One by one the boys begin to fall…

In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

The Reader

In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness, as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.

The Magic Mountain

From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of "Floating in My Mother's Palm" comes a stunning novel about ordinary people living in extraordinary times.

Trudi Montag is a "Zwerg"—a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he's a girl, to the Jews Trudy harbors in her cellar.

Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.

Stones from the River (Burgdorf Cycle, #1)

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)

The Book Thief

Telling the tragic tale of a socially advantageous but emotionally ruinous match, Theodor Fontane's "Effi Briest" is translated from the German by Hugh Rorrison with an introduction by Helen Chambers in Penguin Classics.

Unworldly young Effi Briest is married off to Baron von Innstetten, an austere and ambitious civil servant twice her age, who has little time for his new wife. Isolated and bored, Effi finds comfort and distraction in a brief liaison with Major Crampas, a married man with a dangerous reputation. But years later, when Effi has almost forgotten her affair, the secret returns to haunt her - with fatal consequences. In taut, ironic prose Fontane depicts a world where sexuality and the will to enjoy life are stifled by vain pretences of civilization, and the obligations of circumstance. Considered to be his greatest novel, this is a humane, unsentimental portrait of a young woman torn between her duties as a wife and mother and the instincts of her heart.

Hugh Rorrison's clear, modern translation is accompanied by an introduction by Helen Chambers, which compares Effi with other literary heroines such as Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina.

Theodor Fontane (1819-98) was a German novelist and potitical reporter. Along with "Effi Briest", Fontane is remembered for "Frau Jenny Treibel" (1892), an ironic criticism of middle-class hypocrisy and small-mindedness.

If you enjoyed "Effi Briest "you may like Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina", also available in Penguin Classics.

'I have been haunted by it ... as I am by those novels that seem to do more than they say, to induce strong emotions that can't quite be accounted for' 
Hermione Lee, "Sunday Times"

Effi Briest

Heimsuchung reicht tief in die deutsche Vergangenheit. Eine literarische Spurensuche von stupender Wucht

Ein Haus an einem märkischen See ist das Zentrum, fünfzehn Lebensläufe, Geschichten, Schicksale von den Zwanzigerjahren bis heute ranken sich darum. Das Haus und seine Bewohner erleben die Weimarer Republik, das Dritte Reich, den Krieg und dessen Ende, die DDR, die Wende und die Zeit der Nachwende. Jedem einzelnen Schicksal gibt Jenny Erpenbeck eine eigene literarische Form, jedes entfaltet auf ganz eigene Weise seine Dramatik, seine Tragik, sein Glück. Alle zusammen bilden eine Art kollektives literarisches Gedächtnis des letzten Jahrhunderts, geformt in einer Literatur, die nicht nur großartige Sätze und Bilder zu bieten hat, sondern die auch Wunden reißt, verstört, beglückt, verunsichert und versöhnt.

Worin das Geheimnis dieser Geschichten besteht, woraus sich ihr Glanz, ihre Wucht und ihre eminente Dramatik entfalten, ist schwer zu sagen. Sicher aber ist eins: Mit diesem Buch ist Jenny Erpenbeck ihr Meisterstück gelungen.

»Immer, wenn Jenny Erpenbeck ihren scharfen Blick auf die Dinge richtet, verändern sie sich blitzartig. Die Oberfläche schmilzt. Darunter kommt zum Vorschein, was als subkutane Irritation die Figuren bewegt.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Heimsuchung

Wie alle Hauptwerke Hermann Hesses hat auch der Demian, den der damals 40jährige Autor mitten im Ersten Weltkrieg schrieb, eine ebenso ungewöhnliche wie spannende Entstehungs- und Wirkungsgeschichte. Daß dieses im Herbst 1917 vollendete Buch erst im Juni 1919, ein halbes Jahr nach Kriegsende, veröffentlicht wurde, lag an der Unbekanntheit des Verfassers. Denn Hesse hatte das Manuskript dem Verlag als das Erstlingswerk eines kranken jungen Dichters empfohlen, des zeitkritischen Poeten Emil Sinclair, der bisher nur in Zeitungen und Zeitschriften durch pazifistische Mahnrufe und Erzählungen aufgefallen war (die gleichfalls von Hesse stammten). Doch trotz des Inkognitos erlebte das Buch eine geradezu stürmische Aufnahme und wurde noch im Erscheinungsjahr mit dem Fontane-Preis für das beste Erstlingswerk eines Nachwuchsautors ausgezeichnet. Thomas Mann verglich die elektrisierende Wirkung des Buches mit der von Goethes Werther, da es »mit unheimlicher Genauigkeit den Nerv der Zeit traf und eine ganze Jugend, die wähnte aus ihrer Mitte sei ihr ein Künder ihres tiefsten Lebens entstanden, zu dankbarem Entzücken hinriß«. Bis zur Entdeckung des Pseudonyms im Mai 1920 erschienen drei Auflagen, denen dann unter Hesses eigenem Namen zu seinen Lebzeiten noch 93 weitere folgten.

Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

Every ninety years, twelve gods incarnate as humans. They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are dead. The team behind critical tongue-attractors like Young Avengers and PHONOGRAM reunite to create a world where gods are the ultimate pop stars and pop stars are the ultimate gods. But remember: just because you’re immortal, doesn’t mean you’re going to live forever. Collects THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #1-5

The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 1: The Faust Act

Hitler boasted that The Third Reich would last a thousand years. It lasted only 12. But those 12 years contained some of the most catastrophic events Western civilization has ever known.No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.

Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, "Those Who Save Us" is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.

Those Who Save Us

Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a "brilliantly innovative thriller-writer," Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir-tinged mysteries that are nothing short of spellbinding. The first book of the "Berlin Noir" trilogy, "March Violets" introduces readers to Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin; until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture.

Bernhard Gunther, a hard-boiled Berlin detective who specializes in tracking down missing persons — mostly Jews. He is summoned by a wealthy industrialist to find the murderer of his daughter and son-in-law, killed during the robbery of a priceless diamond necklace.

Gunther quickly is catapulted into a major political scandal involving Hitler's two main henchmen, Goering and Himmler. The search for clues takes Gunther to morgues overflowing with Nazi victims; raucous nightclubs; the Olympic games where Jesse Owens tramples the theory of Aryan racial superiority; the boudoir of a famous actress; and finally to the Dachau concentration camp. Fights with Gestapo agents, shoot-outs with adulterers, run-ins with a variety of criminals, and dead bodies in unexpected places keep readers guessing to the very end.

Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and richly detailed, "March Violets" is noir writing at its blackest and best.

March Violets (Bernie Gunther, #1)

"Floating in My Mother's Palm" is the compelling and mystical story of Hanna Malter, a young girl growing up in 1950's Burgdorf, the small German town Ursula Hegi so brilliantly brought to life in her bestselling novel "Stones from the River." Hanna's courageous voice evokes her unconventional mother, who swims during thunderstorms; the illegitimate son of an American GI, who learns from Hanna about his father; and the librarian, Trudi Montag, who lets Hanna see her hometown from a dwarf's extraordinary point of view. Although Ursula Hegi wrote "Floating in My Mother's Palm" first, it can be read as a sequel to "Stones from the River."

Floating in My Mother's Palm

Welcome to Germany, a country where you should always wait at the red man, show up on time for your wedding, and be extremely suspicious if anyone offers you a doughnut. 'German men sit down to pee' is a tongue-in-cheek guidebook to German culture that highlights the rules Germans consciously and unconsciously follow, while trying to make a little sense of it all along the way. Why, for example, mowing your lawn on a Sunday will mean getting an earful from your neighbour, but lie naked in the middle of a public park and nobody will bat an eyelid. Ideal for anyone visiting or moving to Germany, 'German Men Sit Down to Pee' offers a collection of insights into German culture while at the same time highlighting rules and cultural norms that those visiting Germany will not only find humorous but useful for avoiding any cultural faux-pas.

German Men Sit Down to Pee and Other Insights into German Culture

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Goring and the expectedly charming—yet wholly sinister—Goebbels, "In the Garden of Beasts" lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther #1-3)

Eine Auseinandersetzung mit den Jahren der deutschen Teilung.
Ende August 1961: In einem kleinen Krankenhauszimmer erwacht Rita Seidel aus ihrer Ohnmacht. Und mit dem Erwachen wird auch die Vergangenheit wieder lebendig. Da ist die Erinnerung an den Betriebsunfall und vor allem die Erinnerung an Manfred Herrfurth. Zwei Jahre sind vergangen, seit sie dem Chemiker in die Stadt folgte, um an seiner Seite und mit ihm gemeinsam ein glückliches Leben zu beginnen. Wann hat die Trennung begonnen? Hat sie die ersten Anzeichen einer Entfremdung übersehen? Denken, Grübeln, Fiebern – Tage und Nächte hindurch! »Ich gebe Dir Nachricht, wenn Du kommen sollst. Ich lebe nur für den Tag, da Du wieder bei mir bist.« Manfred ist von einem Chemikerkongreß in Westberlin nicht zurückgekehrt in dem festen Glauben, daß Rita ihm folgen wird. Sie muß eine Entscheidung treffen, die sie in eine tiefe Krise stürzt.

Der geteilte Himmel

Pfeijffer diagnosticeert de tijdgeest in een kolossale roman met Europa als speelveld

‘De toekomst van Europa is het Europa dat nu al een realiteit is. Europa is het recreatiegebied voor de rest van de wereld,’ zegt een van de personages in Grand Hotel Europa. Het is – overdrachtelijk – ook een zelfdiagnose. Alle personages in deze roman zitten immers op verschillende manieren vast aan hun verleden. Voor toekomst is geen plek meer. Het Avondland is vergrijsd en improductief. Geschiedenis is het voornaamste dat Europa nog te bieden heeft. En geschiedenis trekt toerisme. Maar dit verontrustende en au fond weemoedige gegeven krijgt in Grand Hotel Europa zijn beslag in een wervelende en hilarische roman met een tragische liefdesgeschiedenis als hoofdmoot.

Grand Hotel Europa

Written by Hitler's Minister of Armaments and War Production, the man who kept Germany armed and the war machine running even after Hitler's mystique had faded, this memoir gives us as complete a view as we will ever get of the inside of the Nazi state. "B&amp;W photos."

Inside the Third Reich


  A classic of 20th-century fiction, "The Berlin Stories" inspired the Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film "Cabaret".
First published in the 1930s, "The Berlin Stories" contains two astonishing related novels, "The Last of Mr. Norris" and "Goodbye to Berlin", which are recognized today as classics of modern fiction. Isherwood magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming, with its avenues and cafÃ©s; marvelously grotesque, with its nightlife and dreamers; dangerous, with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy, with its mobs and millionairesâ€”this is the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power. "The Berlin Stories" is inhabited by a wealth of characters: the unforgettable Sally Bowles, whose misadventures in the demimonde were popularized on the American stage and screen by Julie Harris in "I Am A Camera" and Liza Minnelli in "Cabaret"; Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee mysteriously caught between the Nazis and the Communists; plump FrÃ¤ulein Schroeder, who thinks an operation to reduce the scale of her BÃ¼ste might relieve her heart palpitations; and the distinguished and doomed Jewish family, the Landauers.

The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr Norris/Goodbye to Berlin

Recounts, in narrowing detail, and with formidable skill, the brutal death throes of Hitler's Reich at the hands of the rampaging Red Army.

Berlin: The Downfall 1945

Iron Kingdom traces Prussia's involvement in the continent's foundational religious and political conflagrations: from the devastations of the Thirty Years War through centuries of political machinations to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, from the enlightenment of Frederick the Great to the destructive conquests of Napoleon, and from the "iron and blood" policies of Bismarck to the creation of the German Empire in 1871, with all that implied for the tumultuous twentieth century.

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947

In this classic, John le Carre's third novel and the first to earn him international acclaim, he created a world unlike any previously experienced in suspense fiction. With unsurpassed knowledge culled from his years in British Intelligence, le Carre brings to light the shadowy dealings of international espionage in the tale of a British agent who longs to end his career but undertakes one final, bone-chilling assignment. When the last agent under his command is killed and Alec Leamas is called back to London, he hopes to come in from the cold for good. His spymaster, Control, however, has other plans. Determined to bring down the head of East German Intelligence and topple his organization, Control once more sends Leamas into the fray -- this time to play the part of the dishonored spy and lure the enemy to his ultimate defeat.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

Never feel like a stranger in Germany again!

On entering a restaurant, should you find your own table or wait to be seated? What is a suitable topic for small-talk with a stranger? In what circumstances might you ask to borrow " ein Handy"? All these answers and more can be found in "When in Germany, Do As the Germans Do", a fun and intriguing book that teaches you about Germany's culture, language, and people.

It features 120 intriguing multiple-choice questions that are cross-referenced to fascinating articles on pop culture, customs, behavior, history, consumer trends, literature, tourist sights, business, language, and more. Also included are key terms and useful expressions, informative charts, and websites for further reference.

When in Germany, Do as the Germans Do

Magdalena, the clever and headstrong daughter of Bavarian hangman Jakob Kuisl, lives with her father outside the village walls and is destined to be married off to another hangman’s son—except that the town physician’s son is hopelessly in love with her. And her father’s wisdom and empathy are as unusual as his despised profession. It is 1659, the Thirty Years’ War has finally ended, and there hasn’t been a witchcraft mania in decades. But now, a drowning and gruesomely injured boy, tattooed with the mark of a witch, is pulled from a river and the villagers suspect the local midwife, Martha Stechlin.

Jakob Kuisl is charged with extracting a confession from her and torturing her until he gets one. Convinced she is innocent, he, Magdalena, and her would-be suitor race against the clock to find the true killer. Approaching Walpurgisnacht, when witches are believed to dance in the forest and mate with the devil, another tattooed orphan is found dead and the town becomes frenzied. More than one person has spotted what looks like the devil—a man with a hand made only of bones. The hangman, his daughter, and the doctor’s son face a terrifying and very real enemy.

Page Numbers Source ISBN: 054774501X

The Hangman's Daughter (The Hangman's Daughter, #1)

"Steppenwolf" is a poetical self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope. Yet his novel can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of the period. As Hesse himself remarked, "Of all my books "Steppenwolf" is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any of the others".

Steppenwolf

In the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War, there were few instances of shining moral courage, let along secular sainthood. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Nazi resister was the exception. This emblematic figure risked his life--and finally lost it--through his participation in a failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and topple his regime. "Saints and Villains" gives us this exemplary life in a sweeping narrative that is bold in conception and utterly convincing in its power of imaginative reconstruction.

Saints and Villains

By the acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," this day-by-day, eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is now available in a new paperback edition.

CBS radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was virtually unknown in 1940 when he decided there might be a book in the diary he had kept in Europe during the 1930s—specifically those sections dealing with the collapse of the European democracies and the rise of Nazi Germany.

"Berlin Diary" first appeared in 1941, and the timing was perfect. The energy, the passion, the electricity in it were palpable. The book was an instant success, and it became the frame of reference against which thoughtful Americans judged the rush of events in Europe. It exactly matched journalist to event: the right reporter at the right place at the right time. It stood, and still stands, as so few books have ever done—a pure act of journalistic witness.

Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

From one of the world's most distinguished historians, a magisterial new reckoning with Hitler's rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany.

In 1900 Germany was the most progressive and dynamic nation in Europe, the only country whose rapid technological and social growth and change challenged that of the United States. Its political culture was less authoritarian than Russia's and less anti-Semitic than France's; representative institutions were thriving, and competing political parties and elections were a central part of life. How then can we explain the fact that in little more than a generation this stable modern country would be in the hands of a violent, racist, extremist political movement that would lead it and all of Europe into utter moral, physical, and cultural ruin?

There is no story in twentieth-century history more important to understand, and Richard Evans has written the definitive account for our time. A masterful synthesis of a vast body of scholarly work integrated with important new research and interpretations, Evans's history restores drama and contingency to the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, even as he shows how ready Germany was by the early 1930s for such a takeover to occur. With many people angry and embittered by military defeat and economic ruin; a state undermined by a civil service, an army, and a law enforcement system deeply alienated from the democratic order introduced in 1918; beset by the growing extremism of voters prey to panic about the increasing popularity of communism; home to a tiny but quite successful Jewish community subject to widespread suspicion and resentment, Germany proved to be fertile ground for Nazism's ideology of hatred.

The first book of what will ultimately be a complete three-volume history of Nazi Germany, The Coming of the Third Reich is a masterwork of the historian's art and the book by which all others on this subject will be judged.

The Coming of the Third Reich (The History of the Third Reich, #1)

Specifically designed for students studying Edexcel A Level History Unit 3 From Kaiser to Fuhrer: Germany 1900-1945, with all the in-depth content and analysis they need.

Access to History: From Kaiser to Fuhrer: Germany 1900-1945 for Edexcel

A "New York Times Book Review" Editors' Choice

For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "A Woman in Berlin" tells of the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

For more than two years, one book has taken over Germany's hardcover and paperback bestseller lists, reaching number one in Der Spiegel and setting off a frenzy in bookstores: "The Swarm".

Whales begin sinking ships. Toxic, eyeless crabs poison Long Island's water supply. The North Sea shelf collapses, killing thousands in Europe. Around the world, countries are beginning to feel the effects of the ocean's revenge as the seas and their inhabi-tants begin a violent revolution against mankind. In this riveting novel, full of twists, turns, and cliffhangers, a team of scientists discovers a strange, intelligent life force called the Yrr that takes form in marine animals, using them to wreak havoc on humanity for our ecological abuses. Soon a struggle between good and evil is in full swing, with both human and suboceanic forces battling for control of the waters. At stake is the survival of the Earth's fragile ecology -- and ultimately, the survival of the human race itself.

The apocalyptic catastrophes of "The Day After Tomorrow" meet the watery menace of "The Abyss" in this gripping, scientifically realistic, and utterly imaginative thriller. With 1.5 million copies sold in Germany -- where it has been on the bestseller list without fail since its debut -- and the author's skillfully executed blend of compelling story, vivid characters, and eerie locales, Frank Schatzing's The Swarm will keep you in tense anticipation until the last suspenseful page is turned.
(front flap)

The Swarm

A major new series from the makers of "A History of the World in 100 Objects," exploring the fascinating and complex history of Germany from the origins of the Holy Roman Empire right up to the present day. Written and presented by Neil MacGregor, it is produced by BBC Radio 4, in partnership with the British Museum.

Whilst Germany s past is too often seen through the prism of the two World Wars, this series investigates a wider six hundred-year-old history of the nation through its objects. It examines the key moments that have defined Germany s past its great, world-changing achievements and its devastating tragedies and it explores the profound influence that Germany s history, culture, and inventiveness have had across Europe.

The objects featured in the radio series range from large sculptures to small individual artifacts and items that are prosaic, iconic, and symbolic. Each has a story to tell and a memory to invoke."

Germany: Memories of a Nation

This shattering memoir by a journalist about his father’s attempt to survive the aftermath of Auschwitz in a small industrial town in Sweden won the prestigious August Prize
On August 2, 1947 a young man gets off a train in a small Swedish town to begin his life anew. Having endured the ghetto of Lodz, the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the slave camps and transports during the final months of Nazi Germany, his final challenge is to survive the survival. 

In this intelligent and deeply moving book, Göran Rosenberg returns to his own childhood to tell the story of his father: walking at his side, holding his hand, trying to get close to him. It is also the story of the chasm between the world of the child, permeated by the optimism, progress, and collective oblivion of postwar Sweden, and the world of the father, darkened by the long shadows of the past.

A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz

The changes that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 were particularly dramatic for East Germans. With the German Democratic Republic effectively taken over by West Germany in the reunification process, nothing in their lives was immune from change and upheaval: from the way they voted, the newspapers they read, to the brand of butter they bought.

But what was it really like to go from living under communism one minute, to capitalism the next? What did the East Germans make of capitalism? And how do they remember the GDR today? Are their memories dominated by fear and loathing of the Stasi state, or do they look back with a measure of fondness and regret on a world of guaranteed employment and a relatively low cost of living? 

This is the story of eight citizens of the former German Democratic Republic, and how these dramatic changes affected them. All of the people in the book were born in East Germany after the Berlin Wall was put up in August 1961, so they knew nothing other than living in a socialist system when the GDR fell apart. Their stories provide a fascinating insight not only into everyday life in East Germany, but about how this now-vanished state is remembered today, a quarter of a century after the fall of the Wall.


Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall

"Dissonant Lives" is not a standard 'history of Germany' in the twentieth century, or even of the German dictatorships. It is concerned with the ways in which Germans of different ages and life stages lived through this terrible period in German history, and how they interpreted, confronted, and responded to the multiple challenges of their times.

In volume two, Mary Fulbrook explores the move from the Nazi dictatorship to the communism that succeeded it, examining the experiences and perceptions of selected individuals, and how major historical events affected the course of their lives and their outlooks. In doing so, she provides a new understanding of the ways in which not only the character of the German state, economy, and social structure changed over the century, but also the very character of the German people themselves.


Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence Through the German Dictatorships

It's irrational.

You know that, you’ve checked the statistics. Flying is safer than driving — nineteen times safer.

You also know that should something happen, seat 7A, according to the numbers, is the worst place to be sitting.

But here you are, in seat 7A, buckled up for take off, unable to shake off the feeling of dread, the feeling that something is about to go very wrong.

Irrational, perhaps.

But you're not wrong.

Seat 7A

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, more than a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived among their defeated persecutors in the chaotic society of Allied-occupied Germany. "Jews, Germans, and Allies" draws upon the wealth of diary and memoir literature by the people who lived through postwar reconstruction to trace the conflicting ways Jews and Germans defined their own victimization and survival, comprehended the trauma of war and genocide, and struggled to rebuild their lives.


 In gripping and unforgettable detail, Atina Grossmann describes Berlin in the days following Germany's surrender--the mass rape of German women by the Red Army, the liberated slave laborers and homecoming soldiers, returning political exiles, Jews emerging from hiding, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the East. She chronicles the hunger, disease, and homelessness, the fraternization with Allied occupiers, and the complexities of navigating a world where the commonplace mingled with the horrific. Grossmann untangles the stories of Jewish survivors inside and outside the displaced-persons camps of the American zone as they built families and reconstructed identities while awaiting emigration to Palestine or the United States. She examines how Germans and Jews interacted and competed for Allied favor, benefits, and victim status, and how they sought to restore normality--in work, in their relationships, and in their everyday encounters.



"Jews, Germans, and Allies" shows how Jews were integral participants in postwar Germany and bridges the divide that still exists today between German history and Jewish studies.

Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany

This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. "Hitler's Willing Executioners" provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. 

Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival material, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units to the camps to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion.

""Hitler's Willing Executioners" is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books

"The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer

Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

The year is 1929, and Melbourne is in the grip of an exhausting heatwave. But for elegant and irrepressible private investigator Phryne Fisher, the temperature is the least of her worries. She finds herself simultaneously investigating the apparent suicide of a man on St Kilda beach, and trying to find a lost child.

Murder on a Midsummer Night (Phryne Fisher, #17)

One of the great contemporary European writers takes on Europe's biggest issue.

Richard has spent his life as a university professor, immersed in the world of books and ideas, but now he is retired, his books remain in their packing boxes and he steps into the streets of his city, Berlin. Here, on Alexanderplatz, he discovers a new community -- a tent city, established by African asylum seekers. Hesitantly, getting to know the new arrivals, Richard finds his life changing, as he begins to question his own sense of belonging in a city that once divided its citizens into them and us.

At once a passionate contribution to the debate on race, privilege and nationality and a beautifully written examination of an ageing man's quest to find meaning in his life, "Go, Went, Gone" showcases one of the great contemporary European writers at the height of her powers.

Go, Went, Gone

Written in 1939, first published in 1942, a national bestseller and a 1943 BOMC Main Selection, The Seventh Cross presented a still doubtful, naive America a first-hand account of life in Hitler's Germany and of the horrors of the concentration camps. Seven men attempt an escape from Westhofen; the camp commander erects seven crosses, one for each. Only one, the young communist, Heisler, survives, not by cunning or superior skill, but through the complicity of a web of common citizens unwilling to bow to the Gestapo and forced to make decisions that will determine the character of their future lives.

The Seventh Cross

In a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marid Audrian has kept his independence the hard way. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he’s available…for a price.

For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the Arab ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audrian has been made an offer he can’t refuse.

The 200-year-old “godfather” of the Budayeen’s underworld has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to confront a killer who carries the power of every psychopath since the beginning of time.

Wry, savage, and unignorable, "When Gravity Fails" was hailed as a classic by Effinger’s fellow SF writers on its original publication in 1987, and the sequence of “Marid Audrian” novels it begins were the culmination of his career.

When Gravity Fails

This riveting, "New York Times" bestselling biography illuminates the life of Otto von Bismarck, the statesman who unified Germany but who also embodied everything brutal and ruthless about Prussian culture. 
Jonathan Steinberg draws heavily on contemporary writings, allowing Bismarck's friends and foes to tell the story. What rises from these pages is a complex giant of a man: a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox, a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears, a convert to an extreme form of evangelical Protestantism who secularized schools and introduced civil divorce. Bismarck may have been in sheer ability the most intelligent man to direct a great state in modern times. His brilliance and insight dazzled his contemporaries. But all agreed there was also something demonic, diabolical, overwhelming, beyond human attributes, in Bismarck's personality. He was a kind of malign genius who, behind the various postures, concealed an ice-cold contempt for his fellow human beings and a drive to control and rule them. As one contemporary noted: -the Bismarck regime was a constant orgy of scorn and abuse of mankind, collectively and individually.- 
In this comprehensive and expansive biography--a brilliant study in power--Jonathan Steinberg brings Bismarck to life, revealing the stark contrast between the -Iron Chancellor's- unmatched political skills and his profoundly flawed human character.

Bismarck: A Life

When Tiro, the confidential secretary (and slave) of a Roman senator, opens the door to a terrified stranger on a cold November morning, he sets in motion a chain of events that will eventually propel his master into one of the most suspenseful courtroom dramas in history. The stranger is a Sicilian, a victim of the island's corrupt Roman governor, Verres. The senator is Marcus Cicero—an ambitious young lawyer and spellbinding orator, who at the age of twenty-seven is determined to attain "imperium"—supreme power in the state. 

Of all the great figures of the Roman world, none was more fascinating or charismatic than Cicero. And Tiro—the inventor of shorthand and author of numerous books, including a celebrated biography of his master (which was lost in the Dark Ages)—was always by his side. 

Compellingly written in Tiro's voice, "Imperium" is the re-creation of his vanished masterpiece, recounting in vivid detail the story of Cicero's quest for glory, competing with some of the most powerful and intimidating figures of his—or any other—age: Pompey, Caesar, Crassus, and the many other powerful Romans who changed history. 

Robert Harris, the world's master of innovative historical fiction, lures us into a violent, treacherous world of Roman politics at once exotically different from and yet startlingly similar to our own—a world of Senate intrigue and electoral corruption, special prosecutors and political adventurism—to describe how one clever, compassionate, devious, vulnerable man fought to reach the top.

Germany

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque

The Reader

Bernhard Schlink

The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann

Stones from the River (Burgdorf Cycle, #1)

Ursula Hegi

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak

Effi Briest

Theodor Fontane

Heimsuchung

Jenny Erpenbeck

Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

Hermann Hesse

The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 1: The Faust Act

Kieron Gillen

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

William L. Shirer

Those Who Save Us

Jenna Blum

March Violets (Bernie Gunther, #1)

Philip Kerr

Floating in My Mother's Palm

Ursula Hegi

German Men Sit Down to Pee and Other Insights into German Culture

Niklas Frank

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

Erik Larson

Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther #1-3)

Philip Kerr

Der geteilte Himmel

Christa Wolf

Grand Hotel Europa

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

Inside the Third Reich

Albert Speer

The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr Norris/Goodbye to Berlin

Christopher Isherwood

Berlin: The Downfall 1945

Antony Beevor

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947

Christopher Clark

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

John le Carré

When in Germany, Do as the Germans Do

Hyde Flippo

The Hangman's Daughter (The Hangman's Daughter, #1)

Oliver Pötzsch

Steppenwolf

Hermann Hesse

Saints and Villains

Denise Giardina

Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

William L. Shirer

The Coming of the Third Reich (The History of the Third Reich, #1)

Richard J. Evans

Access to History: From Kaiser to Fuhrer: Germany 1900-1945 for Edexcel

Geoff Layton

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

Marta Hillers

The Swarm

Frank Schätzing

Germany: Memories of a Nation

Neil MacGregor

A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz

Göran Rosenberg

Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall

Hester Vaizey

Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence Through the German Dictatorships

Mary Fulbrook

Seat 7A

Sebastian Fitzek

Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany

Atina Grossmann

Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

Murder on a Midsummer Night (Phryne Fisher, #17)