Was tun, wenn Weihnachten kurz vor der Tür steht und immer noch kein Baum im Haus ist? Oder der Wunschzettel lang ist, aber man »immer so mit dem Pfennig rechnen muss«? Und ob die Tiere draußen auch das Fest feiern können? Der Bestsellerautor Hans Fallada erinnert in seinen Erzählungen an die schönste Zeit des Jahres: »Dies Gefühl aufzuwachen und zu wissen: Heute ist wirklich Weihnachten.

Mitten in den Wirren des Dreißigjährigen Krieges hofft Mutter Courage auf gute Geschäfte: Mit einem Marketenderwagen zieht die alleinerziehende Mutter dreier Kinder verschiedenen Heeren hinterher und verkauft ihre Ware, um ihrer Familie in elenden Zeiten ein Einkommen zu sichern. Doch der Geschäftseifer hat seine Kehrseite: Mutter Courage übersieht, dass für die notleidende Bevölkerung mit dem...

In seiner Bearbeitung des Falls Galilei verschränkt Brecht den historischen Stoff mit Fragestellungen des 20. Jahrhunderts: Das Problem des Widerstands in der Diktatur wird hierin ebenso angesprochen wie die schwierige Rolle von Wissenschaftlern im Zeitalter der Weltkriege.

The best cure for blues and depression. Slava Se is the pseudonym of the Latvian author Vyacheslav Soldatenko, who writes in Russian. He is a psychologist by training and works as a plumber. He also plays the guitar, gives concerts in the theater and writes books... Thanks to his good sense of humor and the quality of his literature, his books are very popular.

In The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America’s preeminent storyteller, imagines a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor- of crystal pillars and fossil seas-where a fine dust settles on the great empty cities of a vanished, devastated civilization. Earthmen conquer Mars and then are conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of...

It’s senior year, and Maeve and her friends are practicing and strengthening their mystical powers, while Maeve’s new relationship with Roe is exhilarating. But as Roe’s rock-star dreams start to take shape, and Fiona and Lily make plans for faraway colleges, Maeve, who struggles in school, worries about life without them-will she be selling incense here in Kilbeg, Ireland, until she’s...

Darka and Kat cannot imagine their life without dancing. Olya tries to find friends at a new school and support her father after the divorce. Oleg has been suffering from headaches for many years. And Dmytro doesn't know what to say to the girl he likes. The lives of these teenagers are intricately intertwined and form strange combinations, and sometimes resemble a movie. Lost friendships,...

Poems at the turn of the era often lose their autonomy and increasingly resemble diaries. What can be found in Serhii Zhadan's new poetic diary? 50 and 1 poem, written before and after the big bang, brought together, united by a sense of language that so painfully disappears, but then inevitably returns. Stringed on the string of the voice, dependent on the sound, they, these poems, remain a...

'39 poems about the war that no one declared, the pain that no one can handle, the love that no one can refuse, and the hope that everything rests on.' Serhiy Zhadan.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the...