Why do all boats founder at a certain point? Why does everything go wrong? And why does somebody whom not a soul knows have everywhere a finger in the pie? This pet shop keeper, the guy from next door: He is everywhere and nowhere at home, lives with a golden hamster (thus almost alone), is inconspicuous like a turtle and keeps aloof from people. He only gets in touch with water on and off, then there is a lot of action: assassinations, natural disasters, und permanently there are boats foundering somewhere. Small ones, big ones, the Titanic, with all hands. And always there is our pet shop keeper involved, has above all always already been there and knows too much. A person who doesn’t think of anything evil (of course!), but is he therefore one of us? Or maybe rather God and the devil and everybody’s fate? Michael Stavaric is surfing through the centuries, back and forth, is landing in other eras and is in one phrase back in the present. He brings us news, comfort and warning: universal flux, even the stones, but also the devil never sleeps. History for Michael Stavaric consists of stories, but thousands of them – ones that you haven’t yet heard that way. This is about everything, from the very beginning... until the end, that won’t be a happy one, but neither a bitter one.

Elisa has one passion: empty apartments. The fact that she is a real estate agent presents only a limited accommodation to her infatuation, as during the day she is always busy finding people that fill up her apartments. But at night she is in her element, behind the doors that shut life out: there she feels safe. Until one apartment after the other is afflicted by an arsonist and goes up in flames. Georg, the investigating officer, is in the dark. And what is even worse, he soon catches fire himself, and is burning with love for Elisa. To make matters worse unsolved cases of murder from her childhood suddenly emerge together with Georg. Why can’t she remember anything? Would her mother know more? All sorts of things happen, and yet Elisa can’t get rid of the notion that actually nothing is happening at all. Her daily routine is the only thing that keeps her going – all too often too fast – and there is always the fear that one day she might stop breathing because she could simply have forgotten… Michael Stavarič writes two whodunits in one – and more than that: intriguingly he tells of an irresistible woman. His language is rhythmical, poetic and vibrant. Elisa, the monster, the saint. A woman whom one wishes in the end: live, damn it. Breathe!

“So, no sex, no god, no dreams” – otherwise Lu will talk about anything. She tells her parents that she’s going to kickboxing camp for two weeks. Actually, she has decided to take some time off and rents a room in a Bed and Breakfast called “Zur schönen Gegenwart” (the beautiful now). Lu is 16 and she doesn’t have a story, not a real one, not yet. But she can talk like others breathe. In the B’n’B she meets Tulpe Valentin, an old author who has written eight novels, but finished the last one years ago. She thinks she has left her life behind along with her writing. The time off that Valentin and her ill B’n’B neighbor are taking is more like waiting for the right moment to give up. “A punch hurts less if you see it coming.” But then Lu comes along and starts talking and Valentin listens and writes it all down – it’s her last novel, because she sees life right in front of her. It’s not her own, but another life is continuing.

A man and a woman. She: Pernilla Brigido, once an acclaimed theater actress, now a charmingly elegant, vivacious septuagenarian member of Vienna's society. He: Ildefons Krehmayr, known as Illo, affluent master builder, divorcee and father of a puberty-struck daughter. He's twenty years younger and has led a life with temperate passions and ambitions. Coincidence crosses their paths and so begins a ravishingly outrageous love story that Pernilla and Illo waltz through with the grace of well-trained dancers. Until one of them makes a wrong move and oversteps a boundary better left uncrossed. But when the curtain rises once again, the two star-crossed lovers have already set out on a summery roadtrip…