A marriage of mystery fiction and queer concerns, queer crime literature celebrates the pairing of the political and the sexual. Queer crime fiction is a subgenre in which sex, gender and sexuality are among the mysteries to be solved. Its writers use boundary-crossing identities and desires to express social critique, inviting readers to interpret queer narratives as literary incursions into cultural traditions. From androgynous investigators and serial killer housewives to closeted lesbians and transgendered lovers, the characters in queer mysteries are metaphors for changing social and political relations. This book reads German-language crime stories as allegories about 20th- and 21st-century upheavals, raising questions about human behaviour and justice, the horrors of extremism, the changing shape of the nation, and the possibilities of democracy. Anchored in the historical contexts of protest cultures and countercultures of the last three decades, this study examines novels by popular feminist writers Pieke Biermann, Edith Kneifl and Ingrid Noll, and unexplored works by Susanne Billig, Gabriele Gelien, Corinna Kawaters, Katrin Kremmler, Christine Lehmann and Martina-Marie Liertz. An analysis of recent debates through the lens of genre fiction serves as the foundation for telling the cultural history of contemporary Germany, Austria and Europe as a whole from a new perspective.

The first scholarly collection in English or German to fully address the treatment of gender and sexuality in the productions of DEFA across genres and in social, political, and cultural context. The cinema of the German Democratic Republic, that is, the cinema of its state-run studio DEFA, portrayed gender and sexuality in complex and contradictory ways. In doing so, it reflected the contradictions in GDR society in respect to such questions. This is the first scholarly collection in English or German to fully address the treatment of gender and sexuality in the productions of DEFA across genres (from shorts and feature films to educational videos, television productions, and documentaries) and in light of social, political, and cultural contexts. It is also unique in its investigation of previously unresearched subjects, including films and directors that have received little scholarly attention and nonconformist representations of gender and sexual embodiments, identifications, and practices. The volume presents the work of leading scholars on the GDR and allows students and scholars to examine East German film with respect to the acceptance, rejection, or nuanced negotiation of ideas of proper male and female behavior espoused by the country's brand of socialism. Contributors: Muriel Cormican, Jennifer L. Creech, Heidi Denzel de Tirado, Kyle Frackman, Sebastian Heiduschke, Sonja E. Klocke, John Lessard, Larson Powell, Victoria I. Rizo Lenshyn, Reinhild Steingroever, Faye Stewart, Evan Torner, Henning Wrage. Kyle Frackman is Assistant Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of British Columbia. Faye Stewart is Associate Professor of German at Georgia State University.

New essays by leading scholars examining today's vibrant and innovative German crime fiction, along with its historical background. Although George Bernard Shaw quipped that "the Germans lack talent for two things: revolution and crime novels," there is a long tradition of German crime fiction; it simply hasn't aligned itself with international trends. Duringthe 1920s, German-language writers dispensed with the detective and focused instead on criminals, a trend that did not take hold in other countries until after 1945, by which time Germany had gone on to produce antidetective novels that were similarly ahead of their time. German crime fiction has thus always been a curious case; rather than follow the established rules of the genre, it has always been interested in examining, breaking, and ultimately rewriting those rules. This book assembles leading international scholars to examine today's German crime fiction. It features innovative scholarly work that matches the innovativeness of the genre, taking up the Regionalkrimi;crime fiction's reimagining and transforming of traditional identities; historical crime fiction that examines Germany's and Austria's conflicted twentieth-century past; and how the newly vibrant Austrian crime fiction ties in with and differentiates itself from its German counterpart. Contributors: Angelika Baier, Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, Kyle Frackman, Sascha Gerhards, Heike Henderson, Susanne C. Knittel, Anita McChesney, Traci S. O'Brien,Jon Sherman, Faye Stewart, Magdalena Waligorska. Lynn M. Kutch is Professor of German at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Todd Herzog is Professor and Head of the Department of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

New essays by leading scholars examining today's vibrant and innovative German crime fiction, along with its historical background. Although George Bernard Shaw quipped that "the Germans lack talent for two things: revolution and crime novels," there is a long tradition of German crime fiction; it simply hasn't aligned itself with international trends. Duringthe 1920s, German-language writers dispensed with the detective and focused instead on criminals, a trend that did not take hold in other countries until after 1945, by which time Germany had gone on to produce antidetective novels that were similarly ahead of their time. German crime fiction has thus always been a curious case; rather than follow the established rules of the genre, it has always been interested in examining, breaking, and ultimately rewriting those rules. This book assembles leading international scholars to examine today's German crime fiction. It features innovative scholarly work that matches the innovativeness of the genre, taking up the Regionalkrimi;crime fiction's reimagining and transforming of traditional identities; historical crime fiction that examines Germany's and Austria's conflicted twentieth-century past; and how the newly vibrant Austrian crime fiction ties in with and differentiates itself from its German counterpart. Contributors: Angelika Baier, Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, Kyle Frackman, Sascha Gerhards, Heike Henderson, Susanne C. Knittel, Anita McChesney, Traci S. O'Brien,Jon Sherman, Faye Stewart, Magdalena Waligorska. Lynn M. Kutch is Professor of German at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Todd Herzog is Professor and Head of the Department of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

Garden spiders are supposed to be helpful creatures that keep pests from harming garden plants. They should be able to create beautiful webs. Most importantly, they are to live in the garden. However, this little spider faces the uncertainty of life itself as she is the last of the spiderlings to emerge from the egg sac only to find that she has hatched in the eaves of the barn, too far from any garden for her tiny legs to travel. This little spider must find a way to survive alone in the eaves or find a garden of her own, before it is too late.