Hero Gabriel Allon is a restorer of paintings and frescoes and also a reluctant member of Israeli intelligence. Action and suspense abound in this serious fiction with a serious purpose.

Vienna, 1903. Two men are found beheaded on church grounds, on opposite sides of the city. Reinhardt is baffled. Liebermann is drawn into an urban underworld that hosts and hides virulent racists on one side, and followers of kabbalah on the other.

While hunting for a serial murderer who has been targeting prostitutes in Vienna, Detective Oskar Reinhardt and young psychoanalyst Max Liebermann receive a tip from a patient who relays disturbing dreams.

"An avid member of the Hitler Youth in 1940s Vienna, Johannes Betzler discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa behind a false wall in their home. His initial horror turns to interest--then love and obsession. After his parents disappear, Johannes is the only one aware of Elsa's existence in the house and the only one responsible for her survival. By turns disturbing and blackly comic, haunting and cleverly satirical, Christine Leunens's...

In fin-se-siecle Vienna, Minna Bernays, an overeducated lady's companion with a sharp, wry wit, is abruptly fired, yet again. Out on the street and out of options, she turns to her sister, Martha, for help. Martha has her own problems with six young children and an absent, disinterested husband -- the struggling and controversial professor Sigmund Freud. But while Martha is shocked and repulsed by her husband's "pornographic" work, Minna is fascinated....

Decades after his favorite author confesses that he considered spying for the enemy during the Cold War, former journalist Bill Cage follows a trail of literary bread crumbs through Vienna, Prague, and Budapest to discover links between the author, a beautiful woman, and the CIA.