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
Unicorns, dragons, sprites, will-o'-the-wisps- the inhabitants of an enchanted world. And into this world - through the pages of an old book - ventures Bastian, a lonely boy of ten or twelve. But Fantastica is slowly decaying, its Childlike Empress dying. Only a real human being can set things right...
Every man dies alone
Fallada, Hans
Paper Book
This novel presents a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis and tells the sweeping saga of one working-class couple who decide to take a stand when their only son is killed at the front.
The Oppermanns
Feuchtwanger, Lion
Paper Book
Written in real time, as the Nazis consolidated their power over the winter of 1933, The Oppermanns captures the fall of Weimar Germany through the eyes of one bourgeois Jewish family, shocked and paralyzed by an ideology they cannot comprehend. In the foment of...
The Thief Lord
Funke, Cornelia Caroline.
Paper Book
An exciting, magical adventure set among the crumbling canals and ancient ruins of Venice, Italy. 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 character who calls himself the "Thief Lord."...
Evening in the palace of reason : Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment
Gaines, James R.
Paper Book
Johann Sebastian Bach created what may be the most celestial and profound body of music in history; Frederick the Great built the colossus we now know as Germany, and along with it a template for modern warfare. Their fleeting encounter in 1747 signals a unique moment in history where belief...
Ruby red
Gier, Kerstin.
Paper Book
Gwyneth Shepherd's sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era! Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would...
The book jumper
Gla ser, Mechthild
Paper Book
Amy Lennox doesn't know quite what to expect when she and her mother pick up and leave Germany for Scotland, heading to her mother's childhood home of Lennox House on the island of Stormsay. Amy's grandmother, Lady Mairead, insists that Amy must read while she resides at Lennox House...
Elective affinities : a novel
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Paper Book
Charlotte and Eduard, aristocrats with little to occupy them, invite Ottilie and the Captain into their lives and are overwhelmed by what ensues. Goethe conducts experiments with his characters - in such repressive circumstances is any life worthy the name possible? Elective Affinities is a highly...
The air raid killer : the first case of Max Heller, Dresden detective
Goldammer, Frank
Paper Book
As World War II ends, a killer's game begins. In the final days of the Nazi regime, with the historic city of Dresden on the brink of destruction, terrifying rumors spread about the Fright Man, a demonic killer who exploited the cover of a nighttime air raid siren to mutilate and...
The complete Grimm's fairy tales
Grimm, Jacob
Paper Book
One of the most beloved collections of fairy tales in a splendid new paperback edition. For almost 200 years, these stories of magic and myth gathered by the Brothers Grimm have been part of the way children - and adults - learn about the vagaries of the real world. Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White,...
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...
After the Wall : confessions from an East German childhood and the life that came next
Hensel, Jana.
Paper Book
Jana Hensel was thirteen on November 9, 1989, the night the Berlin Wall fell. In all the euphoria over German reunification, no one stopped to think what it would mean for Jana and her generation of East Germans. These were the kids of the seventies, who had grown up in the shadow of Communism...
The glass bead game : (Magister Ludi)
Hesse, Hermann
Paper Book
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 play...
All for nothing
Kempowski, Walter
Paper Book
A wealthy family tries--and fails--to seal themselves off from the chaos of post-World War II life surrounding them in this stunning novel by one of Germany's most important post-war writers. In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat and the Red Army is...
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...
Pirate curse
Meyer, Kai.
Paper Book
Pirates, ghosts, and terrifying creatures of the deep inhabit this swashbuckling fantasy from German author Kai Meyer.
The storyteller
Michaelis, Antonia.
Paper Book
Anna and Abel couldn't be more different. They are both seventeen and in their last year of school, but while Anna lives in a nice old town house and comes from a well-to-do family, Abel, the school drug dealer, lives in a big, prisonlike tower block at the edge of town. Anna is afraid of him...
Snow White must die
Neuhaus, Nele.
Paper Book
Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus is a tremendous new contemporary mystery series and huge international bestseller--with more than 3.5 million copies in print! On a rainy November day police detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are summoned to a mysterious...
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...
The hangman's daughter
Pötzsch, Oliver.
Paper Book
Taking us back in history to a place where autopsies were blasphemous, coffee was an exotic drink, dried toads were the recommended remedy for the plague, and the devil was as real as anything, New York Times bestselling author Oliver Pötzsch's The Hangman's Daughter is the rollicking start to an...
To die in spring
Rothmann, Ralf
Paper Book
The lunacy of the final months of World War II, as experienced by a young German soldier Distant, silent, often drunk, Walter Urban is a difficult man to have as a father. But his son--the narrator of this slim, harrowing novel--is curious about Walter's experiences during...
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 art of hearing heartbeats : a novel
Sendker, Jan-Philipp.
Paper Book
The first book in the Art of Hearing Heartbeats series, this is a passionate love story, a haunting fable, and an enchanting mystery set in Burma. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he...
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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