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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The neverending story /
Ende, Michael
Paper Book
Read the book that inspired the classic coming-of-age film before it's back onscreen in select theaters this September! From award-winning German author Michael Ende, The Neverending Story is a classic tale of one boy and the book that magically comes to life. <...
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 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."...
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...
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 glass bead game (Magister Ludi).
Hesse, Hermann,
Paper Book
The final novel of Hermann Hesse, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature Set in the 23rd century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been...
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 Dieby 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 traffic...
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
A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be ... until they find a...
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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