Cherry Red Summer


Carina Bartsch - 2010
    It’s been seven years since she last saw the man with the turquoise eyes, Elyas Schwarz—the embodiment of everything mothers warn their daughters about. Good-looking, charming, and with a hint of arrogance, Elyas is back in Emely’s life and driving her crazy. She hates him from the bottom of her heart, but, even so, she can’t deny her growing attraction. Thinking it’s high time to put on the brakes, Emely turns her attention to Luca, the intriguing new man she’s only ever met online. With two men pulling her in different directions, Emely must decide which of them is showing her his true self. After all the work she’s done to learn to trust again, will Emely’s efforts be for nothing?

Butterfly Island


Corina Bomann - 2012
    When the first in a trail of clues is handed down to Diana by her great-aunt on her deathbed, along with a plea to assuage their family’s guilt by revealing all, Diana obliges. She follows the clues—a picture here, a letter there, a pressed frangipani flower in a book—that carry her away from her philandering husband in Berlin to a charming manor in England and all the way to a tea plantation in Sri Lanka.Diana unravels the dramatic tale of her great-great-grandmother, Grace Tremayne, with the aid of Jonathan Singh, a local historian and writer—and someone with whom she feels a deep bond that sparks into romance. As Grace’s tragic past in exotic colonial Ceylon is revealed and the family’s sins come to light, Diana finds inspiration in her ancestor’s courage and begins to rethink what happiness—and love—is worth, and how the surest route to peace is in setting the truth free.

Whipping Star


Frank Herbert - 1969
    It all depended on the survival of the last of the entities known as Calebians.But the Caleban was dying - subjected to systematic torture by the richest, most wicked woman in the Galaxy. Unless she could be stopped, the end was only a few days away, or hours - or even minutes!

The Collini Case


Ferdinand von Schirach - 2011
    Fabrizio Collini is recently retired. He’s a quiet, unassuming man with no indications that he’s capable of hurting anyone. And yet he brutally murders a prominent industrialist in one of Berlin’s most exclusive hotels. Collini ends up in the charge of Caspar Leinen, a rookie defense lawyer eager to launch his career with a not-guilty verdict. Complications soon arise when Collini admits to the murder but refuses to give his motive, much less speak to anyone. As Leinen searches for clues he discovers a personal connection to the victim and unearths a terrible truth at the heart of Germany’s legal system that stretches back to World War II. But how much is he willing to sacrifice to expose the truth?

Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea


Morgan Callan Rogers - 2010
    When her mother disappears during a weekend trip, Florine Gilham's idyllic childhood is turned upside down. Until then she'd been blissfully insulated by the rhythms of family life in small town Maine; watching from the granite cliffs above the sea for her father's lobster boat to come into port, making bread with her grandmother, and infiltrating the summer tourist camps with her friends. But with her mother gone, the heart falls out of Florine's life and she and her father are isolated as they struggle to manage their loss. Both sustained and challenged by the advice and expectations of her family and neighbors, Florine grows up with her spirit intact. And when her father's past comes to call, she must accept that life won't ever be the same while keeping her mother vivid in her memories. With Fannie Flagg's humor and Elizabeth Stroud's sense of place, this debut is an extraordinary snapshot of a bygone America through the eyes of an inspiring girl blazing her own path to womanhood.

Spring's Awakening


Frank Wedekind - 1891
    Its fourteen-year-old heroine Wendla is killed by abortion pills. The young Moritz terrorized by the world around him and especially by his teachers shoots himself. The ending seems likely to be the suicide of Moritz's friend Melchior but in a confrontation with a mysterious stranger (the famous Masked Man) he finally manages to shed his illusions and face the consequences.

Flights of Love: Stories


Bernhard Schlink - 2000
    Here his subject is not history but the heart itself, and with the forensic delicacy of a master he lays bare the essence of our feelings.Already an enormous success in the author's native Germany, Flights of Love is certain to be celebrated, discussed, read and re-read.

Hunting and Gathering


Anna Gavalda - 2004
    She barely eats, works at night as a cleaner and lives in a tiny attic room. Downstairs in a beautiful, ornate apartment, lives Philibert Marquet de la Durbellière, a shy, erudite, upper-class man with an unlikely flatmate in the shape of the foul-mouthed but talented chef, Franck. One freezing evening Philibert overcomes his excruciating reticence to rescue Camille, unconscious, from her garret and bring her into his home.As she recovers Camille learns more about Philibert; about Franck and his guilt for his beloved but fragile grandmother Paulette, who is all he has left in the world; and about herself. And slowly, this curious quartet of misfits all discover the importance of food, friendship and love.

In Times of Fading Light


Eugen Ruge - 2011
    The masterful narrative makes halt in Mexico, Siberia and East Berlin, climbing the summits and charting the abysses of the 20th century along the way. The result is both a stunning panorama and a monumental German novel that makes history itself tangible through the history of one family. A novel of immense stature, founded on its humanity, its precision and its humour.In Times of Fading Light focuses on three generations. The grandparents, still convinced Communists, return to the fledging East Germany at the beginning of the 1950s to do their part in establishing the new state. Their son returns from the other direction, having emigrated to Moscow and found himself banished to Siberia. He returns with his Russian wife to a country mired in petit bourgeois values, yet also brings with him an unwavering belief that they can be changed. The grandson, meanwhile, feels increasingly constricted in a heimat that was not of his choosing, and heads to the West on the very day that his grandfather, the family patriarch, turns 90. The glittering lights of a political utopia that once shone enticingly seem to be gradually fading as time wears unwaveringly on.

The Wave


Todd Strasser - 1981
    And before long The Wave, with its rules of "strength through discipline, community, and action", sweeps from the classroom through the entire school. And as most of the students join the movement, Laurie Saunders and David Collins recognize the frightening momentum of The Wave and realize they must stop it before it's too late.

The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear


Walter Moers - 1999
    I shall recount thirteen and a half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest," says the narrator of Walter Moers’s epic adventure. "What about the Minipirates? What about the Hobgoblins, the Spiderwitch, the Babbling Billows, the Troglotroll, the Mountain Maggot… Mine is a tale of mortal danger and eternal love, of hair’s breadth, last-minute escapes." Welcome to the fantastic world of Zamonia, populated by all manner of extraordinary characters. It’s a land of imaginative lunacy and supreme adventure, wicked satire and epic fantasy, all mixed together, turned on its head, and lavishly illustrated by the author.

The Sirens of Titan


Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 1959
    The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course there's a catch to the invitation—and a prophetic vision about the purpose of human life that only Vonnegut has the courage to tell.

Mine All Mine


Adam Davies - 2008
    Otto Starks is a "pulse"?a highly specialized security guard who has hyperdeveloped senses and a nervous habit of popping tabs of cyanide. Otto was once a rising star but then he was rolled three times by the notorious Rat Burglar. Now, demoted and dangerously in debt to a loan shark, all he has left is Charlie Izzo, the woman he loves. Unfortunately, she is also the Rat Burglar?s zealous advocate. That?s bad enough. But then Otto gets robbed yet again and the cops pronounce him the prime suspect. When Charlie disappears and Otto becomes a fugitive, he realizes that the Rat Burglar has stolen much more from him than art. And to get it back he must break the law he has devoted his life to upholding. A nail-biting thriller about deception, betrayal, and ownership?in art and in love?Mine All Mine is also a quirky and hilarious romantic comedy.

Dream Story


Arthur Schnitzler - 1926
    Dream Story tells how through a simple sexual admission a husband and wife are driven apart into rival worlds of erotic intrigue and revenge.

The Invention of Curried Sausage


Uwe Timm - 1993
    Uwe Timm has heard claims that currywurst first appeared in Berlin in the 1950s, but he seems to recall having eaten it much earlier, as a boy in his native Hamburg, at a stand owned and operated by Lena Brücker. He decides to check it out. Although the discovery of curried sausage is eventually explained, it is its prehistory - about how Lena Brücker met, seduced and held captive a German deserter in Hamburg, in April, 1945, just before the war's end - that is the tastiest part. Timm draws gorgeous details from Lena's fine-grained recollections, and the pleasure these provide her and the reader supply the tale's real charm.