In her new novel, Antje Rávic Strubel gives us a highjacked plane and a difficult, if not impossible, quest for the truth. She has taken a real story as her inspiration: in 1978 a Tupolew 134 was hijacked by two citizens from East Germany who were on a flight from Gdansk to West Berlin. The ...

Meticulous coroner Dr Martin Gansewein leads a quiet life. That is, until the day the spirit of Pascha, a small-time criminal who dealt in stolen cars and whose body is now lying on the slab in front of him, insists on striking up a conversation. Pascha is in one hell of a bad mood - his ...

The only existing document of its kind

Former Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth Movement) member Franz Albrecht Schall's early diaries show how he became caught up in the maelstrom of National Socialism as a young man. Rallies, parades, political lectures and publicity tours are ...

The yo-yo effect is something many have painfully experienced at first hand after a diet, but are you also familiar with the big-fish-little-pond effect, the Mona Lisa syndrome and the TINA syndrome? There are countless psychological principles and phenomena we know little about, and yet on a ...

Compassion is the inner barrier to the inhumane. In Liverpool, two eleven-year-old boys abducted a two-year-old and murder him. This crime could have been avoided if passers-by who heard the child scream had intervened. Arno Gruen asserts that these passers-by placed themselves on the side of the ...

Preface by Gaetano Benedetti

The concept of autonomy, which does not mean power and superiority but full conformity of a human being to his feelings and needs, is an important factor of modern psychology. If this autonomy is lacking - more often the rule than the exception - ...

Much reflection by many disparate thinkers has been devoted to the complex issue of evil in the world, and psychologists have devised different theories to explain the destructiveness of man. But rarely has anyone dissected the causes with such rigorousness as Arno Gruen. He demonstrates how ...

16-year-old Flora is found by the lakeside, bleeding from multiple cuts. She claims to have no memory of what's happened to her. What's more, the different witness statements don't add up to any kind of coherent picture of events, leaving the police with no leads to follow.

Wanda can't believe what's happening! Dad's girlfriend Inge has finally given birth to a lovely baby boy, and Wanda is just getting used to the idea that she has a brother, when it turns out he's not the only one: it seems Mama's boyfriend, Bertfried, also has a son. His name is Wassily, he's ...

Maxi is in love. Totally crazy about the guy. And Patrick, of all people! Who thinks he's Casanova and has just stood her up for the third time in a row! But, this time, he's going to be sorry. Really, really sorry. She's going to make damn sure of that with the help of her best friend Mo. So ...

"This is just the worst thing that could have happened to me. It's utterly dire! New people are moving in next door. And that lot, of all people! I just can't believe it"

No, no! Wanda just can't believe it. This is decidedly too much! Fabian ...

Hanno had been looking forward to going to school, but his classmates make fun of him because he is too fat. This depresses him terribly; he doesn't do his homework or have fun playing. On his way home from school, he sits down on a park bench and begins to draw figures in the sand with a little stick.