Archives de catégorie : London 2024 Fiction

WHISPERS d’Ayla Dade

Four elite students, four deadly secrets and a dangerous game: they can trust no one – but will they get too close to each other for their own good? – Spicy thrills and high-society vibes from this bestselling author.

WHISPERS
Die Wahrheit wird dich zerstören
(Whispers – The Truth Will Destroy You)
by Ayla Dade
Penguin, June 2024

Harvard University: instead of being conscientious, hard-working students, members of the elite fraternity Alpha Phi Omega have wild parties and set each other high-risk dares. Everyone wants to be part of the hype, and film their challenge live for the Whispers app: Noktura. But what starts as a game spins out of control when Willow, Benedict, Deepika and Jacob find Henry’s body during a team challenge at Langdell Hall. They are shocked – but relieved too: all four have a guilty secret that’s somehow linked to Henry.

Meanwhile, mysterious Noktura has her eyes and ears everywhere, and sends them an anonymous message saying that she knows that one of them is Henry’s killer. If they want her to keep quiet about their secrets they’ll have to be good kids and keep playing this pitch-black game. The four students have no other choice. As the challenges get more and more dangerous, they are driven to the brink of madness – and into each other’s arms. Are their all-consuming feelings for each other are real, or just a vile attempt to discover their secrets?

Ayla Dade spends every spare minute she has writing stories. The popular book blogger fills the pages of her New Adult novels with deep emotions and magical settings. Her readers adore her books. Her Winter Dreams series was a phenomenal success, with each instalment spending weeks in the bestseller lists, and the first book in her eagerly anticipated new Blackwell Palace series – which takes readers to the luxurious palace hotel in snowy St Moritz, a place of glamour, intrigue and a firework display of emotions – went straight to no. 3. Her latest novel, « Whispers », not only spices things up, but there’s more at stake – with risky online dares and plenty of intrigue at an elite college, as she takes her readers on a thrilling, pulse-quickening ride.

DAS HAUS KÖLLN d’Elke Becker

The women of the famous oatmeal dynasty have been fighting for more than half a century – for their lives, and for happiness.

DAS HAUS KÖLLN
(The Family Kölln Trilogy)
by Elke Becker
Heyne, 2024

Book 1: GLÄNZENDE ZEITEN (Golden Age, January 2024)

North Germany, 1886: The life of Charlotte Kölln’s husband is tragically cut short by an accident at work. There is no time for Charlotte to grieve, though, because the gristmill has to keep grinding, otherwise her family will face ruin. As a woman, Charlotte can neither get credit nor officially run the business, but she doesn’t let that stop her. When her eldest son announces that he plans to marry one of the workers, Bertha, Charlotte isn’t pleased. She is worried about her family’s status, which she wants to preserve at all costs. The two headstrong women must find a way to get along – and in the process realise that they can do anything, so long as they stick together.

Book 2: GROSSE HOFFNUNG (A New Hope, April 2024)

The sequel to the exciting family saga about the legendary oatmeal dynasty.

Northern Germany, 1912. Bertha Kölln’s new breakfast oatmeal is a huge success, and her family is working tirelessly to increase production. But then the Great War arrives in the sleepy little town near Hamburg, and the Kölln family, too, is affected. But they refuse to be broken, either by the war or by several accidents that have occurred in the mill. When Bertha’s son Peter marries the young bohemian Else Voormann, the couple don’t have it easy: Peter doesn’t understand confident, decisive Else – and Else for her part doesn’t trust her husband, who is spending far too much time with a pretty seamstress. Once again, two very different women must decide: will they fight each other, or stick together?

Elke Becker yearned for the sea and adventure, and travelled all over the world before settling down on Mallorca in 2005. The idea to write about the real-life Kölln family came to her over breakfast one day, as she was eating a bowl of the famous Kölln oatmeal; so she set off on a research trip to northern Germany, a beautiful place which has always been dear to her heart.

KAISERWALD d’Anja Jonuleit

A gripping novel about a young woman’s search for the truth behind her mother’s death that leads her deep into the sinister circles of right-wing nationalists.

KAISERWALD
The Kaiserwald Duology, Book 1
by Anja Jonuleit
Penguin, February 2024

Your mother has disappeared.’ That’s all he said, while a series of emotions crossed his face: disbelief, shock, and finally that fear. That’s what I remember most: the fear, which now haunted the world like a genie released from its bottle. St John’s Eve, 1997: 15-year-old Alise is found unconscious on the shores of Lake Kisezers in Riga. Easter 1998: Rebecca Maywald, a teacher at the German School in Riga, disappears without a trace. She leaves behind an 8-year-old daughter, who is convinced she’ll find her mother again some day. The years that follow are years of uncertainty – and then an anonymous letter changes everything. Berlin, 2023: Ex-mountain trooper Mathilda intentionally crashes her car in order to meet Falk von Prokhoff, scion of a distinguished diplomatic family. Mathilda desperately wants to break into their inner circle – but her motives are as yet unclear. Little does she suspect that she’ll end up falling in love with Falk… and so begins a dangerous game of false identities, unsolved crimes and nefarious far-right political schemes… For readers of Donna Tartt, Alena Schröder and Trude Teige.

Anja Jonuleit, born in 1965, grew up on Lake Constance and spent a few years working for the German Embassy in Rome. After a secondment at the Embassy in Damascus, she studied Italian and English at the SDI in Munich. Back on Lake Constance, she worked as a freelance translator and court interpreter before becoming a full-time writer in 2007. Her books are immensely popular and regular bestsellers. She tackles the big topics of our time with great sensitivity and insight, telling stories of dysfunctional families and relationships, toxic social structures, and threats against which it’s hard to protect ourselves and those around us. Following « Herbstvergessene », « Der Apfelsammler », « Rabenfrauen », « Das letzte Bild » and other novels, she has now written a panoramic two-book family drama (« Kaiserwald », out in Spring 2024, and « Solstice », out in Autumn 2024).

MÖCHTE DIE WITWE ANGESPROCHEN WERDEN… de Saša Stanišić

What if I’d decided differently? What if I’d done that, instead of this? What if I had defied expectations? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could give life a trial run first, before living it for real?

MÖCHTE DIE WITWE ANGESPROCHEN WERDEN, PLATZIERT SIE AUF DEM GRAB DIE GIESSKANNE MIT DEM AUSGUSS NACH VORNE
(When the Widow Is Happy to Talk, She Places the Watering Can on the Grave With the Spout Facing Forward)
by Saša Stanišić
Luchterhand Literaturverlag, May 2024

We sometimes worry that we’ve been a coward, hesitated too long – and missed out on something that would have made us a better, happier person, with better-looking and more fun pets and partners. This is what Stanišić’s new stories are about: the constant, gnawing feeling that maybe you should have taken the road less travelled, made the less obvious choice, told a lie for once. Like the cleaner, for instance, who, holding a goat’s-hair brush in their hands, finally decides to take the matter of life into their own hands too. Or like the author who travels to Heligoland for the first time, only to discover that he’s actually been there before. Or like the father who’s prepared to cheat, if that’s what it takes to finally beat his eight-year-old son at Memory…

Saša Stanišić, born in Višegrad in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1978, has lived in Germany since 1992. His novels and stories have been translated into more than 30 languages, and have won numerous awards, including the 2019 German Book Prize (for « Where You Come From ») and the 2014 Leipzig Book Fair Prize (for « Before the Feast »), as well as the Eichendorff Book Prize, Schiller Prize and Hans Fallada Prize. He lives in Hamburg.

DAS GEWICHT EINES VOGELS BEIM FLIEGEN de Dana Grigorcea

A sculptor in 1920s New York and a writer in 2020s Liguria connect over the great question of what makes true art.

DAS GEWICHT EINES VOGELS BEIM FLIEGEN
(The Weight of a Bird in Flight)
by Dana Grigorcea
Penguin, February 2024

In 1926, full of hope and longing, the ambitious young sculptor Constantin Avis moves to New York. A famous gallery owner wants to take him under his wing and facilitate his great breakthrough in this city of dreams. Constantin floats through his new life buoyed by an exciting new love affair, and the prospect of success – but threatens to lose touch with reality. How far can his art really take him? A whole century later, this is the question that Dora sets out to answer. It is early springtime on the Ligurian coast, and she is working on a novel about Constantin. She has moved here together with her son and a nanny, to find the peace that usually eludes her in her everyday life as an artist and mother. But the deeper she dives, the more her own story becomes intertwined with Constantin’s. Eventually, she realises that she can answer the sculptor’s questions only with her own life. An exceptionally charming tale of the unbreakable bond between art and life – as light as a feather, and yet so powerful that its thoughts will linger with you for a long time.

The Swiss-Romanian writer Dana Grigorcea was born in Bucharest in 1979 and has a degree in German and Dutch studies. She has won worldwide acclaim for her novels and short stories, including An Instinctive Feeling of Innocence and The Lady with the Maghrebi Dog. Her novel Those Who Never Die won the 2022 Swiss Book Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 German Book Prize. Dana Grigorcea is also the winner of the prestigious 2015 Ingeborg Bachmann/3sat Award. Her books have been translated into numerous languages.