Foreign Rights Catalogue

4 Historical fiction Detective fiction
Tanja Kinkel
The Nightingale’s Game
928 pages, 3-426-19818-6
November 2011
Knaur.
100.000
copies sold
Jenseits von
Feuerland
Roman
Carla Federico
Beyond Tierra del Fuego
800 pages, 3-426-50440-5
May 2011
Carla Federico
In the Shadow of the
Fire Bush
760 pages, 3-426-50852-7
April 2012
Tanja Kinkel’s books have been translated into more than a dozen languages to date. Her
novels have settings as varied as the founding of Rome and America in the 21 st century.
Historical novel of the Middle Ages about the famous
Walther von der Vogelweide
A great singer, a spy, a rogue with brains, courage, and heart: in the late 12 th century, a boy
from a dirt-poor background begins his unstoppable rise to become a celebrated troubadour
whom the influential rulers fight over, despite the fact (or perhaps because of of the fact) that
his lyrics break with the usual chaste tradition. What none of his patrons suspect: Walther
von der Vogelweide serves only one master, namely himself. He expertly gathers information,
manipulates and schemes. But a secretive adversary has been getting in his way more and
more, a woman who is as beautiful as she is dangerously clever …
Walther von der Vogelweide has been the subject of about 100 biographies and perhaps 400
volumes of verse, but no novel has successfully captured this remarkable character until now.
Carla Federico is a young Austrian author who now lives in Germany and works as a TV reporter.
Her great passion for travel took her to many different countries before she »stuck
around« for a longer stay in Chile, the country where her novel takes place.
A novel with two complex female heroines
Emilia, daughter of German immigrants, was raised in Chile. When she discovers a dark family
secret, her life is turned upside down, and she flees the country. She’s strong-willed and
inventive, and starts a new life in a foreign land. She thinks she’s happiest when she deadens
all emotions. But in stormy Patagonia she meets Arthur, a German and the great love of her
life.
Emilia’s loyal companion is Rita, who is half-white, half-Mapuche. When there’s violence between
that indigenous people and the Chileans, Rita loses her whole family in traumatic circumstances.
From then on Rita denies her heritage, and does everything to be regarded as
Chilean, but she pays dearly for it. Finally she confronts her past and her true identity and
finds her calling by helping to protect the culture of her ancestors.
Love story set in exotic Chile, follow-up to 200,000-copy sellers
Aurelia has grown up in Patagonia and led a sheltered life. While her three younger brothers
are busy working on the family sheep farm, Aurelia’s love is for drawing. She’s accepted at
the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Santiago, but before she can lose herself in her art she finds love
in the form of the banker’s son Tiago, who woos her, marries her, and enables her ascent into
the Chilean upper class. But she’s deeply uneasy about being part Mapuche. She keeps it
secret from her in-laws, not so much because she’s ashamed of it, but because it would keep
her from the life of luxury that she’s been seduced by. Her friend Victoria accompanies her to
Santiago – she’s more of a rebel who has embraced the cause of women’s rights and doesn’t
mind making enemies. She finds love there too, but it lets her down …
Knaur.
200.000
copies sold
Im Land
der Feuerblume
Roman
Carla Federico
In the Land of the Fire Bush
784 pages, 3-426-50439-1
June 2010
Knaur.
100.000
copies sold
Jenseits von
Feuerland
Roman
Carla Federico
Beyond Tierra del Fuego
800 pages, 3-426-50440-5
May 2011
Petra Busch, born 1967, is a copywriter and journalist who works for clients in the scientific,
technological, and cultural fields.
Friedrich-Glauser-Preis 2010 for the best thriller debut!
Japanese rights sold to Tokyo Sogensha
Mystery: Old secrets and superstitions and a village’s collective guilt
A village in the Black Forest in southwestern Germany is a seemingly idyllic setting. Until a
pregnant woman named Elisabeth is found dead in a nearby gorge. Detective Ehrlinspiel
moves into the only guest rooms in the village, and takes the case.
There are plenty of suspects: Elisabeth’s autistic brother Bruno, her older brother Heiner, her
mother, and her father, who seems to have had more than just fatherly feelings toward Elisabeth.
There’s also a jealous pregnant woman named Sina who was Elisabeth’s best friend
and her only heir …
A friend of Elisabeth’s is found murdered, along with the remains of Elisabeth’s baby, which
had been cut out of her belly as she lay dead. And then the detective finds out that all of the
villagers journey to the gorge every year at the first snowfall …
Petra Busch’s debut novel Hush, My Child was the surprise hit of 2010. It was published with
a modest print run of 6,500 copies, but word-of-mouth made it a hit and Knaur has had to
print 20,000 more and counting to meet demand.
Psychological mystery: A follow-up to the surprise hit of 2010
Miriam has given up her life savings, her job as a teacher, and her nice apartment, but she’s
happy: her mother Thea, who was in a coma for years, is not dead, but has returned to live
with her in her tiny new apartment. The mother can’t remember the daughter, but Miriam
firmly believes that she will be fully healthy again and will stay with her forever. That’s what
the voices she hears are telling her, the voices that she trusts unconditionally. And that’s why
she can’t permit her mother to begin making new contacts in the area. She has to repel the
intruders who want to take Thea away from her.
What Miriam’s schizophrenic delusions don’t let her see: her mother is dead, and Thea isn’t
her mother, but a woman who’s fleeing an abusive husband. Her real name is Sonja Paschek,
and she has opportunistically used her putative amnesia to find a secure spot with Miriam.
So both women are victim and perpetrator in one.
Judith Merchant’s short story »Monopoly« was nominated for the Kärnten Mystery Prize in
2008, born 1976, and this same story won the Friedrich Glauser Award in 2009. In 2011 she
was awarded the Glauser Award for another short thriller. This novel is the author’s first.
The suspenseful start to a new series
Jan Seidel’s wedding was called off, and the 30-year-old chief inspector is temporarily rooming
with his grandmother, a sprightly and extremely stubborn old lady. So he immerses himself
in work, namely investigating the case of a woman’s corpse that was found mutilated in
a cave below Dragon’s Rock, near Bonn. His colleague Elena Vogt is not particularly helpful
when it comes to his investigation, and worse still, his grandmother decides to make some
investigations of her own. Meanwhile, we meet two teenagers – the mother of one turns out
to be the murder victim, and the other one’s mother has gone missing. Then there’s more
trouble for Seidel when the teens go missing as well …
5
Petra Busch
Kriminalroman
50.000
copies sold
Petra Busch
Hush, my Child
448 pages, 3-426-50557-1
September 2010
Petra Busch
You’ll be Mine Forever
448 pages, 3-426-50792-7
October 2011
50.000
copies sold
Judith Merchant
Murder on Dragon’s Rock
384 pages, 3-426-50863-X
May 2011