April 2024
These are the current stern bestsellers of the month
We provide you with this once a month star-Bestseller of the print editions
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The new one appears every week star with current bestsellers: We also present the books reviewed in the print edition online to you once a month.
It is somewhat surprising that so many people still buy “real” reading material despite increasing digitalization. On the other hand, it is also a good sign that so many readers still appreciate a good book. This is why you find the star-Those who order the print editions, which are published every Thursday, can now also do so online. Here are the fiction and non-fiction bestsellers from the April 2024.
“A Safe Home” by Louise Penny
That’s a sentence for the awakening spring: “Her mother was murdered on a dreary November morning on the shore of a godforsaken lake.” The siblings have returned to Three Pines to deal with the death of their mother. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir not only have to deal with this old case, but also an even older one. So to speak: spring cleaning. Louise Penny achieved a worldwide breakthrough in 2005 with her first novel, “The Village in the Red Woods.” Since then, 17 volumes of crime novels have been published, all of them successful. So there are probably good reasons to follow number 18 into the darkness despite the buzzing of bees and seas of buds. The book is available here.
“Pizza Passion” by Sven Teichmann
Sven Teichmann is the pizza chef that the men trust. Not only does he run a popular recipe channel on the Internet with his “PizzaPalace”, Teichmann is also a trained automotive mechatronics engineer. These are the people who use ultra-modern measuring devices to fine-tune the electronics and engines of our cars, and that’s how some recipes read. It’s not just mixing ingredients together, but rather “294 grams of type 405 wheat flour (ideally type 00 wheat flour with at least 12-13 percent protein), 294 grams of cold water, 2.5 grams of dry yeast or 7 grams of fresh yeast.” This is not a cookbook, but the operating instructions for the pizza mobile. The book is available here.
Haunting Adeline by HD Carlton
Given the circumstances, a trigger warning before the trigger warning. The list of toxic themes that HD Carlton prefaced her horror book “Haunting Adeline” alone deserves its own warning. If you don’t long for the literary torture chamber, you shouldn’t read any further here. According to the US author, her work contains violence, questionable sexual acts, stalking, explicit sexual representations and humiliation, child trafficking and human sacrifice. We’re ending the list here because we’re sure you’ve gotten enough of an idea why you don’t want to read this book. If so, bring your ID with you to the bookstore. This trash is only available to those aged 18 and over. The book is available here.
“Toni’s Meal Prep Kitchen” by Antonia Elena Zimmermann
An influencer who published a cookbook: That’s about as original as an influencer who gives out make-up tips. After all, almost all of Antonia Elena Zimmermann’s dishes can be prepared in under 30 minutes, so there is still enough time for facial care. And of course weight is also taken into account. Above every dish is what is guaranteed to destroy the joy of eating: the number of calories. As if that wasn’t enough, the “light” versions of ingredients are also recommended. These recipes are intended for the whole family. You then just have to explain to the children why the “low carb pizza” tastes so strange. The book is available here.
“25 Last Summers” by Stephan Schäfer
A novel with “summer” in the title, how original. This year alone, print products have already appeared with names such as “The Year Without Summer”, “Next Summer at the Lake”, “The Longest Summer of Your Life”, “You and Me and Summer” and “Summer is my Favorite Color”. The publishers’ sales ploy is predictable, as it targets the great longing of most people: that of life during the warmest three months of the year (a longing that quickly begins to melt again at 35 degrees). So we don’t know whether ex-media manager Stephan Schäfer would have had a similar success with “25 Last Winter”. But the king of seasons in the title is Joachim Gauck. He christened his memoirs, which appeared in March, “Winter in Summer – Spring in Autumn”. The book is available here.
“Stolen Women” by Leonie Schöler
There is a well-worn saying that says behind every successful man there is a strong woman. It would be more correct: Behind every successful man is the exploitation of a woman. This is at least true of many of the most famous men: Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht and Pablo Picasso. They all made use of women’s intellectual property, Brecht, for example, using that of his assistant: the writer Elisabeth Hauptmann is said to have been significantly involved in the “Threepenny Opera”. Leonie Schöler has summarized research like this in her book. So that the anger against men does not become too great, here is some small consolation: Women have also taken advantage of women. The only thing that helps is to defend yourself. The book is available here.
“The Wind Knows My Name” by Isabel Allende
In her new novel, Isabel Allende devotes herself to two fates. In 1938, the Jewish boy Samuel was sent from Austria to England on a Kindertransport in order to save him from the Nazis. In 2019, a mother wanted to flee El Salvador to the USA with her blind daughter, but the two were arrested at the border and separated from each other for months. The second story is true, Allende learned about the events through her foundation. The author has often discussed escape and migration in her books and herself fled the dictatorship in Chile to Venezuela in the early 1970s. In 1988 she immigrated to the USA. “I myself have experienced many crises in my life. And with each one we learn a little,” said the 81-year-old in an interview. The book is available here.
“Knife” by Salman Rushdie
What do you think when faced with death? Salman Rushdie knows it. He is a survivor. August 2022, Rushdie gives a lecture in New York. A 24-year-old runs onto the stage and pulls out a knife. And stabs. In the face, in the liver, in the arm. 27 seconds long. Blood everywhere. Rushdie barely survives. Since then he has been blind in his right eye. The attack is the trigger for this book, hence the title “Knife”. The result is a thoughtful and open-hearted work, a precise chronicle of the attack – and a reflection on love and courage to live. The highlight is a remarkable fictional dialogue with his Islamist-motivated attacker. An intimate look into the psyche of a fanatic. The book is available here.
Tip: You can find further book recommendations from the editorial team on our topic page.
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Transparency note: Penguin Verlag belongs to the Penguin Random House publishing group, which, like stern, is part of the Bertelsmann Group.