For Auggie Schnuck, the future looks brighter than ever before: he has achieved almost everything as a wrestler under the ring name The Aug, and he’s planning his future with Nadine, the love of his life. If only it weren’t for his self-doubt: can he, Auggie Schnuck, really stand his ground in front of the whole world? Wouldn’t being a husband and father be simpler in the role of the unbeatable Aug? An artfully narrated novel about dreams that come true and lead to the edge of sanity and reality; and about artificiality, conflict, and tenderness.

Switzerland in the near future: the cities have merged into a large metropolitan area and is flourishing, while extensive sections of the Alps are declared zones restricted for electricity production. Scientist Alesch returns to his native village of Pradetta, a remote locale in the shadow of a glacier. But strange weather phenomena appear on the mountain more and more often, and soon Alesch is torn back and forth between the primitive mountain landscape and the high-tech future. Because his research, as revolutionary as it is risky, could hold the answer to the energy crisis. And then there is his first love Annetta ...

Berlin, 1943: At Plötzensee, 20-year-old Liane Berkovitz is executed by the Nazis. Young love and her contempt for the Nazi dictatorship have made her into a resistance fighter with the Schulze-Boysen group. Decades later, an elderly woman is walking along the streets of Berlin; unkempt, with long, snow-white hair. Everyone who lives there has seen her, but barely anyone knows who she really is: a millionaire, and the first-hand witness of Liane’s momentous life.

Los Angeles, 1959. The aging filmmaker Curtis Melnitz is tormented by nightmares. He is in dire need of sleeping pills – but can only get them if he regularly visits the psychoanalyst. On the analyst’s couch, he reluctantly recounts the story of his life, from Hollywood to Berlin, from the black-and-white, silent dream factory to the garish and glaring German reality of the early 20th century. A chapter for every appointment on the couch. A life like a novel.

At the University of Athens, the humanities are under increasing financial pressure, while technological and economic subjects are being funded. Many students are vehemently opposed to these policies. When a maths professor is found dead, the suspicion immediately falls on the young agitators.
Costas Haritos and Antigoni Ferleki investigate, but soon lose their way in the labyrinth of Greek educational institutions.

Joseph is lonely and struggling with his lot in life, not least because his wife Lis, unable to bear day-to-day life on the farm, has fled to the city with their son. This is far from a daily occurrence in the 1960s in the countryside. Luckily, Ada, Lis’ older sister, is still there — with whom Joseph perhaps always felt more connected. And then 19-year-old Birdie suddenly appears on his doorstep, weak, and fleeing her own predetermined path. Lis, Ada and Birdie — they will turn not only their own lives upside down, but Joseph’s too.

When the snow in the Alps melts down into the valley below, the time has come: Mother wakes from her hibernation, her head filled with the dreams of the past months. She is awaited by Grandfather, and cared for by her children, the twins. Soon, the first visitors will arrive, because Mother’s dreams promise advice and give comfort. This is how it is, year after year. But this summer, the twins’ tenth, everything is about to change — and what Mother predicts will come true in an unexpected way.

After going to the cinema with her best friend, a woman gets into her car and drives home – until a diversion takes her off her usual route. She misses exit after exit, straying further and further from home, where her husband is waiting for her. Within a night and a day it becomes clear: perhaps it would be better if she never went back to him. Because as unsettling as the darkness of the highways and gas stations may be, the true danger is waiting for her at home.

Béla receives a surprising phone call: the house on Zederstrasse is for sale. It’s been thirty years since he lived there with his flatmates Simone, Serdar and Kim. Since then, everyone has gone their own separate ways. Is it really a good idea for the four of them to now buy the house where they spent their years of departure? In truth, Béla didn’t ever want to settle down. As long as he doesn’t look in the mirror, he still feels young. But the only really young one is his girlfriend Kaja, who has just found out that she’s pregnant.

Kalmann is a lovable eccentric in the village of Raufarhöfn, high up in the rugged north of Iceland. Ever since his father gave him a sheriff’s hat years ago, he has regarded himself as the village’s sheriff. And in this role, once again, he has a lot on his plate: While the town is heatedly debating the salmon farm that the Norwegians are planning, he discovers an old tin box containing a huge amount of money. It awakens desires, and before long Kalmann is embroiled in a murky game.

Friedchen and Paula meet in 1932, and it’s friendship at first sight. Two women who are hungry for life, filled with hopes and dreams. Their friendship — as they pledge to one another during their long nights of dancing in Berlin — will last forever. Friedchen just happens to fall in love with Paula’s charming cousin Max. But then Hitler comes to power — and Paula and Max are Jewish. Katharina Höftmann takes us on a journey through a century, across the ocean and beyond all the disruptions that still resonate today.

At the age of forty, Yuval finds himself living a life in which nothing is how he’d imagined it would be. He is incapable of changing anything, until he realises: it wasn’t fate that brought him here, but the decisions he never made. And so he makes one — and embarks on a fateful journey that changes everything.