Foreign Rights Fiction Spring & Summer 2018

FOREIGN RIGHTS FICTION SPRING & SUMMER 2018

Rowohlt Rowohlt Hundert Augen Rowohlt ⦁ Berlin Kindler Wunderlich rororo Rowohlt Polaris rotfuchs CONTACT DETAILS

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH France Japan Foreign Rights Director Editio Dialog Literary Agency Ms. Meike Marx Ms. Carolin Mungard Dr. Michael Wenzel 2-6-5 Otoe-cho Hamburger Str. 17 45, rue Saint André Fukagawa D-21465 Reinbek F-59800 LILLE JP-HOKKAIDO 074-1273 Phone: 0049-40-7272-257 Phone: 0033-3-20 18 03 75 Phone: 0081-164-251466 Fax: 0049-40-7272-319 [email protected] Fax: 0081-164-263833 [email protected] [email protected]

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Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Katharina Adler

IDA © Christoph Adler

Suffering from a petite hysterie and growing up within a darkly complex family situation, Dora became one of the twentieth century’s most famous patients when she found the strength to break off treatment with Sigmund Freud. Aged barely eighteen, the young Jewish girl robbed the great analyst, as he later complained, “of the satisfaction of more thoroughly freeing her of her ailment”.

For author Katharina Adler, this rebellious patient, whose real name was kept secret at the time, is more than a family anecdote. In her later fame, Adler’s great-grandmother was portrayed by some as a victim, and idealised by others as a heroine. “Slowly, my wish grew to complete this picture of her, yet also to counter it. I wanted to show a woman who couldn’t be dismissed as a life-long hysteric or exploited in a superficial way as a heroine. I wanted to show a woman with strengths and a few weaknesses who struggled to the last to live a self-determined life, despite all the adversities.”

Ida – Dora’s real name – is the focus of this stirring, infectious novel, a powerful display of Adler’s creative dexterity and eye for the smallest of details. The locus of Ida’s story oscillates between Rowohlt external, political disputes and internal, psychological conflict, and August 2018 between exile and memory. Yet this bewitching narrative also offers 656 pages intriguing perspectives on the ripples and storms of half a century of human history. Ida is a forceful plea both for the veracity of human perceptions and their captivatingly diverse nature, telling the story of a woman whose life began in earnest once she had turned her back on one of the past century’s greatest figures.

“The story of Freud’s ‘Dora’ has been told many times, but the stories seldom agree. After years of research in archives English sample translation available! and amongst her family, the great- granddaughter of the real Born in Munich in 1980, Katharina Adler lived in Leipzig and Berlin ‘Dora’, Ida Adler, finally gives before returning to the city of her birth, where she currently lives. She her a voice.” was awarded the state of Bavaria’s literary stipend and was Donna Leon nominated for the 2015 Döblin Prize.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Claudia Tieschky ENGELE © Stephanie Füssenich

“I’ll tell you her story, she says. She senses a desire for a callous insensibility, for brutality. She’ll tell it as it really was.” Lotte meets her lover once every so often. One day, she suddenly begins to tell him about her grandmother, and wanders into a memory that she had kept hidden from herself for years. During Lotte’s childhood, Ruth often behaved in an eccentric and puzzling way, a dominating and effervescently lively woman who could also be cold and tough.

Before the war, Ruth was a nurse in Berlin, an emancipated woman who had affairs. She then discovered the warmth of family life with Siegfried Engele, a charismatic musician, in a small town in southern Germany. Their marriage disintegrated in the 1950s, with Siegfried imprisoned for a “crime of morality”; Lotte never found out what that meant. Ruth’s life is turned upside down and, bringing up her children with a cold determination, she experiences her own economic miracle and adventures... As she relates Ruth’s story, a feeling of understanding grows within Lotte. Not only for her grandmother and her own distant mother but also for her own life and its unsteady, fleeting relationships.

Detailing an open family secret, this novel is also an exploration of German morality, a depiction of three women and surprising freedoms. Inspired by her own family history, Claudia Tieschky’s Rowohlt ⦁ Berlin concisely told, gripping and poetic book reveals a Germany hitherto March 2018 unexplored. 208 pages

English sample translation available!

Claudia Tieschky was born in Augsburg in 1968, and studied history and German studies. In 2003 she joined the Süddeutsche Zeitung as a staff writer covering media issues. In 2016 she was awarded the Bert Donnepp Prize, the German prize for media journalism. Claudia Tieschky lives in Munich. Engele is her first novel.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Lucy Fricke

DAUGHTERS © Dagmar Morath

Two women embark on a journey to Switzerland. With a terminally ill father on the back seat. This is to be their last, final journey together. But nothing ends the way it was supposed to, not even a life. Some stories begin with someone dying, but not every death is certain.

Martha and Betty have known each other since their 20s. They decide to blast full-throttle along the roads. In front of them is their destination, while a disaster looms behind. “There was no one with whom I could laugh this loudly about misfortune, only Martha. Most women don’t laugh about misfortune, especially not their own. Women talk about it until they cry and there’s nothing left worth saving. When it comes to suffering, women lose their sense of humour.”

Armed with humour used as a last line of defence and a painfully telling honesty, Lucy Fricke has crafted a warm, engaging novel about the goodbyes we all have to go through, the fathers who leave us too early and the debts that no one can hide from, even on the remotest island. This journey southwards explores the deep abyss of past lives, leading us to discover that the most important question isn’t, “Where did I come Rowohlt from?” but, “How do I get out of here?” March 2018 240 pages

● A road novel that captures the reader right from the start. ● “Telling a story like this one that’s not only absurd but also beautiful, tragic and often very funny, is an artform.” Backlist: Margarete Stokowski, die tageszeitung about Takeshi’s Skin

The work of Lucy Fricke, born in Hamburg in 1974, has won the author many prizes, including the stipend of the German Academy in Rome and a residency at New York’s Ledig House. Following Thirst Is Worse Than Homesickness, I Brought Friends and Takeshi’s Skin, Daughters is her fourth novel. Since 2010, Lucy Fricke has organised Hamburg’s HAM.LIT youth literature and music festival, the city’s first. She lives in Berlin.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek André Kubiczek

COME TO THE PARK AND SEE © Dagmar Morath

In a near-future Germany, public order is faltering, the influence of anarchists and ‘illegals’ is spreading like an infection and rumours of a revolution are sweeping through the streets. Marek leads a more-or-less respectable life, working at the university and living with Adriana, his wife, and her children from a previous marriage. When the headmistress makes absurd accusations at Marek, he embarks on a small-scale war on the local government and police; as his colleague weighs in, the situation spirals out of control.

Meanwhile, Marek’s 19-year-old son Felix visits his father in a final attempt to try to understand him. “He was always putting a foot just slightly off the beaten path, but it happened so often that the sum of all his missteps finally led him into the wilderness.” After a chaotic escape, both end up stranded somewhere in Bohemian Switzerland. It’s here, in a remote weaver’s hut, that they finally get to know themselves and each other while they wait for things to calm down at home. Both ask themselves how things could have come this far…

André Kubiczek’s story portrays a father-son relationship enveloped in a broader state of emergency. Yet instead of Rowohlt ⦁ Berlin describing the myriad absurdities of our reality with overcharged 320 pages alarmism, he depicts an apocalypse approaching deftly and quietly, March 2018 like a skilled dancer.

● Rights to the author’s novel A Sketch of Summer were sold Backlist: to Greece (Kritiki) and Bulgaria (Black Flamingo). ● “André Kubiczek is the Salinger of Eastern Germany.” Literarische Welt

André Kubiczek was born in Potsdam in 1969 and lives in Berlin. 2002 saw the publication of his acclaimed novel Young Talents; The Good and the Bad and The Stars Shine Above followed. He was awarded the Candide Prize in 2007. His most recent books were The Fabulous Year Of Anarchy (2014) and A Sketch Of Summer (2016), which was shortlisted for the German Book Prize.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek

Georg Klein MIAKRO picture alliance / Frank May ©

Throughout his long career as a writer of prose, Georg Klein has used humour and emotion to show the cracks in standard narrative techniques where the light of the fantastic can break through into the greyness of the expected. Even genres with stark, rigid rules, soften to enable new intellectual and emotional surprises.

Miakro opens in the confines of a work environment that seems hermetically sealed from the outside world. Row upon row of workers in the “middle office” is busily employed at the “soft glass”. They march off as a unit in their blue overalls at the end of their shift to the sustenance corridor, where the “pale wall” presents a meal for them. Then each heads to their own personal bunk for some rest.

For the last few nights, Nettler, an office supervisor, has been woken by a curious “indoor wind” that shows him everything he thought he remembered about his working life, but in a way that has been shifted, transmuted. Slowly, the strict routines of the office start to crumble. Together with three colleagues he trusts, Nettler decides to break out.

But outside, the goings on within the capsuled space of the office are already under vigilant surveillance. The enclosure is surrounded. Lead Rowohlt agent Xazy seems intent on investigating the twilight zone of the March 2018 natural, and the border between the outer and inner worlds. 320 pages

● Shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair Award 2018. ● Rights to Georg Klein’s novels have been sold to 14 countries.

Backlist:

A native of Augsburg, Georg Klein was born in 1953. His works published to date include Libidissi, Barbar Rosa, The Sun Is Shining On Us and The Naked Night Visitor. He has been the recipient of both the Brüder Grimm Prize and the Bachmann Prize for his prose. Novel Of Our Childhood won the Book Award of the Leipzig Book Fair. His novel The Future Of Mars was published in 2013.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Max Annas FINSTERWALDE © Michele Corleone

It could happen, and sooner than we think. The EU collapses, with nationalists and xenophobes at the reins of government across Europe. In this new reality, living space in Germany is allocated using new criteria: Anyone without a German passport is deported, and the state rescinds the nationality of many of its citizens. Most Germans with foreign roots find themselves transported to “transit camps”, and hope for an international solution involving a deal with another country that will accept them. But even the world’s most corrupt regimes refuse to take the German refugees, claiming that they will be too difficult to integrate socially. What they mean is that they will bring too much potential for turmoil and change.

Finsterwalde used to be a bustling provincial town, but has since been cleared of its population and turned into a camp. Among the thousands of internees here are Marie and her two children. Food is scarce and the perimeter fences are tightly guarded. There is no infrastructure, and the internees concentrate only on survival. A rumour makes its way round the camp that three black children are stranded alone in Berlin. Marie decides to find a way out of the camp to save the three children from certain Rowohlt Hundert Augen death. March 2018 416 pages In a parallel narrative, the novel tells of a Greek married couple who were once invited into the country to help fill vacancies on the job market. Eleni, a doctor, is allocated a dilapidated surgery in Berlin. Theo finds traces of a woman called Marie who ran the practice before them. Despite a strict ban, Theo begins a search to find her. Backlist: ● Rights to The Wall were sold to France (Belfond) and the US (Catalyst Press). ● English sample translation of The Wall available. ● The author won the German Prize for Crime Fiction in 2017.

Max Annas was a journalist and worked for many years in South Africa on a research project studying South African jazz. He now lives in Berlin. He was awarded the German Crime Writing Prize for both his debut novel The Farm and his second book, The Wall.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Poznanski / Strobel INVISIBLE © Gaby Gerster

You don’t want to do it, but your desire for murder is stronger than you.

A surgeon stabs a patient’s heart in a bizarre frenzy during an operation. A young man is publicly beaten to death in Hamburg. An estate agent is cut down in a bloody orgy of violence.

A series of gruesome murders rattles the nation. While the culprits are quickly caught, their motives remain a mystery – they all say they have no idea what came over them.

Based in Hamburg, detective superintendent Nina Salomon suspects that the murders are somehow connected. It can’t be a coincidence, she reasons, that in all three cases, the murderers and victims didn’t know each other. Is it possible that someone else could have sparked those murderous intentions? But how? Together with her colleague Daniel Buchholz, himself plagued by personal problems, she begins to research the victims’ most intimate secrets to find something that connects them. They hit on a discovery that casts a new light on something that many of us rely on in our daily lives... Wunderlich March 2018 ● Previous titles Anonymous and Foreign have sold more 352 pages than 120,000 copies. ● Rights for the title Foreign were sold to the Czech Republic (Euromedia), Greece (Klidarithmos), Italy (Giunti), Turkey (Pegasus) and the US (St. Martin’s Press).

Backlist: Ursula PoznanskiI was born in Vienna in 1968, and formerly worked as a journalist writing for a medical publisher. After the tremendous success of her young adult novel Erebos, her thriller Five was a bestseller. Further novels and bestsellers, Blind Birds and Voices, were also published by Wunderlich, as were the thrillers Foreign and Anonymous, written with Arno Strobel.

Arno Strobel was born in Saarlouis in 1962, studied IT and worked for many years at a major German bank in Luxembourg. His psychological thrillers Der Trakt, Das Wesen, Das Skript, Der Sarg and Das Dorf (all published by Fisher) topped the bestseller lists. Arno Strobel lives near Trier with his wife.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Andreas Winkelmann THE GIRLS’ HOUSE

You move to a new city. You rent a room for yourself. You become friends with the girl from the room next to yours. But the next morning, she's gone. Something doesn't feel right to you. You start looking for her. But what you find is worse than anything you could have ever imagined…

Leni comes to the big city for an internship. She rents a room in an old massive mansion by the canal through an agency and quickly becomes friends with the girl in the room next to hers - but the next morning, her new friend is gone. Something about her disappearance feels off and Leni starts looking for her.

Freddy Forster, once a successful businessman, is now living on the streets. He witnesses a man shooting the driver of an Opel Corsa and since he is afraid of becoming the next victim, he starts looking for the killer. Then he meets Leni, who still hasn’t found her missing friend. Soon the two of them realize that the shooting rororo June 2018 and the disappearance of Leni's neighbor are connected, and that 416 pages they are both in great danger...

● Rights for the title Housesitter were sold to the Czech Republic (Alpress). ● “Andreas Winkelmann pushes the narrative forward with a Backlist: vehemence only seen in English-language thrillers.” Die Welt

ANDREAS WINKELMANN was born in Lower Saxony in 1968, is married and has a daughter. He lives with his family in a lonely house on the edge of a forest near Bremen. When he’s not plumbing the deepest depths of the human psyche, he’s crossing the Alps on foot, climbing its highest peaks or going fishing and hunting in the Canadian wilderness.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Anja Baumheier THE LAND OF CRANES

Growing up in 1960s East Berlin, the Groen sisters could not be more different. Charlotte, the elder, is as fiercely committed to socialist ideals as their father Johannes, whose Stasi career is going from strength to strength. Artistically inclined Marlene, on the other hand, frequently rubs others up the wrong way. She falls for Wieland, the son of a pastor who criticises the communist system. With every day that passes, the young couple’s yearning for a life in freedom intensifies. When they decide to flee to the West, Marlene’s father makes a fateful decision.

Decades later, the youngest Groen sister Theresa is surprised to find herself as the inheritor of Marlene’s house, who she had been told had died in an accident before she was even born. What’s behind this mysterious inheritance? Theresa starts investigating and uncovers a network of lies, guilt and betrayal. Suddenly, she is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her family and herself…

Told through the prism of the Groen family story, The Land Of Cranes looks back at 80 years of German history, from the post-war years through the founding of the GDR and the building of the Berlin Wall up to the Wende, or great change, of reunification. Wunderlich 432 pages April 2018 ● Recommended by New Books in German (Goethe Institute). ● English sample translation available!

Anja Baumheier was born in Dresden in 1979 and spent her childhood in the GDR. Today she lives with her family in Berlin, teaching French and Spanish at a school there. The Land Of Cranes is her debut novel.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Ildikó von Kürthy

HILDE © Frank Grimm

This isn’t just a dog! This is Hilde.

She jumps with fright when her stomach growls at her. She regularly gets chased by her own tail and her favorite snack is dirty washing.

I’ve got my own dog!

In my new life, all that matters are things like biodegradable poo bags and gourmet liver biscuits. I was at dog dancing classes, at the dog hairdresser, at a self-help group for over-anxious canines and at a Christmas market for dogs. I asked a few people what “species-appropriate” means and got a lot of different answers.

This is my diary, my life in the weird and wonderful world of dog fanatics, a guidebook written by someone who is constantly at a loss.

An honest, funny and moving book for bipeds that never thought they’d one day turn into one of those crazy dog people…

Wunderlich 320 pages December 2017 ● English sample translation available! ● Ildikó von Kürthy`s novels have sold over six million copies and have been translated into 21 languages. ● Hilde has been on the SPIEGEL bestseller list for several weeks.

Ildikó von Kürthy is a journalist and columnist for Brigitte magazine. She lives in Hamburg with her husband and two sons. Her novels have sold over six million copies and were translated into 21 languages. Her first non-fiction book, Unter dem Herzen topped the bestseller Charts.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Catharina Junk TO HEAVEN AND BACK © Friedrun Reinhold

Katja’s career as a scriptwriter lets her live an untold number of different lives without risking any emotional disasters. Perfect! Now and again Ratko stops by, but that’s not really love. But when Katja is tasked with developing a family drama series, her creativity suddenly dries up.

That might have something to do with the fact that her own family is a disaster area. When her mother gets in touch with terrible news, a new half-sister turns up out of nowhere and Katja finds herself thinking about Joost all the time, she’s forced to confront her own life story. And realises that it’s one that needs a new ending...

Kindler ● Rights to Love is Made from Courage were sold to 240 pages Latvia (Jumava). March 2018 ● More than 55,000 copies were sold of Love is Made from Courage.

Backlist: Catharina Junk was born in Bremen in 1973. She spent several years as a producer of various television programmes and series for the NDR, a public broadcaster serving northern Germany. She began working as a freelance scriptwriter in 2008. In 2014 she was awarded the literary stipend of the city of Hamburg on the strength of an early draft of her first novel. She lives with her family in Hamburg.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Friedrich Christian Delius

THE FUTURE OF BEAUTY © juergen-buer.de

On 1 May 1966, a young German from the Hessian countryside finds himself in a New York jazz club. Albert Ayler, the famous saxophonist is playing. Alienated, insulted yet inspired by the most scandalous music of its time, the young man hears sounds that seem to reflect the furious chaos of the times: The Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, stock exchange fluctuations, black liberation struggles and student protests are all intertwined with the wild music.

The more he absorbs it, the closer the would-be poet edges towards finding himself, revealing the suppressed pain of a paternal conflict sparked by another jazz concert and the embarrassingly adolescent beginnings of his poetry. Stunned by Ayler’s improvisational raptures, the young man is subsumed in a clairvoyant whirlwind of associations and begins to understand the revolutionary energy of awakening and anger. Through the music he senses physically, corporeally, how destruction and dissolution can engender the beginning of all that is beautiful and how art can become a form of salvation.

This autobiographical work conjures a dazzling vision of the spirit of Rowohlt ⦁ Berlin optimism that imbued an entire era. March 2018 98 pages ● Rights to the author’s previous titles have been sold to 19 countries! ● Winner of the Georg Büchner Prize.

“A wonderful tale. A flawless, Friedrich Christian Delius was born in Rome in 1943 and grew up classic piece of modern prose.” in Central Germany. He did his doctoral thesis in German studies in Süddeutsche Zeitung on Bildnis 1970 and subsequently worked as book editor. Today he divides his der Mutter als junge Frau time between the Italian capital and Berlin. Some of his best-known works are Ribbeck’s Pears (1991), The Sunday I Became World Champion (1994), The Walk from Rostock to Syracuse(1995), My Year as a Murderer (2004) and Portrait of Mother as a Young Woman (2006). Delius has won numerous awards, most recently the German Critics’ Prize, the Joseph Breitbach Prize and the Georg Büchner Prize.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Martin Walser EVERYTHING Letters to an Unknown Lover

Karin Rocholl ©

“What in the world would I rather be than myself? Everything but me,” claims Justus Mall. That is his name now. Formerly a high-ranking immigration official, he became a philosopher with responsibility for everything and nothing. Only because of one thoughtless act. But that’s not his only dilemma. Day in, day out, he finds himself in conflict with circumstances of his own creation. Is it perhaps easier not to have a relationship at all rather than have only one? Justus Mall is in love with two women. And because that’s not realistic, he starts to blog about it, searching for the one person that embodies exactly what he needs.

It’s a stupendous paradox: A man who believes that reality is a construct, a yarn woven of illusory fibres, pins his hopes to a weblog to find a sense of closeness. His monologues are addressed to an unknown lover, always conscious that she doesn’t exist. In earlier works, Martin Walser used letters and emails as a stylistic element. All that falls away in Everything, a story in which a man shouts out into the void, and is forced to rely on himself, with no one to listen to his feelings and perceptions. This is a novel written with unerring clarity about a situation in which nothing is Rowohlt clear, a work whose existential questions develop a terrifying, April 2018 overpowering urgency. 112 pages

Rights to Walser’s previous titles were sold to 31 countries!

Martin Walser was born in 1927 in Wasserburg and now lives in Überlingen by Lake Constance. He is among Germany’s most “No other novelist has important writers and has received numerous awards for his work, transformed the history of among them the Georg Büchner Award and the Peace Prize of the the German soul post-1945 German Book Trade. He has also been decorated with the order into literature as Pour le Mérite and was appointed Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des comprehensively as he has.” Lettres. In 2015 he was awarded the Nietzsche Prize for his life’s Die ZEIT work.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Martin Walser I’D HATE TO DIE TODAY Karin Rocholl ©

“My muse is scarcity!” Martin Walser made that statement describing the starting point for his fiction at the beginning of his career. The interviews with Walser collected in this volume trace his life as a writer and intellectual spurred on by a sense of scarcity.

But they also show his attitudes and opinions about Kafka, about the relationship between literature and the world, the Gruppe 47, the history of the two Germanies, historic revolutions, the greatness inherent in small moments and writing as a rejuvenating force.

“As long as I continue writing, getting older is an rororo interesting experience.” Martin Walser 576 pages

April 2018

Martin Walser was born in 1927 in Wasserburg and now lives “His oeuvre is a monolith, in Überlingen by Lake Constance. He is among Germany’s towering over Germany’s most important literary authors and has received numerous literary landscape … He awards for his work, among them the Georg Büchner Award remains the creator of a and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. He has also singular range of works whose been decorated with the order Pour le Mérite and was lustre will not dull over time.” appointed Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2015 he Pia Reinacher, Weltwoche was awarded with the Nietzsche Prize for his life’s work.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Botho Strauss

THE CONTINUATION © Ruth Walz

A soul uncovered by cool, silvery microphones… A copper beech tree that dreams of dancing, that begins to move, to dance, that carries the dance within itself… Arlecchio, who argues incessantly with his neighbours through every window and is proud of his legendary quarrelsomeness…

This startling new book builds on the tradition of the Romantic fragment, on the work of Hamann, Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel. Shards of imagining form a springboard for the enormous creativity of Botho Strauss, who has constructed a book unique among his writings, representing a laconic compression of the styles and approaches deployed by Strauss in his earlier stories, reflections and criticism.

New forms engender new insights. The focus here is on the non-tangible, on the poetic moment, on those depictions of happiness or horror that can’t be created deliberately, on a void swept clean of meaning that – surprisingly and with a sense of relief – generates new meaning.

Rowohlt Strauss’s most important motif, the couple, recurs throughout via a March 2018 range of intriguing ciphers. Couples at war, breaking up, reconciling. 240 pages “The formula for attraction is: Urge times Movement times Threat.”

“Strauss’s exceptional status ● One of the most important contemporary German in contemporary literature is dramatists and essayists. founded on his ability to ● Rights to the author’s previous titles have been sold to: listen out attentively for the Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, echoes of the Sweden and the UK. anarchic-mythical in modern life; he is the last modernist. Botho Strauss (born in 1944 in Naumburg, Saale) was editor at the He knows the yearnings of magazine Theater heute and dramaturge at the Schaubühne, the hermit but his probing of Hallesches Ufer in Berlin. He gave his debut as a dramatist in 1972 with the present day is more the play Die Hypochonder. Since then, he has published numerous timely and precise than dramas, novels, short stories and essays. those who accuse him of He has received the Literature Award of the Bavarian Academy of Fine escapism are capable of.” Arts in 1981, the Mülheim Dramatists’ Award in 1982 for Kalldewey, Ijoma Mangold, Die ZEIT Farce, the Jean-Paul Award in 1987, the Georg Büchner Award in 1989 and the Lessing Award in 2001 among others. Most recently, he was honored with the Schiller Memorial Prize of the state of Baden-Württemberg.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Ulrike Schweikert THE CHARITÉ (Vol. I) © Barbara Ellen Volkmer

Berlin, 1831. The last few weeks have seen a feverish panic envelop Prussia: cholera is coming. When a sailor on a barge on the River Spree dies in terrible pain, the city’s fate is sealed.

At the Charité, Berlin’s most renowned hospital, Professor Dieffenbach and his colleagues attempt to discover the causative agent, its vectors and a cure in a deadly race against time.

While the doctors fight to save the lives of thousands, three women are immersed in their own personal battles. Countess Ludovica, trapped in a marriage with a hypochondriac, finds solace in her conversations with Dieffenbach. Martha, a midwife, is doing everything to offer her son a better future – including working in the morgue at the Charité. The deaconess Elisabeth discovers her passion for medicine and, despite the taboo, her love for a young doctor.

Polaris 448 pages June 2018

After training as a bank worker, Ulrike Schweikert became a securities broker, studied geology and journalism. Her debut novel, Die Tochter des Salzsieders, was one of the most successful historical novels written by a female author. Since the publication of Erben der Nacht, her work also includes work in the fantasy genre. Her trademark is her ability to create fascinating female heroes that are true to life. Ulrike Schweikert lives and works near Stuttgart.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Helene Sommerfeld THE DOCTOR (Vol. I and II)

The Doctor: The Light Of The World Brandenburg, 1876. Ricarda, a gardener’s daughter, saves the life of the daughter of Count Freystetten. To show her gratitude, the countess takes the 13-year-old Ricarda to Berlin, where her house is the focal point of the city’s high society. But Ricarda soon discovers the dark side of life in the capital; no one seems interested in looking after the sick women and children populating the dingy backstreets. Ricarda realises that is exactly what she wants to do. Although German women are not permitted to study medicine, she will fight tooth and nail to realise her dream, come what may…

The Doctor: Storms Of Life Munich, 1890. Ricarda is the first woman to open a doctor’s surgery. After a stroke of fate, she again crosses paths with Siegfried, who she was once in love with long ago. She decides to accompany him to the German colonies. Ricarda’s daughter begins her university studies in medicine, and falls in love with a man guarding a dark secret. When war breaks out, Siegfried and rororo Ricarda are imprisoned by the Japanese, somewhere on the other April 2018 side of the world. Ricarda suddenly finds herself free, and begins 416 pages her desperate struggle to save Siegfried’s life…

VOL. II: rororo November 2018 416 pages

Helene Sommerfeld is the pseudonym of a married couple living in Berlin, both of whom are professional writers. Many of their novels and non-fiction books were bestsellers. The unique energy and vitality of their books is due to their passion for medicine and their deep interest in historical characters and personalities coupled with a yearning to visit far-flung lands.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek

Mareike Schneider OLD ANGELS © Gene Glover/Agentur Focus

The art student Franka Raben moves to her mother’s hometown to help her father look after her grandmother. That’s one reason. The other is that she has nowhere else to go. Grandma Maria, who used to stand with open arms by the garden gate, now claims to be blind and screams as if possessed every time she is forced to leave her house. She complains incessantly, yearning for every day to end. Franka’s father, a pot-smoker and Maria’s son-in-law, tends patiently to her garden and keeps things in repair. For his trouble, he is referred to by Maria merely as The Moor. The exact term Maria uses is part of the local vernacular of the Vogtland region that Maria left to be with her future husband and which she has sorely missed all her life. In her memories, which she often shared with Franka, she revives people, countries, dogs and old customs. Like the Christmas food ritual called The Nine, where nine different open sandwiches are served on Christmas Eve, and each person is allowed to have only one piece of each if they are to enjoy good fortune in the coming new year. In Mareike Schneider’s novel, everyone seems to regard the impending death of the matriarch as though it will solve Rowohlt Hundert Augen conflicts long repressed. With great narrative power and 528 pages originality, Schneider tells the story of a family at whose March 2018 centre is a gaping hole. And although the family lost its focal point a long time before the death of the grandmother, its members still seem unable to let go.

Mareike Schneider was born in 1981 and lives in Leipzig. She studied creative writing and cultural sciences in Hildesheim. She was awarded a prize at an Open Mike event in 2014.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Christian Y. Schmidt THE LAST HUELSENBECK © Gong Yingxin

After many years in the Far East, journalist and hobby ornithologist Daniel S. is back in Germany; all he wants is a bit of peace and quiet. Then the funeral of his childhood friend Viktor ends in a fist fight. It’s a turning point in Daniel’s life, and sparks its descent into chaos. When a woman from his past turns up, Daniel – try as he might – simply cannot remember who she is. People seem to swap places or disappear. And everywhere he goes he sees signs that tell him he will die on 19 October. Can Daniel solve these puzzles using the “Cooper Method” recommended by his psychiatrist, a die-hard David Lynch fan? Or should he listen to his dealer in Berlin who advises him to “do more honest drugs from the seventies”? Can Google help? And what does all this madness have to do with a trip to America Daniel and his friend, the neo-Dadaist Huelsenbeck, went on in 1978?

In his debut novel, Christian Y. Schmidt sends his protagonists on a mysterious journey between Berlin and Mexico, at the end of whose tortuously convoluted paths lies the ultimate truth.

Rowohlt ⦁ Berlin Schmidt’s immensely enjoyable book recounts the joys of being a April 2018 youth in the wild ‘70s, describes the agonising failure of even the 352 pages best laid plans and shows us what happens when we deceive ourselves.

Bristling with originality and deliciously dark humour!

Born in 1956, Christian Y. Schmidt was on the staff of the satirical “Schmidt is a master of ironic magazine Titanic between 1989 and 1996. Since then he has self-reflection.” worked as a freelance journalist, being published in FAZ, SZ, taz, Deutschlandfunk Kultur on Stern, konkret, NZZ and Die ZEIT; he has also worked for several Allein unter 1,3 Milliarden TV stations. He is a senior consultant at the “Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur” and was a partner at and contributor to the riesenmaschine.de blog. In 2003 he moved to Singapore before moving to China two years later. He lives in Berlin and Beijing.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Kirsten Fuchs

INTERFERENCE © Paul Bokowski

A boy and a girl play football on the Faroe Islands, barely even noticing that they’re falling in love. A father suffers a heart attack while his daughter tries to save a spider on the balcony. A man wakes up with a bicycle chain around his neck, tries to figure out what happened last night and never sets foot in a bar again.

No one has ever written with such concision about the absurdities of welfare dependency: “To get welfare benefits, you have to suffer. It’s the ‘salty plaster’ concept.” This book is about love, farewells, Berlin and our planet, this rough, dirty gem that someone has thrown our way.

Kirsten Fuchs has been delighting audiences on the “Lesebühne” scene of open mic literary events for years. A novelist and playwright, her widely praised work addresses the big questions of existence in a calm way. This book shows the talents of Kirsten Fuchs as a storyteller, offering a series of stories by turns funny, serious, bizarre and brash.

Lighting up the imagination of her readers in a rainbow of vivid colours, her stories offer original and eye-opening perspectives on our times while reaching the heart of important questions in a casual, almost offhand way. Rowohlt ⦁ Berlin April 2014 224 pages ● Winner of the German Youth Literature Prize 2016! ● The author’s novel Girl Gang sold more than 50,000 copies and rights were sold to Russia (Samokat).

“This book is the bomb.” tageszeitung on Girl Gang Kirsten Fuchs was born in 1977 in Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt), and is perhaps the best known and most “This language produces an energy popular author on Berlin’s Lesebühne literary performance scene. and vitality that seeks its equal in She won the renowned Open Mike literature competition in 2003. contemporary German literature.” Her highly praised debut The Titanic and Herr Berg was Der Spiegel on Heile, Heile published in 2005 by Rowohlt Berlin. The novels Heile, Heile (2008) and Girl Gang (2015) followed; the latter won her the 2016 German Youth Literature Prize.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Katharina Herzog

BETWEEN US THE SEA

Lena leads a withdrawn, quiet life on Amrum, an island on Germany’s North Sea coast. She collects glass washed up on the beach and turns into jewellery. It’s a way for her to get something back from the sea, after it took so much from her. Twenty years ago, Lena’s Italian mother went swimming one morning and never came back.

When Lena meets Marco, a young Italian, among the dunes, the two feel an instant attraction. But the next day Marco is gone without saying goodbye. Lena finds a folder left behind by Marco and discovers photos of her mother as a young woman inside, smiling brightly in a way Lena can’t remember having seen before. Together with her sister Zoe, she journeys to the Amalfi coast to find out more about her mother’s mysterious past – and to find Marco, the man with the emerald eyes…

Polaris April 2018 More than 60,000 copies were sold of the author’s 325 pages novel A Never-Ending Summer!

All her life, Katharina Herzog has loved thinking up new stories and writing them down. After a brief spell in journalism she went back to creative writing. She soon began publishing her books, Backlist: and has already won a wide audience as an author of e-books. She lives with her family near Munich.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Sofie Cramer iLOVE

Maren works as a wedding planner, even though she stopped believing long ago that she would ever find true love. Disaster strikes when she accidentally swaps her iPhone with that of the passenger next to her on a plane, as she has a connecting flight to New York.

The other passenger is a divorce lawyer, of all things, and the two are forced by circumstance to stay in touch, with both revealing more about themselves than they’d like. When they meet up to swap their phones back, Maren finds herself drawing their meeting out for as long as possible. It must have something to do with the nervous tingling in her stomach, a feeling she never thought she’d ever have again…

rororo Sophie Cramer is the author of SMS For You (more March 2018 than 150,000 copies sold) and many other 352 pages successful novels.

Sofie Cramer, born in northern Germany’s heathland in 1974, studied German language and literature and political science in Bonn and Hanover. Today, she lives and works as a freelance scriptwriter and author in Hamburg. Sofie Cramer writes under a pseudonym — also because her own experiences are often part of her books.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Thomas Chatwin ClaudiaA LETTER TORikl MURDERER THE END OF SILENCE © Stefan Hoyer

The city of Neubrandenburg is shaken to its foundations when a corpse is discovered in the dacha of a former major in the East German National People’s Army. Its owner had evidently sliced open his wrists, yet in the last excruciating moments of his life a murderer must have intervened to put suicide out of Hans Konrad’s reach; the major’s tongue was cut out and is found next to the body.

This gruesome scene is found by Susanne Ludwig, a recently divorced journalist. The horrific picture frozen in her mind rekindles old traumas, and she collapses. To avoid problems claiming custody of her daughter, she plays down her psychological symptoms and begins her own investigation into the murder.

But an amateur messing things up is the last thing the detective leading the official inquiry needs. It’s been almost 30 years since detective chief Michael Herzberg was himself imprisoned in the Stasi’s infamous prison ‘Bautzen II’. His time there not only left deep scars. It also prevents him from staying objective when his hunt for clues unearths evidence of a secret network involving former military and Stasi officers. Yet he still Kindler clings to the idea that the case has nothing to do with his past. March 2018 A deadly mistake... 528 pages

The beginning of a new series with inspector Michael Herzberg.

Claudia Rikl was born in Naumberg, East Germany in 1972. She grew up there and was preparing to take her school-leaving exams when the Berlin Wall fell. This period of countless demonstrations, of churches filled to overflowing, this era of collapse and rejuvenation made a lasting impression on her. A jurist and literary scholar, she lives with her family in Leipzig. She is currently working on Michael Herzberg’s next case.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Horst Eckert THE PRICE OF DEATH © Kathie Wewer

A politician at the edge of an abyss. A TV journalist searching for the truth. A fatally ill detective who lives for his final case.

When Member of the Bundestag Christian Wagner is found hanged in his Berlin flat, Sarah Wolf refuses to believe that it’s a suicide. Sarah hosts a TV politics show, and had begun a relationship with Christian only weeks previously. Christian had been accused by a tabloid newspaper of working as a lobbyist for the Samax corporation, which runs several hospitals. A PR and career disaster, it’s true, but surely not enough to make him kill himself… Searching for the truth, she begins to sift through his papers and soon finds a document about a refugee camp in Kenya. She is forced to ask herself how well she really knew the man she thought she loved.

Meanwhile, the body of a woman is recovered from a lake near Düsseldorf. Inspector Paul Sellin discovers that Johanna Kling was in contact with Christian Wagner just before her death. What links the deceased 29-year-old environmental activist with the politician? Sellin must solve this case, regardless of cost. He’s seriously ill and this case may well be his last... Wunderlich March 2018 416 pages

Horst Eckert was born in 1959, has lived for the last 29 years in Düsseldorf. His debut novel Annas Erbe appeared in 1995. His novels have been translated into several languages and won several prizes (including the Friedrich Glauser Prize and the Krimi-Blitz Prize). Wunderlich has previously published his political thrillers Wolf Spider, Black Light and Shadow Boxer.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Hans Rath / Edgar Rai DEAD HAVE COLDHans FEET Rath / Edgar Rai (Vol. II) DEADS HAVE COLD FEET © Mirjam Knickriem

Inspector Holger Brinks is assigned a missing persons case: Victoria Sommer is one of three founders of “Smooth Sisters”, a successful young start-up company selling smoothies that’s just about to make it big. Meanwhile, private eye Charlie Brinks has been tasked by an old flame to snoop around her husband Robert to find out if he’s having an affair. And he’s bored beyond belief. When Robert suddenly disappears under mysterious circumstances, Holger and Charlie suspect that the two cases must be connected, and that the remaining Smooth Sisters are behind the disappearance of both Victoria and Robert. But the evidence is thin, being almost completely circumstantial. When Charlie tries to get hold of some direct evidence to support their suspicions, he falls into a deadly trap.

Things get substantially more complicated with the arrival of Charlie and Holger’s mother Anita and her fiancé (name: Rodrigo, age: twenty years younger), who she intends to make husband number five. Anita has one burning desire, namely that Charlie and Holger make all the wedding arrangements and host the party in Holger’s garden - which soon becomes the scene of an administrative nightmare...

Wunderlich 288 pages April 2018

Born in 1965, Hans Rath studied philosophy, German studies and psychology in Bonn. He lives with his family in Berlin, where Backlist: he works, among other things, as a scriptwriter. His trilogy Man tut, was man kann, Da muss man durch and Was will man mehr garnered him a wide and avid readership. Two of the books have been turned into feature films.

Edgar Rai was born in 1967. After being expelled from several schools he spent a year in the US, and later read music and English studies in Marburg and Berlin. Among other jobs he has worked as a scriptwriter, basketball coach, choir leader, odd job man, and online editor. In 2001 he embarked on a successful career as a novelist (Nächsten Sommer, Etwas bleibt immer).

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Thomas Chatwin

MAIL FOR A MURDERER

It’s a beautiful summer’s day in Cornwall, and a placid, sleepy atmosphere has settled over a little town at the mouth of the River Fowey. Daphne Penrose is out on her postal round when she notices that a window in the old fisherman’s house has been open for two days in a row. The house, it emerges, has been ransacked and no trace can be found of its occupant, Mrs McKallan, a painter from Scotland.

At the same time, Daphne’s husband Francis retrieves a male corpse from the water near the ferry to Polruan; the body belongs to Edward Hammett, a shipowner. When two more deaths occur, Daphne and Francis quickly realise that the local Chief Inspector is overwhelmed. They begin a secret investigation of their own, using some rather, well, unique sleuthing methods…

Polaris June 2018 352 pages

Born in 1949, the literary academic Thomas Chatwin is exceedingly knowledgeable about all things English. He has a passion for Cornwall and spends every minute of his spare time there. Under his normal name, Claus Beling, he was responsible for international film productions based on novels, including a series of Rosamunde Pilcher films for the ZDF network. Through his long-standing friendship with Rosamunde Pilcher and the many holidays and trips they have spent together, he has gained many detailed insights into Cornish life.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek

Carolina Conrad

MURDER IN THE ALGARVE

A serial killer with a taste for old-age pensioners? In the sun-drenched, sleepy hinterland of the Algarve, of all places? Bela Silva is visiting the Algarve, the land of her parents, and is struck by a spate of fatalities in the area. A journalist living in Germany, she had planned to use the time to enjoy a little peace and quiet.

Instead, she starts an investigation of her own, uncovering an old grievance. Bela suspects that someone is settling old scores. Someone she thought she knew…

As Bela is pondering her next move, another corpse is discovered. The resulting clues lead ambitious police investigator João Almeida directly to Bela’s front door.

rororo April 2018 288 pages

Born in 1960 in Oldenburg, Carolina Conrad is a former journalist who spent three years travelling from Europe to Brazil in a self-built catamaran before deciding to leave the rat race behind her. Her first book, Untergehen werden wir nicht, was published in 2002, and recounted her experiences at sea. Since 2007 she has focussed on writing women’s fiction, with Alles gegen Werner and Hart aber Hilde becoming instant successes. She lives with her husband, dogs and cats in Portugal.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek

It’s late summer in the Alsatian village of Eguisheim, and the villagers are enjoying a spell of tranquil calm. The peace and quiet is suddenly interrupted when a group of ramblers is attacked by a deer. An investigation reveals that the animal had rabies. A spate of similar attacks results in a man’s death, yet this turns out not to be the last fatality.

While the villagers believe that the animals are defending themselves against human incursion, local police officers Kreydenweiss and Bato have other suspicions. This case will only be solved, they realise, if they dare to climb down into the dark depths of the human psyche, and grapple with fanaticism and superstitions…

rororo February 2018 352 pages

Jules Vitrac is a successful German writer and lawyer. In her thrillers around the Alsatian investigator duo Kreydenweiss & Bato, she combines her professional experience with criminal chasms and her passion for intricate puzzles with a great love for France.

44-year-old Ulrike is at a new low point in her life. Her marriage is on the rocks, with her son living with his father; her finances are a disaster and she’s as good as homeless. She finds herself standing in front of her parents’ house with packed suitcases. It’s perfect timing for mother Wilma, who now has a new life-defining duty: looking after her adult daughter. Ulrike feels as though she’s travelled back in time, and her longing to be anywhere but here in this small town is like a déja vu.

But things have changed here, too. Wilma is head over heels in love, and Ulrike’s old friends seem to have found some secret recipe for happiness. Slowly, she realises that the only thing that needs to change now is herself…

rororo March 2018 More than 36,000 copies of Bloom’s novel Life Starts 352 Seiten at 40 were sold!

Franka Bloom is the pseudonym of an experienced script writer who has contributed to children’s films as well as TV Backlist: crime dramas like Tatort, SOKO Leipzig and Ein Fall für zwei. She has won many awards for her work. She lives with her two daughters and her partner in Leipzig. 40s, Get Set, Go! follows on from her successful debut novel, Life Starts At 40.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Helene Sommerfeld HOW TO GET RID OF A HEADACHE WITH A WOODEN HAMMER

Did you know that you can get rid of a headache using a wooden hammer? That eating 8 pounds of grapes everyday burns off body fat? Or what to do in case of caffeine poisoning?

While researching her two-volume historical saga The Doctor, Helene Sommerfeld studied a range of popular, semi-scientific and scientific texts. What was known about medicine and disease in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? How were the sick treated? A lot of the medical advice people believed back then sounds strange, bizarre, even highly comical to us today.

rororo April 2018 80 pages

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Lena Wolf A SUMMER WITH PROSPECTS

She’s made it. Finally, Luisa is sitting in her car on her way to France. The only thing dampening her mood is that Stefan, her ex-husband, is the one behind the wheel. And the situation isn’t helped by the fact that her mother is camped out on the back seat. Elisabeth, it turns out, doesn’t know about the divorce. All she wants is to support her adoptive daughter when she meets her biological mother for the first time. That and prevent Luisa’s new mother from pushing her into second place, what with her swanky guest house in the Provence…

The mood in the car is far from relaxed and when they break down, the tension is ratcheted up a few notches. But the group’s in luck when they flag down a passing car. The attractive French driver begins flirting with Luisa, sparking a problematic chain of events…

rororo May 2018 352 Seiten

Lena Wolf is the pseudonym of a successful author. In contrast to her protagonist, she actually enjoys driving holidays with her husband and her mother, ideally in the south of France.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Safia Monney HARD TIMES FOR TOUGH GUYS

Clemens works as a journalist for a men’s lifestyle magazine. He loves writing about all that man stuff: extreme sports, monster trucks and all that. While he’s stand-offish about relationships in general, he’s open for the odd affair now and again.

Like when he meets the fascinating Wayra at an airport. Unfortunately for him, however, Wayra turns out to be his new boss. She wants to re-energise the flagging title by bringing in new ideas. Like writing about the New Man, his needs and aspirations. Clemens is assigned the new “Beauty and Body Care” section, and his first task is to write about a congress entitled “Sensitive Men” that’s being held at an Alpine resort…

rororo May 2018 288 pages

The German-French author Safia Monney was born in Saarbrücken in 1979. She studied acting at the Viennese Conservatory and communications science at LMU in Munich. Her acting career has included roles at Munich’s Kammerspiele theatre as well as TV and film appearances. She has performed at literary readings and has also contributed to an audio book. She has lived in Paris since 2008.

Greta Wohlert is on her way to visit her aunt who lives on a small North Sea island – similarities to the island of Föhr may not be entirely coincidental. Greta has taken a few days off from her stressful job as a flight attendant, and desperately needs a bit of peace and tranquillity.

First, though, she helps Aunt Inge clear out her old shop. Greta is fascinated to discover dozens of dusty old books, and sells them at a flea market. She has so much fun that she decides to give up her old job and open a bookshop on the island. Her new acquaintance, the attractive guest house owner Klaas, supports her in her new venture. Then events begin moving fast. Someone wants to chase Greta off the island, and a mysterious inscription in one of the books arouses Greta’s curiosity. As if she didn’t already have enough on her plate, her on/off boyfriend suddenly knocks on her door, pleading for a second chance…

Polaris March 2018 256 pages

Janne Mommsen was born on the Baltic Sea coast. Before becoming a writer he was a nurse, a shipyard worker and a pianist on a cruise ship. Now he mostly writes novels, scripts and plays. He lived in northern Frisia and often returns to take in the invigorating coastal atmosphere. Fittingly, his wife’s family has lived on Föhr for hundreds of years.

Peace and quiet descends once more on to the coastal village of Klütz in Mecklenburg. The tourist season is over and the hotel managed by Britta is closed for the winter. The mainstay of her life is the village choir, which has rehearsed on Wednesday evenings for the last 20 years. Its members sing, help one another, have the odd party and, once in a while, even fall in love with one another.

One day, the long-time leader of the choir announces that he is moving away, shocking everyone. The choir helps everyone feel part of a community, a feeling that now seems under threat. Britta decides to roll her sleeves up and get things moving by holding auditions for a new choir leader. She also gets to know a young piano player who, impressed with her commitment and drive, persuades her to lead the choir herself. Will the pair manage to keep the community together?

rororo July 2018 288 pages

Janne Mommsen was born on the Baltic Sea coast. Before becoming a writer he was a nurse, a shipyard worker and a pianist on a cruise ship. Now he mostly writes novels, scripts and plays. He lived for years in northern Frisia and often returns to take in the invigorating coastal atmosphere. Fittingly, his wife’s family has lived on Föhr for hundreds of years.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek

Linda Graze

The most serious recent crime committed in the sleepy Swabian town of Bad Wildbad was when someone poured the contents of their flowerpot into the river, including the flowers. But the town’s new police detective Justin Schmälzle has been in his post for a matter of minutes when a dead body turns up. The corpse is male, and found covered in the kinds of herbs used in cookery.

Soon after, a woman disappears while accompanying Wolfram, a mental patient. Small bags of herbs turn up being sold as “herbal air fresheners” on the town’s high street. Justin Schmälzle is just the man to get to the bottom of these mysterious goings on. As soon as he’s finished his rice milk latte…

rororo July 2018 320 pages

Linda Graze spent her childhood in the Northern Black Forest. After her training as an interpreter she decided to write her own texts. She became a copywriter and worked for major agencies, from Munich and Hamburg to Frankfurt. She wrote campaigns for cameras, cosmetics, candy bars and even screws. She now runs a recruiting agency for the advertising industry in Stuttgart.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Christiane Franke & Cornelia Kuhnert MUSSELS, MURDER AND A FRESH SEA BREEZE

A major fire has erupted in the village of Neuharlingersiel, tearing through the building site of a new wellness centre and killing a Polish construction worker. At a local club meeting, one of the project’s investors claims he knows who started the fire. A few hours later he is found dead.

The regional CID suspect the local building contractor had a hand in the man’s death, but teacher and amateur detective Rosa Moll has other ideas. Together with her friends Rudi, the village policeman, and Henner, the postman, she sets about solving this latest puzzling case.

rororo April 2018 320 pages

Backlist:

Christiane Franke enjoys living on the North Sea coast. In addition to her work as a writer and editor, she works as a lecturer for creative writing.

Cornelia Kuhnert lives in Hannover and worked there as a teacher. She has published numerous crime novels and anthologies.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Boris Meyn

The year is 1925, and young journalist Ilka Bischop discovers that Russian military pilots are secretly being trained in Germany, a serious contravention of the Treaty of Versailles. When Ilka decides to investigate, one of her informants, a friend and pilot, is found dead. The dead man was having an affair with an architect from Hamburg, who is also murdered before Ilka can contact him.

Meanwhile, Director of Public Works Fritz Schumacher is planning to rebuild large swathes of Hamburg. Major construction contracts often result in rules being bent to breaking point. But murder? Ilka uncovers a secretive group with aims that go far beyond making some money with a few new buildings. This organisation is willing to do anything to make its nefarious designs a reality…

rororo March 2018 256 pages

Boris Meyn was born in 1961 and received a doctorate in the history of art and architecture. In addition to his scientific work he has published several historical crime novels with great success. He lives with his family in the North of Germany.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Sebastian Kretz

Harm Harmsen has bags of talent for his job, more than enough to become a great CID officer. It’s just a shame about all the neuroses and baggage he’s carrying around with him. And then there’s his hatred of computers and all that stupid modern technology. It’s the reason why he’s assigned 20-year-old Peggy as a partner on a new case. She’s an expert on digital forensics, clever, in-your-face and completely uncontrollable. A murder has been committed in a Neukölln allotment. Was it politically motivated? Or a lovers’ tiff gone wrong?

The dead man’s girlfriend seems genuinely devastated, yet Peggy’s DNA evidence points to her guilt. But then her trail peters out, leaving the investigation going nowhere despite her modern methods. The only way to get it back on track is for these two detectives to bury the hatchet and work together…

rororo 256 pages June 2018

Sebastian Kretz was born in 1982, growing up in East Frisia. He has lived in Berlin since 2005. He studied political science and attended the German School of Journalism in Munich. He works for GEO magazine as a contributor and reporter. The high-tech DNA process Peggy uses in the book was the subject of an article he wrote in 2015 for GEO about Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office.

Germany in the early 1960s. Most people have only one goal: the economic and financial security of home ownership. But for many, the road there leads through hard times of sacrifice and austerity. The Albers family have to make do with the Pfaff estate; its dark, rotting house is hardly a symbol of the dawning of a new era of hope. While daughter Annemarie follows her dream of attending university, her parents lose their focus on pursuing their dream. Their silence and guilt mirror a wider malaise in German society. A terrible truth is hiding in the shadows. “What did you do during the war, dad? Were you a Nazi, too?”

rororo June 2018 256 pages

Born in 1955 in the Lower Rhine region, Hiltrud Leenders began her career as a translator before making a name for herself as a poet. She is the mother of two sons and became a full-time novelist in 1990. The Estate is a novel about the turmoil of growing up and the burdens placed on the post-war generation in reaching adulthood in a nation pervaded by guilt that refused to talk about it. Hiltrud Leenders herself was a child of this era.

Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburger Straße 17, D-21465 Reinbek Marco Göllner GRANDMA MARTHA & ME

“Grandma Martha always smelled the same (cologne). Her teeth spent the night in a tumbler. Anything that looked even vaguely like a rash was instantly daubed with talcum powder: the open wound on her leg, babies’ bottoms, and – for many years – my brother’s face. Till one day she thought, ‘So it’s supposed to be like that!’”.

Marco Göllner grew up with his grandmother Martha, a grandma of the ‘pinny’ generation who wore a pastel-coloured plastic pinafore everyday for housework. And in her house, you could be sure of one thing: Grandma Martha had everyone eating out of her hand.

This enchantingly written book is a declaration of love for a woman who gave the author everything he needed. And what she didn’t give him turned out to be unimportant anyway…

rororo June 2018 192 pages

Marco Göllner was born in 1971 in Herford (Prussia!) because his father got lost driving the car. But he grew up in Bad Salzufflen, in a suburb called Aspe. This is where he spent the first years of his life, with his grandmother, Martha. Today he lives in the Teutoburg Forest and in Berlin, and has become a superstar in the audiobook segment as a director and author. He first became known to a wider audience through the “Fest & Flauschig” podcast by Jan Böhmermann and Olli Schulz.

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