Andrea Maria Schenkel

She describes, in ghastly and suspenseful detail, how a small Bavarian village, called Tannöd, became the unlikely site of a horrific crime.

She also draws the pitiless portraits of a bigoted and unromantic rural society influenced by traumatic relations that finally lead to death.

The work has been published in more than 20 languages, with foreign rights sold to France (Actes Sud), Italy (Riuniti), the Netherlands (Signature), Sweden (Ersatz), Norway and Denmark.

In June 2014, Quercus published the work in the United States, which The New York Times announced in a profile of Schenkel.

It is set in Munich where female bodies keep surfacing around the city and the circumstantial evidence points to the unassuming and married Joseph Kalteis.

In June 2015, Quercus US published "Kalteis" under the title "Ice Cold," and in March 2016, Hoffman und Campe will publish her next work, "Als die Liebe endlich war" ("Where Love Ends"), which takes readers from 1930s Germany to World War II-era Shanghai to 21st-century America.