Hidden away at Settecento, the shady 'Tsar' runs a modern-day boarding school modelled on Baroque-era music academies. Here, highly gifted boys are trained – and castrated – to enable them to sing the most spectacular roles, like the castrati of Baroque music. When Timo, a young boy with a magical voice, flees to Vienna and his mentor Matteo sets off in search of him, the music world is forced to confront reality. Matteo becomes a street singer and is both the hunter and the hunted. The Tsar is on his tracks and, in order to find Timo, he has to hold his own in the tough world of the homeless. Imbued with the sounds of Baroque opera, Daria Wilke's breathtaking story tells of a secret society that is prepared to pay any price for beauty.

In the second of his autobiographical works, Thomas Bernhard tells of the decision to remove himself from his life. Rather than continue attending school, he starts an apprenticeship in the cellar of a grocery store, on the outskirts of the detested town, in the ghetto of the have-nots and criminals. There he becomes acquainted with society's outcasts. He feels drawn to them and learns for the first time what it means to be accepted and to be 'useful'. Day-to-day life in the cellar turns out to be therapeutic. This place of limbo becomes a refuge, until a severe illness puts a sudden end to Bernhard's apprenticeship. In 'The Cellar', Lukas Kummer finds a relaxed pictorial language for the author's narrative tone. With precise strokes, Kummer accompanies Thomas Bernhard through what was probably the brightest period of his youth and throws a congenial light on the 'cellar'.

Four women at the end of a life stage – and at the beginning of a new one, in which they strike out on an unconventional path with humour and solidarity. Ella finds herself alone in her large period apartment. Finally alone? Or lonely after all? There's Rada, the Rumanian carer of her deceased husband, and Ella's sister, the colourful Maggie, who has returned after her international career. And there’s her neighbour Luise, who's been left for a younger woman. What kind of life do they want to have in their old age? What's possible? What's permitted? Will they be invisible or invincible? Fulfilled or frustrated? And most importantly – will they each live alone or all together? Their answer is brave and unconventional – and soon Ella's large apartment is full of life and heated discussions about politics, family ... and sex.

Christine Nöstlinger's new vernacular poems are profound, pithy and full of darkly humorous overtones. They tell of hopes and fears, of avarice and of dealing with old age. The work-shy "Jasmin from stairway four" is a drain on her husband's pocket, "West Street Station Rudi" observes life's little and big ladies on the station platform every day, quiet Mr Meier only reveals his secret fantasies of violence to his goldfish – is that reason to call the police? The verses gathered from Christine Nöstlinger's estate provide a nuanced look at life by focusing on the margins of society. A must for all friends of Viennese vernacular poetry and Nöstlinger fans.

What's to be done when ordinary life simply becomes too much? When your mother has to go into residential care and the family home must be cleared out and let. When everyone expects the narrator to finally look for a sensible job and start a family? When normality-induced melancholia hits, there's only one thing for it – hit back. Ideally where it’s least expected. A revolt is instigated in the care home; Jola delivers inflammatory speeches in her sequinned gown; the local youth gang of "domestic poachers" turns life in the small town upside down; a kidnapping morphs into a seaside mini-break, much to the delight of the home's residents. And then suddenly Malina appears. Malina, who’s prepared to do almost anything and sometimes oversteps the mark.

"Whatever you need, you take" Vienna in a gold rush: World War two is over, the black markets are booming, and shady characters are on their way to a new life. The brilliant first part of Rosei's cycle "Wiener Dateien" (Vienna files) span the period from corruption in postwar Vienna to the fancy homes of affluent business people in the 1980s. With artistic ease, he creates an intricate web entangling the lives of parvenus and bon vivants, professors and politicians, perfect wives and superwomen. At the center of it all are Alfred and Georg, two very different friends: One is an anarchist, the other a baby boomer. Rosei's novel is intense, enthusiastically written prose portraying a city where everything has its price and nothing is sacred…

Henriette Lauber can look back at a life full of creativity and hard work. As a film cutter she experienced different worlds while working alongside her beloved husband. But all this was long ago and now she leads a withdrawn and almost isolated life in a small flat in the center of town. Her godson from Western Sahara, a politically active man who works in Algerian refugee camps, is the sole recipient of her love and attention. Then a dizzy spell in the hallway leads her to meet Linda, her young neighbor who begins to take care of Henriette and increasingly seeks her presence… Erika Pluhar tells the story of a friendship between to very different women, describing life patterns, the process of aging, and transience.

In memory of his idol Thomas Bernhard, the internationally renowned artist Erwin Wurm has created a unique special edition. In dedication to the author, Wurm has produced a series of new drawings – affectionate, wry and very personal. "The Cause" and its consequences: in five stories between fact and fiction Thomas Bernhard laid bare how he became the author he was – from his childhood and boarding school days in Salzburg, his apprenticeship and studies, through to his isolation in a lung sanatorium at the age of eighteen. Those who want to understand Thomas Bernhard's world will find the key to it here.

Modernity’s core endeavour is to increase our personal reach, our grasp on the world. However, according to Hartmut Rosa’s controversial theory, this available world is a silent one. There is no longer a dialogue with it. Rosa counters this progressive estrangement between human and world with what he refers to as “resonance”: a reverberating, unquantifiable relationship with an unavailable world. Resonance develops when we engage with something unknown, something irritating, something that lies beyond our controlling reach. The outcome of this process can’t be planned or predicted, thus a moment of unavailability is always inherent to the occurrence of resonance.

One December evening, a bright pink long-distance bus bearing the inscription SPERANZA sets off on its journey from Vienna to Romania. The nocturnal drive brings together people who spend their life in the grey zones of Europe’s labour market. Their pay secures their family’s subsistence, their absence creates new problems. Florin hires himself out as a harvest hand to enable his mother in Bucharest to retire. Daiana cleans private homes in Vienna, even though she has a degree. Ioan, one of the drivers, recounts his first border crossing. “Autobus Ultima Speranza” finds a language for a life spent continuously on the hop, for the hopes and disappointments, the restlessness and structural violence that accompany it.