It’s been a minute since the last time we shared some reading tips, but as summer is already here with a blazing heat wave, it is high time to share our favorite summer reads. What better way to escape the heat than to be sucked into a great book or podcast?

Here is a selection of good reads by our fabulous team, especially curated for you. Enjoy, stay hydrated, and maybe even pour yourself a little sip of something nice to treat yourself while reading, because why not?

Tove Jansson: The Summer Book
(Sort of Books, 2003, originally published in 1972)
“I read it every summer,” says von Bartha's Swedish-born, Copenhagen-based artist Emilia Bergmark - and she is not alone. Known best for her fantastical Moomin stories, for me, nothing quite sums up the long Nordic summer days like hollyhock flowers along the roadside and Tove Jansson's The Summer Book. Set on a small island somewhere deep in the Finnish archipelago, we are invited to live alongside Sophia, a six-year-old girl who is awakening to the understanding of her very existence, whilst her grandmother leans toward the end of hers. They discuss concepts that affect all of humankind—death, life, love, sorrow, and joy—within a timeless world created by Jansson's rich imagery and poignant wit.

Recommendation by Mamie Beth Cary

Maggie O’Farrell: Hamnet
(Tinder Press, 2021)
Maggie O‘Farrell‘s very moving story about Shakespeare‘s family in which his son Hamnet (Hamlet) plays a significant part, took me to England of the 16th Century. I actually „lived“ with this book while reading it. The countryside, the circumstances in Stratford at the time as well as the filth and brutality of London life appeared before my eyes. At times heartbreaking but impossible to stop reading!

Recommendation by Margareta von Bartha

Delia Owens: Where the Crawdads Sing
(Heyne, 2021)
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (German: Der Gesang der Flusskrebse) is a wonderful story set in the vast swamps and marshes along the coast of North Carolina in the USA. Anyone who loves nature will also love this story, as well as its protagonist. What begins as a coming-of-age novel about the sound of nature, the language of love, and the solitude of an isolated life develops into a gripping crime story. The book is also available in German and as an audiobook, as well as in a film adaptation (without guarantee).

Recommendation by Claudio Vogt

Hermann Hesse: Siddharta. Eine indische Dichtung
(Suhrkamp, originally published in 1922)
Growing up in the countryside by the River Aare, I vividly remember reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse for the first time. I felt an immediate connection to the way the novel's protagonist experiences the river. Hesse's image of the river as a metaphor for the flow of life and the idea of sitting on its banks, watching the current carry away both sorrow and joy captured exactly what I had felt during the countless days I spent there throughout the changing seasons. Simply watching the endless stream became a quiet reminder that everything passes.

Siddhartha remains one of my all-time favourite books. Every summer, when I return to the River Aare in my hometown, I find myself reading a few passages again. Each time, they resonate differently, yet they always bring me back to the same feeling of reflection, but more than that: Gratitude.

Recommendation by Silvan Koller

András Visky: Die Aussiedlung
(Suhrkamp, 2025)
The book offers a powerful portrayal of the brutality of Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist regime in Romania during the 1950s. It can be read in a single sentence—though one that spans over 400 pages!

Recommendation by Miklos von Bartha

John Boyne: The Elements
(Piper, 2025)
I recommend John Boyne's Quartet of the Four Elements: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. The Elements series follows the lives of four people whose stories are connected by a crime. The novel explores different perspectives on guilt, responsibility, and the consequences of violence in a powerful and thought-provoking way.

Recommendation by Linda Palazzo

Nastassja Martin: In the Eye of the Wild
(New York Review Books, 2021)
This book was gifted to me by a dear friend whose book recommendations never disappoint. It tells the gripping true story of the author's near-fatal encounter with a Kamchatka bear in the mountains of Siberia while conducting anthropological research in the region's remote rural communities. More than just a survival story, it is a beautifully written and thought-provoking reflection on everything that followed. The book explores the beauty and brutality of life, and the search for acceptance, meaning—or perhaps the acceptance that there may be none.

Here one of my favourite excerpts from the book which I read again from time to time: „That night, I write that we need to believe in the wild beings, in their silence, in their restraint; to believe in their watching, in the bare white walls and yellow bedclothes of this hospital room; to believe in the retreat that works upon body and soul in a nonplace that offers neutrality, indifference, and transversality. The formless takes shape, becomes clear, is redefined calmly, abruptly. Deinnervate reinnervate combine fuse graft. My body after the bear after its claws, my body bloodied, reborn of death, my body filled with life, with threads and hands, my body as a wide-open world where multiple lives meet, my body repairing itself with them, without them; my body is a revolution.“

Recommendation by Hester Koper

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
(Atlantik, originally published 1977)
Agatha Christie is often called the “Queen of Crime” and everyone knows her heroes Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Less well known is her autobiography, which takes the reader on a journey through her life full of travel and adventure. Her writing is incomparably charming and humorous, after reading it, you feel as though you've really gotten to know this brilliant mind. Highly recommended summer read!

Recommendation by Daniela Tauber

Stephan Schäfer: 25 Letzte Sommer
(Ullstein Verlag, 2024)
A book for anyone caught in the endless rush of modern life. Stephan Schäfer reminds us that a life spent chasing what’s next often keeps us from experiencing what’s right in front of us. Through this quietly philosophical and inspiring story, he invites us to slow down, reflect and reconnect with what truly gives life meaning.

Recommendation by Judith Ribbentrop

Judith Mackrell: The Unfinished Palazzo: Life, Love and Art in Venice. The Stories of Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse, and Peggy Guggenheim
(Thames & Hudson, 2017)
I suggest this book to anyone with an interest in Peggy Guggenheim — it offers a wonderful window into her notorious Venetian palazzo, its parties, and its scandals, alongside the equally colorful women who shaped its history before her. It moves at a page-turning pace while remaining rich with art history, making it perfect summer reading. Anyone with an eye for art and architecture will find the Palazzo Venier as compelling a character as the women who lived there.

Recommendation by Caroline Baumhauer

Podcast: Tatort Kunst by Deutschlandfunk
If you have a long flight or car drive ahead of you, I cannot recommend this podcast enough! In several very well-researched and elaborately produced episodes, Rahel Klein and Stefan Koldehoff investigate true-crime art cases, such as stolen or lost-and-found artworks, but also touch on several restitution cases. The amount of stubborn museums holding on to Nazi-looted artworks is insane. Unfortunately, I have not found an English equivalent yet, but I am still looking. Listen to Tatort Kunst on your audio channels or* *here

Recommendation by Hester Koper