An old woman sits in an armchair. Her mind turns to her Aunt Paula, from whom she inherited the piece of furniture, and to her own enforced solitude. Outside, the pandemic is raging, and she has been designated a ‘vulnerable person’. As such, she has been sequestered away as a precautionary measure – ‘kept in a sterile environment’. Maybe she’ll turn one hundred under this bell jar. Aunt Paula, on the other hand, didn’t even make it to fifty. She was deported, and the armchair is all that’s left of her. The old woman’s thoughts – sometimes clear as crystal, but growing increasingly confused – keep returning to the lives that are protected and those that are considered ‘worthless’, to social violence – and to the pleasures of not being bothered by anybody.

There's no doubt the boy is talented. They called him "little Mozart" in the town. But he's in prison now. Rightly or wrongly. Step by step, the reader descends into the depths of the boy's memory. With almost agonising artfulness, Evelyn Grill uncovers how a boy who grew up at his grandparents' home, without mother or friends, who was raised and educated, pampered and demeaned by his grandfather – the school's headmaster and an authority in town – became a suspect, perhaps even a killer. For the boy's grandmother is dead, murdered with a pickaxe, and his grandfather was at the inn when it happened. Evelyn Grill masterfully weaves together the threads of this cruel novel about everyday malice and the longing for recognition.

It’s been eight months since Titus’ mother disappeared without a trace. As a native Italian, she always remained a stranger in the village. His father had brought her with him from one of his expeditions. Rumors and suspicions quickly spread: Did she drown in the lake, did she run away with a lover, or was she the victim of a crime? Titus has been an outsider for years. He avoids people because of a burn scar in his face. The offer to live with and assist the new gravedigger seems like a good way to escape the confinement of his father’s home. As it turns out, the gravedigger is no stranger… Evelyn Grill takes her readers on a journey into a dark world full of secrets. Thrilling suspense from first to last page!

When Henriette Stanley dies, the family standing at her grave is no longer large: There is Harry, her “mentally disturbed” son, on whom the shipowner family from Antwerp had once placed all their hopes. There is her daughter Ann with her German husband, whose marriage Henriette was unable to prevent even though it cost her Belgian inheritance after the War. And then there is the sister of her husband, who disappeared under suspicious circumstances many years before. Nobody speaks to her, even though she is the only one to know what happened to her brother and what the Antwerpian will really said. And she also knows that every attempt to forget is futile. This novel is a magnificent painting and Evelyn Gill proves her mastery with it. She recounts the story of a marriage, a novel about a family full of cracks, which reveal the chasms of an entire century.

For the people of a remote village in the foothills of the Austrian Alps, Wilma is a spawn of hell, a monster, and surely not one of them: she is a retarded, corpulent and close-lipped child - and a child without parents. Her helplessness, however, engages the love and sympathy of Agnes, a widowed and childless woman, who both embraces and clings to her fosterling. In constant anxiety for Wilma, she tries to protect their little happiness against the locals, youth welfare officials and all external threats. But their happiness is based on dependence, and in a narrow, secluded world, this can prove lethal... In this book, Evelyn Grill demonstrates once more why her recent novels "Vanitas" and "Der Sammler" [The Collector] made her one of the most provocative voices of contemporary German-speaking literature. She writes uncompromisingly succinct, without sentimentality or shallow morality, and she is never afraid to explore the abysmal depths of the human soul. Let’s worship this author! ANTON THUSWALDNER, SALZBURGER NACHRICHTEN Grill loves to search for strange hobbies and weird passions. Great! DER SPIEGEL

It was not love that drove the ambitious lawyer Alois Hofstätter into marriage with the actress Olga, the much older widow of a deceased client; it was her standing and her fortune, her mature erotic charisma and the not insignificant circumstance that she was expecting his child. Hofstätter's true and eternal love belongs to art, and his passion to gambling. His wife pays his debts, and the child has meanwhile grown into a youth, in whom the practising aesthete finds compensation for the unreasonable physical and intellectual demands of his fading wife. The structure of the illusory upper-middle-class world that satisfies the decadent vanity of both is brittle – in the field of tension between outward prestige and inward discontent. A bitter power struggle which ultimately leads to a catastrophe. With a ruthless eye for detail, Evelyn Grill draws a portrait of a callous but pitiable dandy for whom the aestheticising of everyday life replaces the education of the feelings. Grill sketches her characters in a few confident strokes, in a language devoid of flourishes or empty phrases. She avoids sentimentality and false pity. This is way the way stories can still be told, without the all too palatable flavouring of a moral message (Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler).

Collecting as an obsession: the touching story of a junkaholic defying throwaway society. Alfred Irgang is a collector. However, he does not collect stamps or antiques, but simply anything that he comes across: old newspapers, false teeth that are as good as new, and other things that naïve members of the throwaway society surrender to the garbage collection. Accordingly, his apartment and various cellar compartments are remarkably filled to the brim, which in turn leads to considerable difficulties with the property managers, which, on the other hand, does not keep him from his hunt for treasures. Does not a lady’s corsage have as much of a story to tell as a Biedermeier davenport? At the regular’s table, where a group of scientists and art lovers meet, the collector likes to present his treasures but naturally meets little appreciation. When after an “occupational accident” he is confined to a hospital bed, the regulars see their chance to force their blessings on him …. It is with subtle irony that Evelyn Grill tells of a society that considers itself to be good, while the motto “to live and let live” is buried by the insatiable desire to usurp a maladjusted person.

Karin lives with her boyfriend Alexander in a house by the woods. Her foster-sister Lisa once lived there too, along with her parents August and Inge, sister Margarethe and brother Peter. Back then Karin and Lisa were happy; they grew as fast as the brambles, dived to the bottom of the lake hand in hand, and hid in the tiny caves formed by tree roots. Then something happened; August died and the foster child was banished. Years later Karin fetches Lisa back, and the two women become entangled in a game as destructive as it is seductive, sucked into a whirlpool of addiction, attraction and repulsion which holds us enthralled till the final page.

One hot day in August Elena celebrates her 88th birthday. Everyone is there: her daughters Martina and Renate, her grandson Daniel and his girlfriend Sasha. Their celebration is abundant, with lots of honey schnapps, wild polkas, and much joy. And yet, all Elena can think about is Martina’s childhood friend Rike who fell to her death from the cherry tree right here in the garden fifty years ago. Tina Pruschmann’s intense and heart-felt debut novel delves deep into the lives and fates of its characters. It examines those special moments in life, those turning points that determine our future. They are days of irrevocable decisions; days when time and all its promises and desires come to a standstill.