Kai Meyer: Das Haus der Bücher und Schatten

In the organizer's words:

Bestselling author Kai Meyer creates a masterful blend of historical crime novel and bibliophile horror story

The Baltic States, shortly before the start of the First World War. Deep snow and endless forests cut a manor house off from the world. This is where the young editor Paula Engel from Leipzig travels to see the manuscript of the writer Aschenbrand. Paula and her fiancé Jonathan meet a fascinating eccentric who is the keeper of a dark mystery.

Leipzig, 1933: In the legendary Graphic Quarter, Inspector Cornelius Frey, who has been released by the Nazis, saves a girl's life. As she says goodbye, she whispers "They're all crying in the cellar without stairs". The next night, she lies murdered next to a dead policeman. On the trail of the murderer, Cornelius fights his way back into his old profession and comes across a web of occultists and conspirators, freemasons and fanatics. What was their connection to Paula and Jonathan, who disappeared without a trace in the Baltic twenty years ago?

Following the success of "Die Bibliothek im Nebel" and "Die Bücher, der Junge und die Nacht": Kai Meyer once again tells of the secrets of the Graphisches Viertel, the fog-shrouded heart of the book city of Leipzig.

Kai Meyer, born in Lübeck in 1969, has published around seventy novels, many of which have made the SPIEGEL bestseller list. Translations have appeared in thirty languages. His stories have been adapted into films, radio plays and graphic novels and have won awards at home and abroad.