Only about once in a lifetime you truly get what you wish for. It happens for no apparent reason and comes as a big, unexpected surprise to the wishing person. And then the person has to make sure it doesn't become a burden, overbearing, stifling. My surprise was this summer. A crystal-clear and painfully beautiful coming of age story that we have all been waiting for.

Philine has a mom with a fickle love life and a bunch of changing dads. Instead of going to school she prefers going around the school and in water she turns into a fish. Then she also looses her foothold on land. After a breakdown, Philine moves to a quiet village, where she meets Planta – Planta-who-has-a-plan. Planta who serves her the best scrambled eggs ever at dawn and whose eyes are as blue as a shark pool. He shows her all there is to see, the highest and lowest places, and the bottle house at the lake, where everyone is welcome. Another life seems within reach, a happy, care-free life. But when winter comes and the bottle house commune breaks up, Philine decides not to break and holds on to everything that was, everything that wasn't, and everything that can't be held on to because it's somewhere between the lines and slips through your fingers like the quickest fish in the world: like everything you need to know.

We can't expect evolution to ensure the survival of humankind. If we want to survive, we have to take matters into our own hands.

70, 000 years ago, humans were first able to form a thought about something that didn't exist. What sounds simple actually marks the birth of human culture and poses the outset for a range of inventions that have formed human nature and haven't necessarily changed us for the better. We thought up myths and religions and invented languages, money and racism. Now humankind is about to complete its greatest invention: itself. Science allows us to continue our own evolution. Renée Schroeder looks back at the short period of humankind's existence, takes a detour into genetics and proclaims a new age of enlightenment.

An amusing tour through the history of parenting

A small consolation for 21st century parents: Mothers and fathers have had to face a load of challenges since forever. This tongue-in-cheek book charmingly traces what it was like to be a parent in past eras. Living up to the expectations of being a "good parent" has never been easy. Advice on conception and pregnancy was supposed to help create ideal circumstances before the child was even born. Infant care and child-rearing strategies have changed like seasons in the course of history. What is timeless, however, is parents' love for their offspring. Our ancestors already knew: Puberty is a critical phase and more than one ambitious father's plan was thwarted by teenage rebellion. What's the moral of the story? Most parents pulled through and humankind did not go extinct. So moms and dads, stay calm and carry on!

Designer babies and dream children – where are the ethical boundaries to what is technical possible?

Throughout the world, hi-tech reproduction medicine is paving the way for whole new forms of intervention into human life. Between supply and demand, a global market for dream-child medicine has grown up, its services ranging from in-vitro fertilisation to selecting the child’s sex, from illustrated catalogues of semen and egg-cell donors to the provision of surrogate mothers. Looking at this vast array, Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim asks some urgent, critical questions: are the wishes of parents choosing their ideal child compatible with that child’s needs? Should everything technically possible actually be done? And if not, what are the limits and who should define them?