Luzie's father, Captain Tim Timm is unexpectedly hired by a shipping company that specialises in salvaging shipwrecks - and for Luzie that means summer holidays in the Caribbean! However it has to be said that life on board the Constantina is far from idyllic, as Elena Wagner, the company's ...

A girl named Johnny

Early on, Joana Wolkenzin knows that she is different. She spends hours reading and learns song lyrics by heart. As she grows older, she falls in love with both boys and girls. In the No Man's Land of Western Pomerania in the 1990s, she gives herself a new name: ...

Jochen, Oliver, Bill - almost half of the human race is composed of men. They still set the tone for many issues, even though their facade started to crack a long time ago. Enough of a reason to look more closely. What facets characterize the other gender? With a woman's eyes, Johanna Adorján ...

What is freedom, are we born free or is freedom conveyed to us by others? Can it be taken away? Is freedom only an absence of fear and constraint or does it not rather imply the need to take part in the political and social discourse? Th is essay by Hannah Arendt was fi rst published in German by ...

"People tell each other stories in order to survive-but for death they need music." Marten feels most at home in graveyards: they are quiet and their trees offer plenty of shade. Even as a child he was the odd one out-and as an adult he takes up the profession that fits him like a lid fits ...

Lorenz, a former librarian and cinema usher, is now pushing 30 and working in a copy shop. One day he holds onto one of several copies of a diary he is binding for a diplomat. He gives it unread to his girlfriend Iris, a substitute teacher, so they can read it together. The diary is the ...

Western Pomeranian, 1999, in the small village of Bresekow. When old Frau Hanske dies, her daughter Ingrid flies in for the funeral with her family from Ireland. Ingrid had fled Bresekow many years ago. Her visit brings about many changes in the village, raising questions old and new, ...

Julius is the story of a young man striking out on his own. It's also the story of the eponymous protagonist's friendship with Martin, a sports-mad French student. And it's the moving and tragic love story of Julius and Jadwiga, and Julius's only seemingly ...

Sixteen-year-old Annamaria will never forget that "Dirty Thursday": A harmless Carnival tradition spells doom for the young girl. And yet no one is willing to believe what happened to Annamaria, who has been living with a negligent and unloving foster mother since her parents' untimely deaths.

Where dreams are at home

"There it was again - that inner trembling, the flickering anticipation, the burgeoning pride. This was where the heart of Berlin's fashion world beat."

1913. In the heart of Berlin, Lichtenstein's offers a wide assortment of items, ...

In 2014, the crisis-shaken book market causes even the sales of works by German classics Goethe and Schiller to plummet, which is why their publisher Cotta sends the two gentlemen (now 265 and 255 years old) on a reading tour. The itinerary will culminate in an open-air reading of Faust. Only ...

It is 1959, and friends Ruth and Christa are enjoying their last summer holidays before the school leaving exams. During a lunchtime swim they meet Erich, a young man who is a member of a group of evangelical Christians. Little do they know Christa will soon secretly be accompanying Erich to ...