In 1923, on account of his exorbitant lifestyle, the musician and artist Louis Soutter is committed to a Swiss mental institution by his family. Only his famous cousin Le Corbusier stands by him. Soutter's pictures are unsettling and ignored by the art world of his time. Le Corbusier, both disconcerted and fascinated, becomes intertangled with this archaic art and the convoluted life paths that have led Soutter to this point.

A psychological novel about a family shaken by the realization that their tenant is a dangerous criminal. Lukas Hartmann forges a sensitive link between a portrait of a woman in crisis and a psychological study of a criminal. When their son Sebastian moves out, Margret and Gerhard Sandmaier are left behind. Margret in particular finds the empty house oppressive. Gerhard has his work as a history professor, but Margret’s part-time job at a bookshop and the German lessons she gives for refugee children are not enough to satisfy her. And Sebastian, having fled the nest, maintains a painful distance. The Sandmaiers decide to rent out the annex where their son used to live. They soon find a suitable tenant: a young bicycle mechanic, unobtrusive, polite, taciturn. But Margret begins to develop suspicions when stories hit the headlines about a man attacking young women with a knife.

Sabina has come to Zurich from Russia to be treated by Dr. Carl Gustav Jung at the University Psychiatric Clinic – and becomes his lover. 
Fritz, a carpenter’s son, dreams of building a better society. He pushes Switzerland to the brink of revolution, and later in Russia he saves Lenin’s life.
Sabina and Fritz are courageous, torn, full of contradictions; both ceaseless breakers of new ground. Their paths interweave and mirror one another – even as they slip away into the darkness of European history. 

Of all the robbers who cast fear and terror at the end of the 18th century, Hannikel was one of the most feared. Just the sound of his name was enough to make any child in the Black Forest or Elsace tremble. And Hannikel is on the run, with his most loyal men, along with their women and children. Where can he find a safe place for them? Jacob Schäffer, the head magistrate of Sulz, is obsessed with one mission: to put a stop to robbers, crooks and gypsies. After an honour killing, he finally tracks Hannikel down to a sighting in Chur, in Graubünden. Wilhelm Grau, Schäffer's clerk, has been in on the hunt for the Hannikel band from the start. But he is finding it increasingly difficult to see these people as monsters – especially Dieterle, Hannikel's eleven-year old son. A gripping and lively novel which leads the reader from gypsy camps in the depths of the Black Forest to the private quarters of Duke Karl Eugen and his wife Franziska. A tense and multi-layered novel, based on the true story of the robber Hannikel.

Martha was a formidable woman who rose from a poor background to achieve modest prosperity. But she could never forget the memories of her deprived childhood as a child labourer with a farming family in the Bernese hinterlands: Show no weakness. Work relentlessly. Be tough on yourself and others. These beliefs also influenced her sons, who were determined to succeed in the post-war period, and her grandchildren, who rebel and, for the first time, dare to dream of a different, freer life.

The most personal novel by the Swiss bestselling author.

From global star to refugee – the incredible story of Joseph Schmidt, one of the most beautiful voices of the 20th century.

His voice filled concert halls, beguiled women, captured an audience of millions in Germany, Europe, and America, where they called him »the small man with the great voice«.
Joseph Schmidt, the son of orthodox Jews from Czernowitz, Ukraine, made an incredible success of himself. What a journey from an unknown Eastern European Shtetl to the famous Carnegie Hall! In 1942, however, fame and talent are worth nothing.
On the run from the Nazis, the famous tenor becomes ill and is just one of thousands of exhausted refugees stuck at the Swiss border. Will he make it to the other side, to safety?

A millionaire heiress and a genius painter: a scandalous belle époque love affair. Lukas Hartmann has written a novel about the fate of a woman who breaks with the conventions of her time.

She is intelligent, fascinated by art – and after the death of her father, the »railway king« Alfred Escher, she is the richest woman in Switzerland. She is married to the son of a powerful politician. She is prepared to put all that at risk out of her love for an artist. Who is Lydia? No one knows her better than Luise, the maid who stays by her side through all of life’s twists and turns. And yet Lydia remains a mystery to her.

›Literature Prize of the Canton of Berne‹

English sample translation available.

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.

Who was Emily Ruete, alias Salme of Zanzibar? The Arabian princess who left her home in 1866 out of love for the Hamburg salesman Heinrich Ruete? The woman who took on a new name and a new religion, beginning a new life in Germany? The young widow who had to raise her three children alone in a foreign land? The pawn of political interests, caught up in Germany's scheming for the island of Zanzibar? These are the questions that Emily's children ask themselves to the very end: Said, Antonie and Rosalie. Their life lines run between the Orient and Occident, Islam and Christianity, royal heritage and bitter poverty, German discipline and unbridled exoticism – and lead directly into the catastrophic events of the 20th century.

London 1781. By order of the admiralty, John Webber delivers a portrait of her husband to the widow of James Cook. Outraged, the widow refuses to accept the present, claiming that she does not recognise her husband in it. Although shocked, Webber can sympathise with the woman. Upon the return of Captain Cook's ship »Resolution«, the admiralty issued a complete ban on mentioning the details of the circumstances of Cook's tragic death. And the portrait too only serves one purpose: to perpetuate the heroic memory of the great captain and to make sure that he will go down in history as one of England's noble explorers. But Webber knows the truth about Cook's four-year long journey, his third and last voyage around the world, and all the tormenting images, which he has been prohibited from drawing, will haunt him for the rest of his life.

A moving novel about security and loss, about family bonds which we cannot escape and those of our own making. 11 August, 1999 – total eclipse of the sun. Like thousands of others, a family of five drives to Alsace where the natural spectacle is particularly impressive. Only the youngest son, however, returns from this excursion alive. In the night Eliane Hess, psychologist and single mother, is called to the hospital: eight-year-old Yves, miraculously unscathed, is in shock. He chatters nervously on and on – just not about what really matters. What does he remember of the accident? Did his father smash the car into the tunnel wall on purpose? Piece by jigsaw piece, Eliane is discovering a picture of a family headed towards catastrophe with their eyes open. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep a professional distance. Yves's fate horrifies and fascinates Eliane – in the same way the Isenheim Altarpiece has since her youth, of which it is said that a solar eclipse is represented on its first panel. When a tug-of-war over the boy's future begins between his relatives, Eliane reaches an unorthodox decision that will irrevocably change her life and that of her two daughters.