Fiction

»Lady in her prime seeks cavalier to drive her to the nudist beach. Payment guaranteed.« – An ad in the local newspaper sets the ball rolling: Hedy von Pyritz, 88 years old, disciplined, sharp-tongued, vain. Keen mind, dry humour, at times offensive. An old lady, who usually sits in a wheelchair, causes a substantial scandal in the small town in the region of Münster, where she resides in...

Apartment clearance and tabula rasa, fire or impulse sale – what drives people to sell their things for small change via classifieds? In all seriousness, with an intention to buy, Sarah Khan met numerous people who advertised and listened carefully when they started to recount their life stories – and created literature from oral history. The outcome is a series of stories about...

Two tough sisters, a faked suicide and a text message from the grave – once more, things turn tumultuous in Konny and Kriemhild’s newest case

During the funeral of a...

Konny and Kriemhild, both over sixty, are running – rather unsuccessfully – a bed & breakfast in the countryside. One day, the idyll is disturbed by murder – and the sisters turn out to be...

Konny and Kriemhild see the most powerful man of their village kill a woman. Realising he’s been made, he intends to get rid of Kriemhild. But Kriemhild survives and decides to fake her own death...

Three strangers demolish Konny and Kriemhild’s bed & breakfast and demand that the sisters hand over the millions that the Commodore, Kriemhild’s deceased husband, owes them. Did the...

Sometimes, it just hits you and you don’t even know why. That’s when life seems nothing but chaotic, devastating and confusing. Fighting this, however, is profoundly pointless – and anything but funny. If, yet again, you’ve rushed into one of those crises at full throttle and can’t find your way out, you should take a look at The Little ABC of Survival. From »Age« to »Work«, from...

»Jimi the Polar Bear was lying in the arms of the sleeping child, his paws crossed. It was 1 very young polar pear the size of a puppy and he hardly dared to breathe so as not to wake the child. The child was dreaming that Jimi was lying in its arms and told him 1 story.«

Thus begins the short poetic story of Jimi the Polar Bear and the child Emma, told by the great Austrian poet...

A small bookshop in London’s Mayfair borough. Mrs. Annetta Robington finds herself completely absorbed in a fascinating book about penguins and has lost track of time. Just as she is about to leave the bookshop, she makes a sudden, incredible discovery: the shop owner is a penguin! The elderly gentleman denies it at first, but then admits to it: yes, he is a penguin – one of many...

A gruff Berliner and a small-town northern German with a penchant for yoga and handicrafts. Other than a mutually felt aversion, Edith Scholz and Christel Jacobi have nothing in common – and yet, the two 70-year-olds take off on an adventure that will wind up taking them all the way through Germany.

Widow Edith Scholz is convinced that »being free means being able...

Before there were devils, Earth was pure paradise. Which was nice, but also rather boring. That’s when God knew that he had to intervene. Since then, devils great and small have ensured that the inhabitants of Earth were never bored again. However, now they too many of them met an all-too-early end due to the superiority of evil. Once again, the Almighty was forced to step in. After a...

A summer month in a stately country residence in East Sussex. Sounds marvelous. When a married couple is invited by their English friends to look after the house and the dog while they go on holiday, they are overjoyed at the prospect. Swimming in Pevensey Bay, excursions with the Bluebell Express, visits to the Tate Gallery, hiking in the Downs – the two make great plans. But they have not...