Europe's most recent crises are causing turmoil in modern politics. There used to be left and right, but now things work differently. The East is the future of the West. [Jan Werner Müller, political scientist]

25 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Europe's democracies are in a deep crisis. Old political camps are fading: the left is trading revolution for nationalism; the right is borrowing a useful enemy – the banks – from the left. It causes Boris Schumatsky great dismay to see the growing success of Russia's autocrats. Whether right, left or middle: Ruling is fun, freedom is tough. During the 1990s, a wave of postmodernism seemed to promise everlasting peace. Now the ease of those days, and with it an inability to tell apart truth and lies, has turned into a populist monster. Boris Schumatsky delivers an astute analysis of current political trends and future prospects.

The sequel to Weber's bestseller "A Good Day has 100 Points" The less points a product has, the better for our carbon footprint and our wellbeing. The less we indulge in the excess around us, the better for us and our planet. Why you should reader Weber: Unlike the average environmentalist, he does not plead for a governmental regulation of our carbon footprint. Instead, he calls for more individual initiative in the quest for more sustainability. And with this book, he offers us the tools. [NZZ]

How can we improve our carbon footprint while keeping our lifestyle? How can we stay aware and treat the environment with care? Thomas Weber has the answers and provides ideas that anyone can follow. Initiatives like "rent a chicken", "chop some thujas" and "free your slaves" are concepts that are unusual, but easy to translate into everyday life. After the great success of "A Good Day has 100 Points", this sequel offers new ideas for a more sustainable lifestyle. Thomas Weber's suggestions are creative, fresh, and appealing.

A satire about the rise of the right, state power, resistance, and terrorism – as shrill and loud as if Monty Python had taken over the IS.

Under right-wing populist Michael Hichl, Austria has become a despotically ruled police state. Dissidents, foreigners, and homosexuals are made illegal, the country is run down, and border regions are abused as cheap production sites where the rural population and regime critics slave away in sweatshops. We meet some drifters cluelessly wandering around Austria: Emma with her dilettante assassination plans, opportunistic former callboy Pascal, Alwine who's searching for the love of her, and Wolferl the no-good son of Hichl's chief PR guy who can't get over the murder of his ex-girlfriend Valli Putschek. But something is going on in Upper Austria's impoverished Mühlviertel: Austria's first terror militia, the "Christian Republic" is making its way towards the hills around Linz. Just then the four lost souls cross paths and things quickly get out of hand.

1966, the year the world said farewell to the past and hello to the future. The fact that Schäfer is an author who not only writes literature, but also writes about pop music and literature, is pure luck for this genre. [Franz Dobler, taz]

The opening of the Psychedelic Shop on Haight & Ashbury on January 3, 1966 is not only the beginning of an era in pop culture. Ken Kasey and the Merry Pranksters are touring through the US with their public LSD Happenings. Even the Beatles are on acid and they're more famous than Jesus. And more controversial, too. In London's UFO club, Pink Floyd begin their ascent to the stars, just like Captain Kirk, Spock, and Bones. The cold war moves to outer space and students start moving to the streets. And a white whale is sighted in the Rhine… Frank Schäfer paints a colorful collage of the year when postwar blandness was replaced by psychedelic pink paisley.

An infallible guide through our most painful, but necessary memories Martin Pollack is one of the leading authors in the field of East European history. His work is a continuous effort against forgetting the victims of the 20th century. [Georg Renöckel, NZZ]

"Topografie der Erinnerung" is a collection of the brilliant essayist's most striking speeches and articles. They deal with topics as diverse as the massacre of Reichnitz in the last weeks of the war; so-called "Reibepartien" (scrub groups) where Jews were humiliated and forced to scrub the street; the myth of Galicia; Poland and Ukraine's postwar history; or Pollack's own family's entanglement with the Nazis. His investigations are always astute and critical, they are always aimed at keeping memory alive and against false claims of innocence. Time and again he asks the key question of memory politics: How can and must we deal with these memories today?

A remarkably modern author and her sophisticated work Rediscovering Ebner-Eschenbach is more than worth it, in both a feminist and literary sense… [Elfriede Hammerl, Profil]

Austria's most famous female author of the 19th century was underestimated as a "poet of kindness & grace", yet she was so much more: Poetic realist, playwright, aphorist, proponent of women's rights, fighter of anti-Semitism, officer's wife, trained watchmaker, animal friend, and avid horseback rider. In the first German biography since 1920, Daniela Strigl traces Ebner-Eschenbachs life from her birth in Zdislavice castle to her late fame as an author. The multi-faceted author was always torn between her aristocratic background and her socialist opinions, between ethics and irony, ambition and humility, social obligations and her passion for writing. Maria von Ebner-Eschenbach unwaveringly held on to her goals, despite resistance from her family and bad reviews from theater critics. "If there is a belief that can move mountains, then it is the belief in one's own strength."

Breathtakingly weird: Barbi Marković's urban novel is an ode to pessimism and three truly contemporary superheroines

Every Saturday, three superheroines meet in a run-down café called Sette Fontane. There is Mascha, the brave supportive one, Direktorka, the inexperienced one ready for adventure, and Marija's granddaughter who has a flexible conscience and revenge in her veins. The three have dark, chaotic powers and want to bring justice to Vienna's suburbs as they plan a futile uprising of the middle class. "Lightening of Fate" and "Annihilation" are the weapons that grandma Marija already successfully used to destabilize an entire country. After failed appearances and painful years of learning in Berlin, Belgrade, Sarajevo and other cities, our three superheroines ultimately find triumph in the darkest of all happy ends.

This book is a treasure trove: "The Paper Boy" brings life to a long forgotten era as it tells a riveting tale of devotion, confusion and betrayal. "You and your sister Adelja should be sold to the circus, as two sisters with a single heart, lung and stomach!"

Stanisławów around 1900: a Galician town at the outskirts of the Habsburg Empire. Two sisters, Adelja and Stefa, "entwined in each other like two tree trunks", support each other, suffocate each other, grow up together. When Adelja marries Petro the stonemason, the entwinement turns into a triangle from which Stefa futilely tries to escape. When Torn the magician comes to town with his circus, Felix, a boy contortionist, who looks like an angel suddenly appears in Petro's workshop. The boy is mute, extremely flexible, and a fragile as paper. "The Paper Boy" is a rich story full of color and detail. It brings us closer to a long forgotten time as it tells a fascinating tale of love and betrayal.

Martin Lechner, a master of words, pulls out all the stops with his intriguing new story collection. Hurrah, they still exist! Mature literary debuts that shine with sophisticated language and a strong and convincing composition. (…) Sometimes expressionist prose full of stark contrasts where every feeling materializes, sometimes absurd theater of desperation, and then suddenly juicy and vibrant crime comedy in the style of German Comedian Helge Schneider… [Oliver Jungen, FAZ]

Lechner's stories collide like waves. They pass on words, images, or moods, flow into one another and yet, remain self-contained. They are uncanny and high-spirited and tell us about desperate lakes and knees to fall in love with. They are about films we vaguely remember and brightly lit cities, silently bursting bubbles of blood and summers long brushed aside. They are all at home in a language where something new and unexpected awaits behind each turn. Lechner achieves this feat with humor, the absurd and sentences that give us a touch of the ungraspable.