Mäcke Häring #4

Set against the bustling streets of old Berlin, this fourth installment of Michael Schröter's Mäcke Häring series — subtitled Türme, Keller, Hühnerställe ("Towers, Cellars, Chicken Coops") — promises another gritty Kriminaljeschichte from the German capital. The cover, rendered in warm watercolor tones, contrasts a lively upper-city scene of horse-drawn Schultheiss brewery wagons rumbling across a bridge with a shadowy, lantern-lit underworld below, where a crouching figure lurks beneath the archway. It's a beautifully layered image that captures the split world of 2015's Berlin crime storytelling at its most atmospheric.