Corinna Kastner

"To write a book, for me that is like an adventure, a mysterious travel to an unknown country where everything is possible and nothing is impossible and where I happen to be as surprised as my readers. Therefore, a book is very similar to life itself. Nobody knows in the first year or on the first page, where the journey will end. To try new things, to look at other people and the way of the world and to play with all those eventualities - even in real life this is a fascinating experience. As the writer of a novel, however, thanks to my imagination I have many more options. I can overcome existing borders, can look at the paranormal, the supernatural - and I can make my characters undergo the most peculiar experiences. In the realm of the mysterious, I can show them alien worlds and other times, I can give them questions to solve, about the meaning of all that is happening to them. I can make them doubt everything - to make them finally believe in something, which they would once have denied. But the path leading to that is never straight, and there are no easy explanations. On my own bookshelves a few really good stories by really good writers can already be found. But for me that is not enough. Because we have by far not all stories told, because there are so many more mixtures and variations of mystery and suspense elements, which are not yet standing on some bookshelves, but still waiting in my imagination, inside my head - and also on my hard drive..."

Born in Hameln in 1965, in Hameln, Corinna Kastner trained as a business assistant for foreign languages and correspondence. Since 1985, she has worked at the Institut f�r Journalistik und Kommunikationsforschung (Institute for journalism and communication research) in Hanover. In 1988, she was one of the founders of the Sherlock Holmes Society "Von Herder Airguns, Ltd.": Until 1992, she edited their regularly published magazine and also wrote numerous reviews and essays for it. She is married to the writer J�rg Kastner.

• PB: Emons 2012


• Movie & TV: Rights free (AVA international)

The Hidden Chamber

More and more women readers are feeling drawn to a mixture of suspense and romance combined with elements of mystery. The genre of the romantic mysterythriller is booming, and Corinna Kastner is very adept at weaving the various themes into an exciting plot. The centerpiece of her latest novel is a dark family secret that the author skillfully combines with a romantic love story and an abundance of suspense.

Viktoria unexpectedly inherits half of a villa on the Baltic coast. She does not know the person who willed it to her, just as she has never met the young man who received the other half of the house. The bequest is tied to a condition: Viktoria and Roman, her attractive coheir, must live together for two months in the old house. Her curiosity is piqued even more when she discovers that one of the rooms is locked and there is no key. Soon Viktoria is plagued by strange dreams of a young woman she has never seen before, and Roman is also acting increasingly strange. Viktoria sets out in search of answers.

• PB: Lübbe 2009


• HC: Weltbild 2011


• Movie & TV: Rights free (AVA international)

The mysterious Keys

Juta Berg wakes up in hospital and can’t remember who she is or how she came to be in Salzburg. Apparently, she was discovered wounded and unconscious in the catacombs of a cemetery. She continues to be haunted by strange nightmares in which a stranger asks for help. Juta senses that the nightmares are somehow connected to her situation. She returns to the cemetery and is intrigued to find the tomb of a man whose name seems familiar. At length she identifies the mysterious stranger of her nightmares: it is Como, her childhood friend and first love, and he seems to be in terrible danger…

• PB: Bastei Lübbe 2007

The Legacy of Ragusa
Second volume of the novel trilogy

There is a mysterious trick to the valuable pearl necklace that Nella inherits from her mother: when she looks at herself in the mirror, a stranger's face appears to mask her own. When Nella meets the antiques dealer Safet and asks him to find out more about the origin of the necklace, they trace the pearls to Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast. But then Nella starts out on a far longer journey — back to the sixteenth century into the world of Mirjana who once owned the necklace and is said to have been a witch. It is up to Nella to save Mirjana's true legacy — but she only finds out what it is and from whom she needs to protect it when it is almost too late...

• PB: Lübbe 2006


• Film & TV: Rights free (AVA international)

Eileen's Magic
First volume of the novel trilogy

Gripping entertainment with extrasensory elements for hard-boiled readers of top-notch mystery thrillers: Location: St. Malo, the northern French coast of the English Channel. This is where Daniel Blake and the blind Nathalie Vincent have come after he discovers the mysterious picture of a gravestone in the papers left by his deceased father Jack. Together, he and Nathalie follow the trail of evidence involving the unsolved, tragic death of the beautiful Eileen, who decaded earlier drowned in the sea on the night of her wedding. But the riddle of the past reaches into the present. Nathalie, who inexplicably seems to have fallen into the role of the deceased, finally reveals a horrible truth. She is compelled to admit that Daniel's whole life was based on a terrifying lie. His true identity is related to a brutal crime. An outstanding thriller of a promising author!

• Original-PB: Lübbe 2005


• HC: Weltbild 2006


• Film & TV: Rights free (AVA international)

The Princess of Stones
(together with Jörg Kastner)

A mystery casts its shadows over the death of Pierre's mother. The search for truth leads Pierre ever deeper under the earth, into the world of the stone people. Here he learns some astonishing facts about his mother and is dragged into a centuries old fight between the stone people and the stone breakers, who keep the "Stone Princess" as their prisoner. Pierre must free her to prevent the impending war. Will he be able to turn the fate of the stone world and bring about a happy end?

• HC: Ueberreuter 2002


• PB: Rowohlt 2004


• Film & TV: Rights free (AVA international)