A small-town policeman faces a mountain of corpses: this is not a regular crime novel

In late April 1945 hundreds of Jewish forced laborers from Hungary on the death trail heading to Mauthausen end up in a refugee camp in Persenbeug on the Danube. The frontlines both east and west are as close as the end of the war. The Second Republic has already been proclaimed in nearby Vienna and Adolf Hitler is already dead when a motorized SS taskforce covertly attacks the camp and massacres 223 people in a bloodbath. Hardly anybody admits to having seen or heard anything, but inspector Franz Winkler, a Deputy Commander left to his own devices in this remote town, begins to investigate. He risks his head to save his skin. Will he manage to save the nine survivors of the massacre? Manfred Wieninger documents one of the most extraordinary criminal cases in Austrian history while maintaining a fine balance between historical report and fictitious elements. He turns history into a story, in which the victims are no longer nameless.

First love and buried hopes: the summer that changed everything.

As a seventeen year-old, Anastasia spends an entire summer in Ephesus instead of accompanying her mother, a dancer, and her constantly changing lovers on a trip through the United States. During the dig she learns more about her father’s lifelong obsession, which destroyed more than her parents’ marriage – Ephesus, the city that had only existed in her dreams and in the books her father, a famous archeologist, had written. She also meets Hubert again, her first love and her father’s favorite student, who once upon a time was a permanent fixture in her parents’ home. That summer, Anastasia still believes that her future is just beginning, but then the season ends in disaster… When she hears of her father’s death many years later, she finds out what actually happened that summer and before. And why he and Hubert wanted nothing to do with her as soon as that summer was over.

The life journey of a remarkable young woman in a century full of extremes: a touching, powerfully eloquent and vivid novel.

“Anna was born in Vienna on December 3, 1909, as the second eldest of the four daughters of glass painting master Franz Goetzer.” This is the laconic beginning of Erika Pluhar’s new novel. It tells the story of a highly talented woman who studies at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts between the two World Wars and dreams of leading a self-determined life. However, her emigration to Brazil, her marriage and most of all, the early stages of Nazi fascism keep her from fulfilling her lifelong dream for many years. Erika Pluhar paints an empathetic and insightful picture of the hopes, desires and fears that Anna feels as a young woman coming of age in a century full of political extremes. Austria, Brazil, Germany and Poland are stations in a life that takes several unexpected turns.

The end of the world is near once again. Be prepared! Read this book!

The end of the world isn’t picky. But what if you survive? Just like Martina and her little brother who are saved from the flaming inferno by a young stranger. They meet other survivors, an old man and his granddaughter, with whom they flee to the next valley. Does life end here or does it begin anew? The world beyond the mountains is dead, burnt, buried in toxic dust. What is left after the disaster is barely enough for survival, just enough for life in a cave. After they get settled in they start waiting – but for what? There is no saving ark in sight. The old man surly doesn’t believe in the future. A struggle begins – for survival, for hope, for remaining human. Hannelore Valencak creates gloomy scenarios to illustrate the world after the end of the world: even more radical than Marlen Haushofer’s “The Wall” and more relentless than Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”.

Karl May trifft Franz Kafka auf einem Schiff nach Amerika. Wahr? Besser kann man es nicht erfinden ...

Karl May met Franz Kafka on a ship to the United States. Fact or a brilliant piece of fiction? In his mind, the adventure author Karl May visited the United States a million times. But it is not until September 1908 that the 66 year-old, accompanied by his second wife, Klara, actually boards ship to New York in Bremerhaven. As fate will have it, Karl May meets the famous Franz Kafka on board. The very gaunt and very pale young man is standing at the railing. God forbid, is he about to throw himself into the sea? Who else but Karl May and his much younger wife could save him for the sake of life and literature? The ensuing love triangle completes the ingredients to this great story. Peter Henisch’s novel is a hilarious fantasy, an intimate novel settled somewhere between fact and fiction. With lightness, yet lots of sensitivity he succeeds in joining what we were drilled to keep apart from an early age: Franz Kafka vs. Karl May, high vs. low culture, living a lie vs. living in fear. It comes as no surprise that this book sends sparks flying!

They’re everywhere. And no one knows where they came from…

Journalist Martin Koller is in hospital and cannot sleep. He is tortured by strange sounds in his ear that have thrown him into a deep depression. The fact that his wife desperately wants a child from him and that a young, ambitious colleague is messing with his research in the right-wing extremist scene isn’t exactly helping. Then he finds out that his mother is on the brink of death. So he pulls himself together and heads back to his childhood home. He spends a few days alone with his mother. And then, the visitors start showing up and taking over the entire house. They’re all over the place: in the cellar, in the rooms, in the attic. No one knows where they came from, no one knows what they want. A doctor Martin has known since his youth calls and tells him that she has made a mysterious discovery. A nightmare begins.

Mit einem Nachwort von Karl-Markus Gauß

Come on, then! Stay right there! Keep still now! Life on a hill-farm, a country childhood: eleven years of servitude, fear and humiliation. Only then does Holl find the strength and the courage to break free and leave his father’s farm, to set out on a new life fit for a human being.

Difficult times: the personal side of the great Physicist

When Werner Heisenberg first met Elisabeth Schumacher in 1937 he was 35 years old and had been a professor for Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig for ten years. In 1932 he had received the Nobel Prize. But he wasn’t doing so well: He was lonely and the political situation and ensuing exodus of German scientists was a heavy weight on his chest. He was attacked as the “White Jew” because he taught Einstein’s theory of relativity. Only two weeks after meeting the couple got engaged, a few months later they were married. Shortly after the war broke out, Heisenberg was asked to join the “Uranium Project”, the German nuclear energy project – from then on he barely saw his young family for years. The exchange of letters shows his heartfelt efforts to share a life in spite of the many obstacles and large distance separating him from his family. The letters are supplemented with previously unpublished dairy entries from the last days of the war. It is the touching testimony of a time period where he sought to preserve a personal emotional retreat.

The philosopher and author Peter Bieri aka Pascal Mercier explores central questions of human existence.

We all want to determine our own lives. Our dignity and happiness depend on it. What exactly does that mean? Our thoughts, feelings and actions are based on the circumstances of our life stories. What does it mean to be able to change our lives instead of just letting life happen to us? What role does self-awareness play in all this? When do others help the process of self-determination and when do they become obstacles? How are self-determination and cultural identity connected? And what role can literature play in all this? Bieris contemplations in this book are a sequel to his observations in “Handwerk der Freiheit” (2001).

Sharp, humorous and ironically witty stories about women’s daily lives surrounded by fellow humans, men and children.

Being a woman is not a sport, much less an Olympic discipline, but it makes you sweat just as much. Constantly juggling household chores and relationships, mastering married life and raising kids can make women run out of the breath they need for laughing. Because no problem that you face when handling the daily hustle and bustle of family life is so serious that it couldn’t be solved with a bit of humor. Christine Nöstlinger proves this in her own exceptional style, full of wit and composure, with a lovingly ironic view on life and the big and little challenges it holds. This book is a collection of her best columns offering advice and comfort for every life situation.