EINE ART FAMILIE de Jo Lendle

« It’s the story of a German family. My own, as it happens. » Jo Lendle

EINE ART FAMILIE
(A Kind of Family)
by Jo Lendle
Penguin Germany, August 2021

We don’t choose the times we live in nor the times that shape us. Neither did Lud and Alma. Lud, who was born in 1899, and his brother Wilhelm revere Bach and Hölderlin, and share the same unattainable ideals. Wilhelm, who joins the Nazi party early on, measures others according to its standards; Lud measures himself by them, which torments him for the rest of his life. Alma lost her parents when she was a child, and her godfather Lud – who is only a few years older than her – and his housekeeper become a kind of new family for her.
Lud is a pharmacology professor specialising in sleep and its induction, and while he spends his days at the university Alma is left home alone, unable to stop thinking about him. When he starts researching poison gas, he doesn’t tell her about it. His struggle with his lofty ideals grows ever more desperate – for he can’t get Gerhard, the man alongside whom he fought in the First World War, out of his head.
Taking us on a journey from the days of the German empire to National Socialism, the early days of the GDR and post-war West Germany, Jo Lendle’s scintillating novel is the story of a family falling apart, of guilt, of the meaning of science, and of the subtle difference between sleep, anaesthesia and death. It is the story of a German family – which just so happens to be his own.

Jo Lendle was born in 1968. After studying cultural education and animation culturelle, he joined the German Literature Institute in Leipzig, edited the literary magazine Edit and has been a visiting professor and lecturer at several universities. He was awarded the Leipzig Promotion Prize for Literature in 1997. Since January 2014 he is head of the Hanser publishing house.

HENRY de Florian Gottschick

Of a kidnapping by mistake teaching all involved in a delightful way not to run away from life, but to arrive at themselves.

HENRY
by Florian Gottschick
Penguin Germany, August 2021

Twelve-year-old Henrietta, whom everyone calls Henry, lives in Berlin’s Wilmersdorf district and is longing for adventure. When her overprotective mother leaves her brand-new BMW on the street with her daughter asleep on the back seat, a young man gets into the unlocked car and drives off. He was only going to drive it round the block, but when Henry wakes up she convinces him to drive on. Sven, his girlfriend Nadja and Henry take off on a road trip, and the exuberant, taboo-breaking trio become a close-knit team as they take a journey that will change their lives for ever.
A fast-paced, original, funny and vividly told novel by the award-winning filmmaker Florian Gottschick – the story of an accidental abduction, which teaches three young people the most important thing of all: if there’s a purpose to life, it’s living it. And it’s never too late to look for the place where you’ll find yourself.

Florian Gottschick has graduated from the Babelsberg Film Academy in 2013 with a degree in film directing. His films have been shown at more than 70 international festivals. His graduate feature « Nachthelle » (« Night Light ») was nominated for the Grimme Prize, and can be viewed online alongside his other films. His latest projects include three TV series for ARD and ZDF, as well as one of only three German Netflix Originals produced in 2020. He teaches screen acting, screenwriting and directing. HENRY is his debut novel, and he is currently working on his second book.

DIEBE DES LICHTS de Philipp Blom

The brilliant historical novel about murder, revenge, love, loyalty and betrayal, set in war-torn sixteenth-century Europe.

DIEBE DES LICHTS
(The Light-Thieves)
by Philipp Blom
Blessing/PRH Germany, October 2022

Sander has been on the run ever since 1572, when he saw his father murdered at the hands of the Spanish invaders in Flanders. He meets a master who teaches him how to paint flowers, while his brother Hugo, who hasn’t spoken a word since their parents’ death, mixes the paints for him. But Hugo is as unreliable and quick to anger as he is gentle, and when he commits a violent crime, he and Sander have to flee. They find refuge in an artist’s studio in Rome, witness the Pope’s dissipation, are caught up in the intrigues proliferating in the Neapolitan cardinal’s palace, and – both in their own special way – experience the joy of forbidden love. In the course of their adventures, Sander repeatedly finds a way out of seemingly hopeless situations …
A major new novel that vividly portrays the Renaissance and its key players, including Giordano Bruno, Caravaggio and high-ranking clerics.

Philipp Blom, born in 1970, studied philosophy, history and Judaism in Vienna and Oxford, and obtained his PhD from Oxford with a thesis on the reception of Nietzsche. He is the author of bestselling history books including « The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900–1914 » (2009) and « Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918–1938 » (2014), and has won the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Literature and the NDR Kultur Prize for Non-Fiction. DIEBE DES LICHTS is his first work of historical fiction.

IN THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT de Mary Louise Kelly

A meditation on work and parenting that focuses on the stage when your children are preparing to leave the nest. American broadcaster and journalist Mary Louise Kelly reckons with the compromises she has made – as most people have – while managing a busy life and career, and what it feels like now that the time she has left with her children at home is starting to run out.

IN THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT:
Thoughts on a Finish Line of Motherhood
by Mary Louise Kelly
Holt, late 2022
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

Can she get to her son James’s soccer game on Thursday? Nope. Mary Louise Kelly, co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered, has to be at the studio all afternoon, reporting the news. Drive carpool for Alexander next week? Not if she wants to be part of the press corps flying to Iraq with the Secretary of Defense. She has never been cavalier about these decisions. The bargain she has always made with herself is this: this time I’ll get on the plane, but next year, I’ll be there for the mom stuff.
Well, James and Alexander are now 17 and 15, and a new realization has overtaken her: in only one year, her older son will be leaving for college. The time for do-overs is over. There used to be years to make good on her promises; now, there are months, weeks, minutes.
Mary Louise Kelly is coming to grips with the reality every parent faces. Unlike your marriage or your job, childhood has a definite expiration date. You have only so many years with your kids before they leave your house to build their own lives. It’s what every parent is supposed to want, what they raise their children to do. But the effect of this on her and her husband will be immense. It is at best bittersweet, at worst, devastating. And it brings with it the enormous questions of what she did right and what she did wrong.
Mary Louise has become consumed by these thoughts. What’s she’s written is not a definitive answer – not for herself and certainly not for any other parent. But her questions, her issues, will resonate with every parent. And, yes, especially with mothers, who are judged more harshly by society and, more importantly judge themselves more harshly. What would she do if she had to decide all over again?
This is no political tract, there is no correct answer. But her thoughts as she faces the coming year will speak to anyone who has ever cared about a child. IN THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT is not a manifesto; it’s an examination that is moving, often funny, revelatory and immensely relatable.

Mary Louise Kelly has been reporting for NPR for nearly two decades and is now co-host of All Things Considered. She has also written two suspense novels, Anonymous Sources and The Bullet, and is the author of articles and essays that have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal among numerous other publications.

BRIMSTONE de Russel Hutchings

How far would you go to protect your country?
“Think: Jason Bourne meets Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meets Sicario.” – Graeme Coleman, executive producer

BRIMSTONE: A Mantra 6 Thriller
by Russel Hutchings
Big Sky (Australia), December 2021
(via Randle Editorial)

John Devereaux, an SAS Warrant Officer, is seconded to the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and handed a mission that will test him to his very core – both professionally and personally. The operationally deniable mission: infiltrate into Cambodia via parachute in the dead of night and assassinate two high-value targets, alone, and with two dozen enemy soldiers in his way. From the relentless jungles of Cambodia to the chaotic civilian-filled streets of Sydney and Bangkok, to the secretive dens of Moscow and the extravagant French Riviera, explosive SAS and ASIS action uncovers a shadowy and powerful organisation that brings us face to face with the Russian Mafia, and an assassin getting intimate. Unbeknown to Devereaux, the Director-General of the Secret Intelligence Service, Magnus Webb, is testing him for a far more important role – to head an off-the-books clandestine cell buried deep inside this secret organisation and known only as MANTRA-6. Devereaux’s mission has only just begun …
The writing is direct, engrossing and thundering along at breakneck speed, much like its lead protagonist, for fans of Chris Ryan, Andy McNab, Robert Ludlum and classic James Bond style espionage.
Despite the book not being released yet, there is already a feature film in development, with director Storm Ashwood and producers Brenden Hill (former Dreamworks – Instinct) and David Perkins (Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift) already attached.

Born in Perth, Russel Hutchings is a former SAS Warrant Officer with over 20 years of service in the Regiment. He has operated in many of the world’s troubled areas and most recently performed a role as a military advisor to a US based company operating in Afghanistan. He draws on decades of experience in the world’s most terrifying war zones, and uses his experience of collecting intelligence for national security to write an authentic and high octane trilogy, Mantra 6.