In the new novel in the iconic Max Liebermann mystery series, master storyteller Frank Tallis delivers his latest suspenseful and spellbinding tale set in the smoky atmospheric world of fin de siecle Vienna.

Vienna, 1904.

The body of a man-still sitting in a chair-is discovered in an abandoned piano factory on the outskirts of the city. He has been shot dead but his face has been horribly disfigured with acid, making identification impossible. In front of the body are three chairs positioned conspicuously in a straight line. Who were the former occupants? Had they sat in judgement and pronounced a sentence of death?

Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt calls on his good friend Doctor Max Liebermann-psychiatrist and disciple of Sigmund Freud-to assist in an investigation that draws them both into the shadowy and sexually unconventional world of fringe political activism. It is a world populated by Bohemians, Utopian idealists, and anarchists, many of whom endorse acts of terror to achieve their revolutionary aims.

When bomb-making equipment is found in a suburban basement, the sinister Imperial intelligence bureau (who have been secretly monitoring Rheinhardt's investigation) make themselves known. A legendary anarchist known only by his code name-Mephistopheles-is abroad in Vienna. An appalling act of terror has been planned and time is running out. Rheinhardt must hope that Liebermann, with his profound knowledge of psychology and science, will be able to prevent the coming catastrophe.

The latest novel in the iconic Max Liebermann mystery series, Mephisto Waltz is a tale of murder, romance, intrigue, and espionage set in the atmospheric world of fin de siecle Vienna.

In Freud's dangerous, dazzling Vienna of 1903, an ingenious doctor and an intrepid detective again challenge psychotic criminals across a landscape teetering between the sophisticated and the savage, the thrilling future and the primitive past.

On opposite sides of the city, two men are found beheaded on church grounds. Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt is baffled. Could the killer be mentally ill, someone the victims came into contact with? Some are even blaming the murders on the devil. But when psychoanalyst Dr. Max Liebermann learns that both victims were vocal members of a shadowy anti-Semitic group, he turns his gaze to the city's close-knit Hasidic community. The doctor is drawn into an urban underworld that hosts and hides virulent racists on one side and followers of kabbalah on the other. And as the evidence--and bodies--pile up, Liebermann must reconsider his own path, the one that led him away from the miraculous and toward a life of the mind.

In the dynamic and dangerous Vienna of 1903, a brilliant psychoanalyst and a brave detective battle to catch criminals who commit the most clever and brutal crimes.

Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt finds that young women are being slain in an unnerving--and ingenious--manner, with a small, almost undetectable, hat pin. For Dr. Max Liebermann, the killer is unique in the annals of psychopathology, one who murders in the midst of consensual love. Is the culprit a patient, one who swears he has a double, a shadow figure that is far more forward (in fact, indecent) with women? As danger mounts, Liebermann must find the answer while struggling with his own forbidden desire for a female patient.

In 1902, elegant Vienna is the city of the new century, the center of discoveries in everything from the writing of music to the workings of the human mind. But now a brutal homicide has stunned its citizens and appears to have bridged the gap between science and the supernatural. Two very different sleuths from opposite ends of the spectrum will need to combine their talents to solve the boggling crime: Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, who is on the cutting edge of modern police work, and his friend Dr. Max Liebermann, a follower of Sigmund Freud and a pioneer on new frontiers of psychology. As a team they must use both hard evidence and intuitive analysis to solve a medium's mysterious murder-one that couldn't have been committed by anyone alive.
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THE MORTALIS DOSSIER- PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS: THE CURIOUS CASE OF PROFESSOR SIGMUND F. AND DETECTIVE FICTION
Summertime-the Austrian Alps: A middle-aged doctor, wishing
to forget medicine, turns off the beaten track and begins a strenuous
climb. When he reaches the summit, he sits and contemplates the distant
prospect. Suddenly he hears a voice.
Are you a doctor?
He is not alone. At first, he can't believe that he's being addressed.
He turns and sees a sulky-looking eighteen-year-old. He recognizes
her (she served him his meal the previous evening). Yes, he replies.
I'm a doctor. How did you know that?
She tells him that her nerves are bad, that she needs help.
S ometimes she feels like she can't breathe, and there's a hammering in
her head. And sometimes something very disturbing happens. She sees
things-including a face that fills her with horror. . . .
Well, do you want to know what happens next? I'd be surprised if
you didn't.
We have here all the ingredients of an engaging thriller: an isolated
setting, a strange meeting, and a disconcerting confession.
So where does this particular opening scene come from? A littleknown
work by one of the queens of crime fiction? A lost reel of an
early Hitchcock film, perhaps? Neither. It is in fact a faithful summary
of the first few pages of Katharina by Sigmund Freud, also known as
case study number four in his Studies on Hysteria, co-authored with Josef
Breuer and published in 1895.
It is generally agreed that the detective thriller is a nineteenthcentury
invention, perfected by the holy trinity of Collins, Poe, and
(most importantly) Conan Doyle; however, the genre would have
been quite different had it not been for the oblique influence of psychoanalysis.
The psychological thriller often pays close attention to
personal history-childhood experiences, relationships, and significant
life events-in fact, the very same things that any self-respecting
therapist would want to know about. These days it's almost impossible
to think of the term thriller without mentally inserting the prefix
psychological.
So how did this happen? How did Freud's work come to influence
the development of an entire literary genre? The answer is quite simple.
He had some help-and that help came from the American film
industry.
Now it has to be said that Freud didn't like America. After visiting
America, he wrote: I am very glad I am away from it, and even more
that I don't have to live there. He believed that American food had
given him a gastrointestinal illness, and that his short stay in America
had caused his handwriting to deteriorate. His anti-American sentiments
finally culminated with his famous remark that he considered
America to be a gigantic mistake.
Be that as it may, although Freud didn't like America, America
liked Freud. In fact, America loved him. And nowhere in America was
Freud more loved than in Hollywood.
The special relationship between the film industry and psychoanalysis
began in the 1930s, when many EmigrE analysts-fleeing
from the Nazis-settled on the West Coast. Entering analysis became
very fashionable among the studio elite, and Hollywood soon
acquired the sobriquet couch canyon. Dr. Ralph Greenson, for
example-a well-known Hollywood analyst-had a patient list that
included the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis,
and Vivien Leigh. And among the many Hollywood directors who
succumbed to Freud's influence was Alfred Hitchcock, whose thrillers
were much more psychological than any that had been filmed before.
In one of his films Freud actually makes an appearance-well, more or
less. I am thinking here of Spellbound, released in 1945, and based on
Francis Beedings's crime novel The House of Dr. Edwardes.
T he producer of Spellbound, David O. Selznick, was himself in
psychoanalysis-as were most of his family-and so enthusiastic was
he about Freud's ideas that he recruited his own analyst to help him
vet the script. Hitchcock's film has everything we expect from a psychological
thriller: a clinical setting, a murder, a man who has lost his
memory, a dream sequence, and a sinewy plot that twists and turns
toward a dramatic climax. That this film owes a large debt to psychoanalysis
is made absolutely clear when a character appears who is-in
all but name-Sigmund Freud: a wise old doctor with a beard, glasses,
and a fantastically hammy Viennese accent.
Since Hitchcock's time, authors and screenwriters have had much
fun playing with the resonances that exist between psychoanalysis and
detection. This kind of writing reached its apotheosis in 1975 with the
publication of Nicholas Meyer's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a novel in
which Freud and Sherlock Holmes are brought together to solve the
same case.
The relationship between psychoanalysis and detection was not
lost on Freud. In his Introductory Lectures, for example, there is a passage
in which he stresses how b

An engrossing portrait of a legendary period as well as a brain teaser of startling perplexity --Chicago TribuneIn Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, Max Liebermann is at the forefront of psychoanalysis, practicing the controversial new science with all the skill of a master detective. Every dream, inflection, or slip of tongue in his hysterical patients has meaning and reveals some hidden truth. When a mysterious and beautiful medium dies under extraordinary circumstances, Max's good friend, Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, calls for his expert assistance. The medium's body has been found in a room that can only be locked from the inside. Her body has been shot, but there's no gun and absolutely no trace of a bullet. On a table lies a suicide note, claiming that there is such a thing as forbidden knowledge. All signs point to a supernatural killer, but Liebermann the scientist is not so easily convinced.

Set in the Vienna of Freud, Klimt, and Mahler, a time of unprecedented activity in the worlds of philosophy, science, and art, A Death in Vienna is an elegantly written novel, taut with suspense and rich in historical details.

A chronicle of Vienna's Golden Age and the influence of Sigmund Freud on the modern world by a clinical psychologist whose mystery novels form the basis of PBS's Vienna Blood series.

Some cities are like stars. When the conditions are right, they ignite, and burn with such fierce intensity that they outshine every other city on the planet. Vienna was one such city and, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was the birthplace of the modern mind and the way we live today. Long coffee menus and celebrity interviews are Viennese inventions. 'Modern' buildings were appearing in Vienna long before they started appearing in New York and the idea of practical modern home design originated in the work of Viennese architect Adolf Loos. The place, however, where one finds the most indelible and profound impression of Viennese influence is inside your head. How we think about ourselves has been largely determined by Vienna's most celebrated resident, Sigmund Freud.

In Mortal Secrets, Frank Tallis brilliantly illuminates Sigmund Freud and his times, taking readers into the mind of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, chronicling the evolution of psychoanalysis and opening up Freud's life to embrace the Vienna he lived in and the lives of the people he mingled with from Gustav Klimt to Arnold Schönberg, Egon Schiele to Gustav Mahler. Mortal Secrets is a thrilling book about a heady time in one of the world's most beautiful cities and its long shadow that extends through the twentieth century up until the present day.

A dogged police inspector and an insightful young psychiatrist match wits with depraved criminal minds in this acclaimed mystery series set in Freud's Vienna.

In glittering turn-of-the-century Vienna, brutal instinct and refined intellect fight for supremacy. The latest, most disturbing example: the mysterious and savage death of a young cadet in the most elite of military academies, St. Florian's. Even using his cutting-edge investigative techniques, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt cannot crack the school's closed and sadistic world. He must again enlist the aid of his frequent ally, Dr. Max Liebermann, an expert in Freudian psychology. But how can Liebermann help when he a crisis of his own: handling his conflicted and forbidden feelings for two different women, one a former patient? As the case unfolds, powerful forces will stop at nothing to keep a dark secret.

Frank Tallis, acclaimed author of the Edgar Award-nominated Vienna Secrets, returns with a new and masterfully woven tale full of deceit, love, and rich mystery. Set in fin de si cle Vienna, it's perfect for fans of Boris Akunin, Alan Furst, and David Liss.

Ida Rosenkranz is top diva at the Vienna Opera, but she's gone silent for good after an apparent laudanum overdose. Learning of her professional rivalries and her scandalous affairs with older men, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and Dr. Max Liebermann suspect foul play instead. Their investigation leads them into dark and dangerous conflicts with Gustav Mahler, the opera's imperious director, who is himself the target of a poison pen campaign, and Karl Lueger, Vienna's powerful and anti-Semitic mayor. As the peril escalates, Rheinhardt grows further into his role as family man, while Liebermann finds himself at odds with his inamorata, Amelia, who's loosening both her corset and her tongue in the new feminist movement.

PRAISE FOR FRANK TALLIS'S VIENNA THRILLERS

A] captivating historical series.--The New York Times Book Review

A] riveting read . . . with well researched and wonderfully imagined period detail.--The Guardian (U.K.), on Vienna Twilight

Chock-full of tantalizing elements.--The Austin Chronicle, on Vienna Secrets

Engrossing . . . immensely satisfying.--The Boston Globe, on Fatal Lies

The second in the Dr. Max Liebermann series, literature's first psychoanalytic detective.

In the grip of a Siberian winter in 1902, a serial killer in Vienna embarks upon a bizarre campaign of murder. Vicious mutilation, a penchant for arcane symbols, and a seemingly random choice of victim are his most distinctive peculiarities. Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt summons a young disciple of Freud - his friend Dr. Max Liebermann -- to assist him with the case. The investigation draws them into the sphere of Vienna's secret societies -- a murky underworld of German literary scholars, race theorists, and scientists inspired by the new evolutionary theories coming out of England. At first, the killer's mind seems impenetrable -- his behaviour and cryptic clues impervious to psychoanalytic interpretation; however, gradually, it becomes apparent that an extraordinary and shocking rationale underlies his actions. . . .

Against this backdrop of mystery and terror, Liebermann struggles with his own demons. The treatment of a patient suffering from paranoia erotica (a delusion of love) and his own fascination with the enigmatic Englishwoman Amelia Lydgate raises doubts concerning the propriety of his imminent marriage. To resolve the dilemma, he must entertain the unthinkable -- risking opprobrium and accusations of cowardice.

Life and its meaning is a mystery almost impossible to solve, but what can the leading theories teach us about the search for purpose?
For most of us, the major questions of life continue to perplex: Who am I? Why am I here? How should I live? In the late nineteenth century, a class of thinkers emerged who made solving these problems central to their work. They understood that human questions demand human answers and that without understanding what it means to be human, there are no answers.
Through the biographies and theories of luminaries ranging from Sigmund Freud to Erich Fromm, Frank Tallis show us how to think about companionship and parenting, identity and aging, and much more. Accessible yet erudite, The Act of Living is essential reading for anyone seeking answers to life's biggest questions.

Obsessive thoughts, erratic mood swings, insomnia, loss of appetite, recurrent and persistent images and impulses, superstitious or ritualistic compulsions, delusion, the inability to concentrate -- exhibiting just five or six of these symptoms is enough to merit a diagnosis of a major depressive episode. Yet we all subconsciously welcome these symptoms when we allow ourselves to fall in love. In Love Sick, Dr. Frank Tallis, a leading authority on obsessive disorders, considers our experiences and expressions of love, and why the combinations of pleasure and pain, ecstasy and despair, rapture and grief have come to characterize what we mean when we speak of falling in love. Tallis examines why the agony associated with romantic love continues to be such a popular subject for poets, philosophers, songwriters, and scientists, and questions just how healthy our attitudes are and whether there may in fact be more sane, less tortured ways to love. A highly informative exploration of how, throughout time, principally in the West, the symptoms of mental illness have been used to describe the state of being in love, this book offers an eloquent, thought-provoking, and endlessly illuminating look at one of the most important aspects of human behavior.

Sheldon Short guides let you grasp the essentials in less than an hour! Worry is a useful biological response to adverse circumstances, which can sometimes get out of hand. While the anxiety response primes us for action, too much becomes counterproductive. This easy-to-read manual explains how to understand and control your worry, and make the brain's warning system work for you.

It is natural to worry; it is our body's built-in warning system, and it serves an important function. However, sometimes the worrying can get out of hand, and worry starts to disrupt your life, and your enjoyment of it.

This book is written to help anyone who finds themselves distressed and distracted by their fears, or anyone who is concerned that their worries may be getting out of hand. Not only will it give you practical steps to stop worrying - and advice on how to deal with setbacks - it will also help you to turn worry to your advantage, using it in a more positive way for better outcomes.

Armed with a systematic approach as outlined in this book, you will be able to use worry constructively, and come to see it as helpful rather than harmful.