open and honest. - Hansjörg Schneider's last crime novel ›Hunkeler and the Eyes of Oedipus‹ was number 1 on the Swiss best-seller list. »When I wrote this book, I concentrated on authenticity rather than getting caught up with stylistic finesse. It is a diary of my grief. I could have chiseled a gravestone for Astrid. But as I am a writer, not a stonemason, this book is my gift for her instead.« When Hansjörg Schneider's wife Astrid died of cancer in 1997, they had lived together for more than thirty years. »The truth is that we loved each other from the very beginning, and for a lifetime.« After her death, Hansjörg Schneider kept a diary for one year. The result is a personal book about a great love and a moving document of grief.

Eleven-year-old Martin has nothing but the shirt on his back, and a black rooster which is both a protector and a friend. The villagers steer clear of the boy, finding him strange; far too smart and kind. They would rather mistreat him than acknowledge his talents. When Martin meets a travelling painter and seizes the chance to leave the village with him, he is led into a terrible world which, thanks to his compassion and understanding, he is able to resist, becoming a saviour for those even more innocent than he is.

An old, seaside villa with a large, white terrace – this is how the translator Marina imagines the property she has inherited in Bulgaria. Of course, her friends – the realistic psychotherapist Xenia and the cheeky tradeswoman Vera – soon have Marina's feet back on the ground. An inheritance in Bulgaria does not necessarily mean sun, sea, the beach and white terraces – more likely a bureaucratic nightmare and endless nerve-racking repairs. But the two women are not completely immune to Marina's daydreams. When Marina decides to drive to Bulgaria with her two children in order to inspect the property, Xenia and Vera suddenly join the bandwagon. At least one might be able to spend a pleasant summer at the seaside… An eventful time is in store for the three women in which not only the Bulgarian bureaucracy, but also a passionate archaeologist and his team, try to make their life difficult.

Hedwig is an unmarried woman who works in the countryside as a primary school teacher. Already at a young age, she frequently reports being ill. The pastor sees her as a lost soul; the doctor diagnoses a nervous disorder — and her family doesn’t understand her.

It is the turn of the 20th century — an old era gives way to modernity, and Hedwig is leading a quiet, solitary life. Her emotional outbreaks begin to increasingly unsettle those around her. Eventually, the rise of the Nazi dictatorship puts her life as a mentally ill woman in grave danger.