Hans-Ulrich Grimm - Vom Verzehr wird abgeraten

Wussten Sie, dass die Herzschutz-Margarine dem Herzen, und der ACE-Saft dem Embryo schaden kann? Wussten Sie, dass dem Essen zugesetztes Kalzium vielleicht einen Knochenbruch verhindert – aber ebenso vielleicht einen Herzinfarkt bewirkt? Wussten Sie, dass es in Deutschland pro Jahr mehr Vitamintote als Verkehrstote gibt? Hans-Ulrich Grimm deckt auf, was im Functional Food wirklich wirkt – und was den Konsumenten droht. Schon rechnen Versicherungen mit steigenden Krankheitskosten sowie Produkthaftungsfällen und stufen die angeblichen Gesund-Produkte aus dem Supermarkt als Risiko ein. Grimm zeigt, wie die Geschäftsstrategien der Industrie unsere Gesundheit aufs Spiel setzen. Er leuchtet die Wirklichkeit hinter der Werbefassade aus und untersucht die Methoden der Irreführung. Und Grimm recherchiert, wie Wissenschaftler aus staatlichen Instituten und den Labors der Konzerne sich verbrüdern – zum Schaden von ernährungsbewussten Verbrauchern.

Hjorth & Rosenfeldt - Die Frauen, die er kannte

Wieder wurde in Stockholm eine Frau ermordet, es ist bereits das dritte Opfer. Auch sie trug ein hellblaues Nachthemd, wurde brutal vergewaltigt, ihre Kehle aufgeschlitzt. Kommissar Höglund und seine Kollegen stehen unter großem Druck, denn die Abstände zwischen den Taten werden kürzer. Und die Handschrift deutet auf einen berüchtigten Serienmörder: Edward Hinde, manipulativ, grausam, hochintelligent. Doch Hinde sitzt seit Jahren im Hochsicherheitstrakt. Höglund bleibt nichts anderes übrig, als jenen Mann ins Team zu holen, der Hinde einst hinter Gitter brachte – Kriminalpsychologe Sebastian Bergman. Für den Kommissar und sein Team ist der arrogante Einzelgänger eine Zumutung, für Bergman wird der Fall zum Albtraum: Denn der Name des vierten Opfers ist ihm nicht unbekannt  ...

Peter Handke - Die Wiederholung

Die Wiederholung von Peter Handke handelt von einem Mann, der sich auf der Wanderung durch das Land seiner Vorfahren seiner Berufung zum Schriftsteller bewusst wird und ein Vierteljahrhundert später darüber berichtet. Das Erzählwerk ist ein äußerst kunstvoll gebauter Bildungs- und Entwicklungsroman, dessen Erzähler sein Tun ständig reflektiert.
Entstehung: Die Wiederholung ist kein autobiografischer Roman, enthält aber viele selbstbiografische Elemente, wie die starke Beziehung zum Slowenischen und zu Slowenien, die durch die Vorfahren von Handkes Mutter gegeben ist. Seine Vertrautheit mit dem Land sowie die starke Bindung an die Landschaft seiner Kindheit und Jugend bildet die Basis des Romans. Und nicht zuletzt war Handke, als er an dem Roman arbeitete, im gleichen Alter wie dessen Protagonist beim Erzählen.

Philip Pullman - The amber spyglass

Lyra lies sleeping in a cave near a rainbow, drugged into unconsciousness by her mother, Mrs Coulter, whose love for her daughter closely rivals her own ruthless ambition. Now, the latter threatens to overcome the former, as she strives to prevent the events which are dependent on the decisions Lyra is fated to make. Meanwhile, Will-scarred and traumatised after his last, fatal meeting with his father-seeks blindly for her, with only two of Lord Asriel's angels as companions on his dangerous search. The two are fated to meet once more, however, and begin their most treacherous journey. For Lyra owes a great debt, and she must repay it-she must rescue her friend from the Land of the Dead. Neither are prepared for the terrible sacrifice they must endure, or for the universal consequences of their actions. Lyra and Will must play their part in the war between the worlds and heaven...

Philip Pullman - The subtle knife

At the end of The Northern Lights, Lyra Silvertongue watched in fear and fascination as her father, Lord Asriel, created a bridge between worlds. Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, are now lost in an alternate universe where they meet Will Parry, a fugitive from a third universe. Will has found a small window between Cittagazze (a place where children roam unchecked but invisible Specters suck the spirit out of adults) and his Oxford, which, with its Burger Kings and cars, is frighteningly different from the Oxford Lyra knows.
Will's father, an explorer, disappeared years ago, but recently some odd characters have started asking questions about him, and now, having accidentally killed one of them, Will is wanted by the police. Armed with the Subtle Knife, a tool that cuts any material (including that which separates universes) and Lyra's alethiometer, the children set out to find John Parry, with adults of various stripes in desperate pursuit.
Lyra's finest qualities, her courage and quick mind, are stretched to the limit as she has to lie, cheat and steal to keep herself and Will out of danger. However, she must also learn when to tell the truth and when to trust, for, though she does not yet know it, she has a huge part to play in the upcoming battle between Good and Evil...

Andrew Sean Greer - The confessions of Max Tivoli

Out of the womb in 1871, Max Tivoli looked to all the world like a tiny 70-year-old man. But inside the aged body was an infant. Victim of a rare disease, Max grows physically younger as his mind matures. In Andrew Sean Greer's finely crafted novel, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Max narrates his life story from the vantage point of his late fifties, though his body is that of a 12-year-old boy. He has known since a young age that he is destined to die at 70, and he wears a golden "1941" as a constant reminder of the year he will finally perish in an infant form. His mother, a Carolina belle concerned over her son's troubling appearance, curses Max with "The Rule": "Be what they think you are". Max fails to keep this Rule only a handful of times in his life, but it is the burden of living by it that wounds him and slowly alienates him from the people he loves.
Over Max's narration of the preceding decades of his life, he offers outsider's snapshots of San Francisco and all of America across the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Throughout, Greer uses the literary device of reverse aging to interrogate the evolution of social conventions, the finitude of a human life and the decay of memory. Max wants love. But his curse destines him to deception. He loses his wife, Alice, changes his name and remains hidden from his own son to keep his true identity secret. Only his lifelong friend, Hughie, stands by Max and can see the person inside the anachronistic body. Like the best science fiction and myth, the novel uses its central conceit to reveal human prejudice and explode all assumptions of normalcy to profound effect.
Love is a destructive force in The Confessions of Max Tivoli. But Greer recognises that in the failure of love is also hope. He artfully captures Max's fragile world with a delicacy that never crosses into sentimentality but also avoids the monumental scale of tragedy. As Max says near the end of the novel, "It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing to waste ones life for love." A journey with Max, while brave and beautiful, is hardly a waste.

Alice Sebold - The lovely bones

On her way home from school on a snowy December day, 14-year-old Susie Salmon is lured into a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams", where "there were no teachers... We never had to go inside except for art class... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue". The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun...