The incredible tale of an extremely chaste saint, his portrait and the painters Rubens and Van Dyck

Witty and inquisitive, Alois Brandstetter goes in search of his patron saint and namesake Aloysius. The journey takes him to Mantua in Italy at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The thoroughly chaste Aluigi, who died young, has just been beatified, and his mother is looking to have his portrait painted for the new church being built in his name. The job is offered to Rubens of all people, whose work celebrates the pleasures of the flesh, but he turns it down and recommends the boy wonder Van Dyck, nineteen and highly talented. Letters fly between Mantua and Amsterdam. Will Aluigi’s Portrait ever be painted? Perhaps not on canvas but certainly in the form of an enchanting historical fantasy created by Alois Brandstetter.

The ghost of freedom wanders the streets…

Baku, Azerbaijan, spring 2011: the city is in uproar, protests against the authoritarian regime are growing louder. In the midst of it are Ali and Nino, Frida and Che, two young couples fighting not only against state repression but for their love, for freedom and self-determination, for happiness and a life they can call their own. Yet Verena Mermer evokes more than just the political struggles and everyday life in one of the last dictatorships on Europe’s borders. Her wonderful debut also plays an enthralling game with its characters, with the times and places, the myths of revolution and love and lures us into the labyrinth of poetic invention.

Dammed if you celebrate, dammed if you don't

Love them or not, birthdays are unavoidable, not only ours but our uncles and aunts, parents and lovers, grandmas and grandpas, friends who don’t want to get older and children who can’t wait to. This book even considers people who flee to the ends of the earth (or the next bar) at the mere mention of a birthday party, as well as the chosen few with birthdays on 29 February, 1 May or New Year’s Eve or people already reborn a few times. Twenty-five contemporary authors have brought gifts: unusual, touching and unbelievable ‘birthday presents’. Reason enough to celebrate. With short stories by Polly Adler, Ela Angerer, Bettina Baláka, Ruth Cerha, Friedrich Dönhoff, Petra Hartlieb, Monika Held, Peter Henisch, Wolfgang Hermann, Margarita Kinstner, Elisabeth Klar, Edith Kneifl, Konrad Paul Liessmann, Heidi List, Klaus Nüchtern, Klaus Oppitz, Kurt Palm, Verena Petrasch, Eva Rossmann, Tex Rubinowitz, David Schalko, Susanne Scholl, Dirk Stermann, Cornelia Travnicek, Anna Weidenholzer and lyrics by the band Gustav.

Gernot Wolfgruber’s 1976 classic “Herrenjahre” (“His Own Master”) – back in print at last

Following his time as an apprentice Bruno Melzer’s hopes for his time as His Own Master are not fulfilled. The dream of independence soon proves to be a fragile utopia. He undergoes a painful disillusion process doing monotonous work on a factory conveyor belt, then loses his remaining vestiges of freedom as a one night stand makes him a father. But along with the story of the worker Bruno, this famous novel paints a broader picture of social conditions and attitudes at the time, and remains highly relevant today.

An amusing journey through the history of marriage, from the ancient world to the present

Marriages might be made in heaven but they are lived out here on earth – for some a floor lower… Even beforehand, when choosing a partner, those keen to marry are faced with a tricky decision: money or love? There are countless traps, which even royal marriage-hopefuls can fall into: Henry VIII of England fell victim to the Photoshop effect back in the sixteenth century when he requested portraits of suitable marriage candidates. After the ceremony is completed it’s often no easier: who turns out to wear the trousers? And rumours of a blissful two-fold union are a myth: one half turns out to come with a mother-in-law, the other can’t manage with just one woman. And the dictates of church and state follow the couple right into the bedroom. Till death us do part. But help is at hand.

This book opens up new perspectives on an icon of Austrian policy in the dramatic year of 1945.

Still in brutal solitary confinement in the Mauthausen concentration camp at the beginning of the year, Nazi prisoner Leopold Figl awaits his trial on death row. In April, as the Russians already begin to enter Vienna, he’s released. Soon after Figl organises the improvised Viennese food supply. In May, he became the first Governor of Lower Austria. Finally, he led the People's Party in November in the parliamentary elections, which made him the first Chancellor of the Second Republic. Based on meticulous research Helmut Wohnout allows the life of Leopold Figl to make the year 1945 eventful in a new whole new light.

Islamist terrorism and Western surveillance – a menacing interplay.

Terrorist attacks and radicalisation directly cause oppression in Western society. The fear of "Islam" is associated with the expansion of the surveillance state. But how does Islamist terrorism impact us? Are fears of "foreign infiltration" justified? Or do they rather serve as a pretext for massive government intervention in our freedom? Christa Chorherr tirelessly shows how big the dangers of Islamism and terrorism in Europe really are – and what the consequences are for us all: state "protection", which degenerates into the escalating use of endlessly collected personal data and which leads to the increasing loss of our privacy.

From the Keeping Uncalm series, in co-operation with the Akademie Graz

Theweleit describes the laughter of killers using a selection of case studies, including German soldiers in British prisoner of war camps during WWII, who are said to have told each other about the atrocities they had committed with considerable mirth. The laughter masks another aspect of killing for pleasure however; the cold rationality with which murderers speak when they justify their acts in public. Anders Breivik’s defence in court starts to sound like a statistical analysis of Norwegian immigration figures, for instance. Theweleit’s essay reveals the language of justification as a foil for sadism, because, according to the author’s provocative argument, anything can be ‘justified’; we should avoid believing a word of it.

April in Stein tells of life and survival in prison, forced labour and political resistance, but above all the mass murder in Krems for the first time.

During the Nazi tyranny, the prison in Krems-Stein was the largest in the "Ostmark" or ‘Eastern March’; the Nazi’s name for Austria. This was where dissidents were imprisoned – communists and "saboteurs", resisters from Austria and Eastern Europe. On April 6 1945, the prison governor opens the gates of the prison when faced by the advancing Red Army, but the SS, SA and local people hunt and kill hundreds of political prisoners in an unprecedented massacre. Some manage to escape, some survive by hiding in cellars, and their reports form the basis of Robert Streibel’s polyphonic panorama.

Medical innovation is always accompanied by those who resist it – no life shows this better than that of Ignaz Semmelweis.

A journey through the life of the great fighter for the health of mothers and medical progress. "Wash your hands": this rule of hygiene is taken for granted. That this was not always the case is revealed through the history of the 1818-born Semmelweis, who worked as a gynaecologist in Vienna. He had to fight hard for it to be recognised that doctors’ dirty hands were infecting child-bearing women. His life story, which is of immense importance still today, let’s us look deep into the fascinating world of scientific discoveries and intrigue.