book shelf

Für Polina

Takis Würger · 2025

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami · 2010

Windstärke 17

Wahl, Caroline

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Mitch Albom · 2003

Case Study

Graeme Macrae Burnet · 2022

Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo

Kai Hermann, Horst Rieck, Christiane F. · 2017

Die Sieben Männer Der Evelyn Hugo

Jenkins Reid, Taylor

Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson · 2011

Ich bin Circe

Madeline Miller · 2019

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee · 2002

The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro · 1990

Hippie

Paulo Coelho · 2019

Der Vorleser

Bernhard Schlink · 2001

Der große Sommer: Roman

Ewald Arenz · 2021

Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel

Bonnie Garmus · 2022

Vom Ende der Einsamkeit

Benedict Wells · 2016

Spinner

Benedict Wells · 2016

Rare Book

Veronika beschließt zu sterben

Paulo Coelho · 2021

Elf Minuten

Paulo Coelho · 2016

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman · 2019

<p><b>SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL.</b><br> <br> <b>Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation.</b><br> <br> Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?<br> <br> Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner.<br> <br> Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.<br> <br> <b>WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE <i>WATER CURE</i><br> <br> **<i>Orlanda</i>, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**</b></p>

Just Kids

Patti Smith · 2010

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-Second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max’s Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous, the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years. Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.

Daisy Jones & The Six: A Novel

Taylor Jenkins Reid · 2020

<b>#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup—from the author of <i>The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, </i>and <i>Carrie Soto Is Back</i><br><br><b>REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NOW AN EMMY AWARD–NOMINATED ORIGINAL STREAMING SERIES EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY REESE WITHERSPOON</b><br>  <br>“An explosive, dynamite, down-and-dirty look at a fictional rock band told in an interview style that gives it irresistible surface energy.”—Elin Hilderbrand<br><br>ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, <i>The Washington Post, Esquire, Glamour, Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire, Parade, Paste, Shelf Awareness, BookRiot<br></i></b><br> <i>Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.<br><br></i>Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.<br><br> Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.<br><br> Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.<br><br> The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with <i>Daisy Jones & The Six, </i>brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.

The Bell Jar (Modern Classics)

Sylvia Plath · 2005

<p><i>The Bell Jar</i> chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made <i>The Bell Jar</i> a haunting American classic.</p> <p>This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.</p>

22 Bahnen

Caroline Wahl

Tildas Tage sind strikt durchgetaktet: studieren, an der Supermarktkasse sitzen, sich um ihre kleine Schwester Ida kümmern – und an schlechten Tagen auch um die Mutter. Zu dritt wohnen sie im traurigsten Haus der Fröhlichstraße in einer Kleinstadt, die Tilda hasst. Ihre Freunde sind längst weg, leben in Amsterdam oder Berlin, nur Tilda ist geblieben. Denn irgendjemand muss für Ida da sein, Geld verdienen, die Verantwortung tragen. Nennenswerte Väter gibt es keine, die Mutter ist alkoholabhängig. Eines Tages aber geraten die Dinge in Bewegung: Tilda bekommt eine Promotion in Berlin in Aussicht gestellt, und es blitzt eine Zukunft auf, die Freiheit verspricht. Und Viktor taucht auf, der große Bruder von Ivan, mit dem Tilda früher befreundet war. Viktor, der – genau wie sie – immer 22 Bahnen schwimmt. Doch als Tilda schon beinahe glaubt, es könnte alles gut werden, gerät die Situation zu Hause vollends außer Kontrolle.<br/>›22 Bahnen‹ ist eine raue und gleichzeitig zärtliche Geschichte über die Verheerungen des Familienlebens und darüber, wie das Glück zu finden ist zwischen Verantwortung und Freiheit.

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro · 2006

<b>NOBEL PRIZE WINNER <b>•</b> From the acclaimed, bestselling author of <i>The Remains of the Day</i> comes “a Gothic tour de force" (<i>The New York Times</i>) with an extraordinary twist—a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic.<br><br>One of <i>The New York Times</i>’s 10 Best Books of the 21st Century • A <i>Kirkus Reviews </i>Best Fiction Book of the Century • A <i>Los Angeles Times</i> Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 Years</b><br><br>As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. <br><br>Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

The Silent Patient

Alex Michaelides · 2021

<p><b>**THE INSTANT #1 <i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>BESTSELLER**</b><br><br>"An unforgettable—and Hollywood-bound—new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy."<br><b>—<i>Entertainment Weekly</i></b><br><br><b><i>The Silent Patient</i> is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.</b><br><br>Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.<br><br>Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.<br><br>Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....</p>

They Both Die at the End

Adam Silvera · 2018

Adam Silvera reminds us that there’s no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable day.<br/>#1 New York Times bestseller * four starred reviews * A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year * A Kirkus Best Book of the Year * A Booklist Editors' Choice * A Bustle Best YA Novel * A Paste Magazine Best YA Book * A Book Riot Best Queer Book * A BuzzFeed Best YA Book of the Year * A BookPage Best YA Book of the Year<br/>On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today.<br/>Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day.<br/>In the tradition of Before I Fall and If I Stay, They Both Die at the End is a tour de force from acclaimed author Adam Silvera, whose debut, More Happy Than Not, the New York Times called “profound.”<br/>Featuring a map of the novel’s characters and their connections, an exclusive essay by the author, and a behind-the-scenes look at the early outlines for this critically acclaimed bestseller.<br/>Plus don't miss The First to Die at the End: #1 New York Times bestselling author Adam Silvera returns to the universe of international phenomenon They Both Die at the End in this prequel. New star-crossed lovers are put to the test on the first day of Death-Cast’s fateful calls.

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak · 2007

<b>#1 <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER • ONE OF <i>TIME</i> MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME <b>• A <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> READER TOP 100 PICK FOR BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • A <i>KIRKUS REVIEWS</i> BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK OF THE CENTURY</b><br><br>The extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times.</b><br><br><i>When Death has a story to tell, you listen.</i><br><br>It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.<br><br>Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. <br><br>In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of <i>I Am the Messenger,</i> has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.<br><br>“The kind of book that can be life-changing.” —<i>The New York Times</i><br><br>“Deserves a place on the same shelf with <i>The Diary of a Young Girl </i>by Anne Frank.” —<i>USA Today</i><br><br><b>DON’T MISS <i>BRIDGE OF CLAY</i>, MARKUS ZUSAK’S FIRST NOVEL SINCE <i>THE BOOK THIEF.</i></b>

Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Coco Mellors · 2022

The smash National bestseller and Goodreads Choice Award finalist--perfect for readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends. An addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple’s impulsive marriage.<br/><br/>Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank’s life is full of all the excesses Cleo’s lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could’ve predicted.<br/><br/>Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it’s Cleo’s best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo’s marriage, or Frank’s financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.<br/><br/>As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara · 2016

<b><i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (<i>NPR</i>) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.<br></b><br><b><b><b><b><b><b><b>NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST <b><b><b>•</b></b></b></b> MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST <b>• <b><b><b><b><b> WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE</b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b><br><br><i>A Little Life</i> follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Stephen Chbosky · 2012

“A timeless story for every young person who needs to understand that they are not alone.” —Judy Blume<br/><br/>“Once in a while, a novel comes along that becomes a generational touchstone. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of those books.” —R. J. Palacio, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wonder<br/><br/>This #1 New York Times bestselling coming-of-age story with millions of copies in print takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory.<br/><br/>The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.<br/><br/>A #1 New York Times bestseller for more than a year, adapted into a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson (and written and directed by the author), and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (2000) and Best Book for Reluctant Readers (2000), this novel for teen readers (or wallflowers of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life.

Everything Is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer · 2005

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison · 1995

The Princess of 72nd Street

Elaine Kraf · 1979

The Song of Achilles: A Novel

Madeline Miller · 2012

A New York Times Bestseller<br/>“At once a scholar’s homage to The Iliad and startlingly original work of art….A book I could not put down.” —Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House<br/>A thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War from the bestselling author of Circe<br/>A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.<br/>“A captivating retelling of The Iliad and events leading up to it through the point of view of Patroclus: it’s a hard book to put down, and any classicist will be enthralled by her characterisation of the goddess Thetis, which carries the true savagery and chill of antiquity.” — Donna Tartt, The Times

Tausend strahlende Sonnen

Khaled Hosseini · 2015

Blue Sisters

Coco Mellors · 2025

The three Blue sisters are exceptionaland exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in. But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets theyve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves. Imbued with Coco Mellorss signature combination of humor and heart, Blue Sisters is a story of what it takes to keep living after lossand, ultimately, to fall in love with life again.[Bokinfo].

Alte Sorten Roman

Ewald Arenz · 2020

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov · 1989

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in <b>Lolita</b>, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. <b>Lolita</b> is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

The Woman Destroyed

Simone De Beauvoir · 1987

Good Girl: A Novel

Aria Aber · 2025

Little Woman

Louisa May Alcott · 2018

Im Wasser sind wir schwerelos

Tomasz Jedrowski · 2022

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai · 1973

<p> Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. </p><p>Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.</p><p>Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: "The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing." (The Japan Times)</p>

The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka · 2009

"The Metamorphosis" (original German title: "Die Verwandlung") is a short novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into an insect.

The Queens Gambit

WALTER TEVIS · 2022

Ein eigenes Haus

Deborah Levy · 2021

The Stranger

Albert Camus · 1989

With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The Stranger—Camus's masterpiece—gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward.<br/><br/>Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life.<br/><br/>“The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.” —from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie<br/><br/>First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation: A Novel

Ottessa Moshfegh · 2019

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible A New York Times Bestseller • New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound.” — Entertainment Weekly “Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh’s] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.” —Vogue From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes. Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.