Open Books 2024: Books by a German author, or that take place in Germany

The Open Books Reading Challenge is a year-long reading challenge for people interested in pushing the boundaries of their reading. For full details of the program, please check-out our page at: https://www.rplmn.org/books-more/discover-more/open-books-reading-challenge

This list is to help you find books that fit the 2024 category of "Books by a German author, or that take place in Germany."

Happy Reading!


Updated December 19, 2023
RPL Staff
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Germany in the world : a global history, 1500-2000
Blackbourn, David
Paper Book
With Germany in the World, award-winning historian David Blackbourn radically revises conventional narratives of German history, demonstrating the existence of a distinctly German presence in the world centuries before its unification-and revealing a national identity far more complicated than...
The neverending story
Ende, Michael.
Paper Book
From award-winning author Michael Ende, The Neverending Story is a classic tale of one boy and the book that magically comes to life Unicorns, dragons, sprites, will-o'-the-wisps- the inhabitants of an enchanted world. And into this world - through the pages of an old book...
Every man dies alone
Fallada, Hans
Paper Book
This never-before-translated masterpiece--by a heroic best-selling writer who saw his life crumble when he wouldn't join the Nazi Party--is based on a true story. It presents a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis and tells the sweeping saga of one working-class...
The Thief Lord
Funke, Cornelia Caroline.
Audiobook
Prosper and Bo are orphans on the run from their cruel aunt and uncle. The brothers decide to hide out in Venice, where they meet a mysterious thirteen-year-old who calls himself the "Thief Lord." Brilliant and charismatic, the Thief Lord leads a ring of street children who dabble in petty crimes....
Dear child
Hausmann, Romy
Paper Book
NOW A #1 NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES AND #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER "[A] tantalizingly disturbing debut...As enthralling as it is thought-provoking." -New York Times Book Review BookPage's Top 10 Mystery & Suspense of the Year Chicago Public...
The shortest history of Germany : from Julius Caesar to Angela Merkel : a retelling for our times
Hawes, J. M.
Paper Book
A country both admired and feared, Germany has been the epicenter of world events time and again: the Reformation, both World Wars, the fall of the Berlin Wall. It did not emerge as a modern nation until 1871--yet today, Germany is the world's fourth-largest economy and a standard-bearer of liberal...
The glass bead game : (Magister Ludi)
Hesse, Hermann
Ebook
The Glass Bead Game, for which Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, is the author's last and crowning achievement, the most imaginative and prophetic of all his novels. Setting the story in the distant postapocalyptic future, Hesse tells of an elite cult of intellectuals who...
When Hitler stole pink rabbit
Kerr, Judith.
Paper Book
Now a major motion picture, and based on the author's gripping real-life story, this international bestseller is perfect for Holocaust Remembrance Month. Anna is not sure who Hitler is, but she sees his face on posters all over Berlin. Then one morning, Anna and her brother awake...
Snow White must die
Neuhaus, Nele.
Paper Book
On a rainy November day police detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are summoned to a mysterious traffic accident: A woman has fallen from a pedestrian bridge onto a car driving underneath. A witness suggests that the woman was pushed. The investigation leads Pia and Oliver to a small...
Black Leviathan : the first journey into the Cloudmere
Perplies, Bernd
Paper Book
Melville's Moby Dick unfolds in a world of dragon hunters in Black Leviathan, an epic revenge fantasy from German award-winning author Bernd Perplies. Beware! A shadow will cover you, larger than that cast by any other dragon of this world. Black as the...
28 days : a novel of resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto
Safier, David
Paper Book
Inspired by true events, David Safier's 28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto is a harrowing historical YA that chronicles the brutality of the Holocaust. Warsaw, 1942. Sixteen-year old Mira smuggles food into the Ghetto to keep herself and her...
The end of loneliness
Wells, Benedict
Paper Book
From internationally bestselling author Benedict Wells, a sweeping novel of love and loss, and of the lives we never get to live "[D]azzling storytelling...The End of Loneliness is both affecting and accomplished -- and eternal." --John Irving "An...
The most dazzling girl in Berlin
Wilson, Kip
Paper Book
A fascinating historical novel about Hilde, an orphan who experiences Berlin on the cusp of World War II as she discovers her own voice and sexuality, ultimately finding a family when she gets a job at a gay cabaret, by award-winning author Kip Wilson. On her eighteenth birthday, Hilde...
Stella
Würger, Takis
Paper Book
From the internationally bestselling author of The Club comes a gripping historical novel of love and betrayal, set in wartime Berlin In 1942, Friedrich, an even-keeled but unworldly young man, arrives in Berlin from bucolic Switzerland with dreams of becoming an artist. At a life...

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