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Andrea Maria Schenkel (born 21 March 1962 in Regensburg, Germany) is a German writer. She published her debut novel Tannöd in 2006.

Based on the Hinterkaifeck murder in the 1920s, Schenkel’s fictional account takes place in the 1950s. She describes, in ghastly and suspenseful detail, how a small Bavarian village, called Tannöd, became the unlikely site of a horrific crime.

In her novel, a whole family - the farmer, his wife and children, the maidservants and farm laborers - are all killed in one night.

Nobody had liked the family: they had been unfriendly, greedy and crabby. But now after the outrage, fear dominates life in the village. Nobody knows the murderer. Slowly, anxious and shocked every witness gives his statement. Speculation and assumptions about the case are described in a direct, merciless and impressive manner.

With her debut novel, Andrea Schenkel presents not only thrilling crime and fiction. She also draws the pitiless portraits of a bigoted and unromantic rural society influenced by traumatic relations that finally lead to death.

More than 120.000 copies were sold in Germany. Foreign rights are sold to France (Actes Sud), Italy (Riuniti), the Netherlands (Signature), Sweden (Ersatz), Norway and Denmark. Also film option rights are about to be sold.

Her first novel won the "Deutsche Krimi-Preis" (German award for crime thrillers) in the category "Best National Crime Thriller 2007". In 2008, Tannöd won Sweden’s Martin Beck Award, which is given to the best detective story translated into Swedish.

The English translation of the novel was released by Quercus Publishing on 5 June 2008. The title is The Murder Farm. Quercus released a paperback edition of "The Murder Farm" on 26 December 2008.

In August 2007 Andrea Maria Schenkel published her second novel Kalteis, which focuses on a serial killer in 1930s Germany. 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.

Kalteis also won the "Deutsche Krimi-Preis" in the category "Best National Crime Thriller 2008" - the first time an author won the award for two consecutive years.

Andrea Maria Schenkel lives with her family near Regensburg.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Andrea Maria Schenkel", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0