Novels in Three Lines


Félix Fénéon - 1906
    This extraordinary trove, undiscovered until the 1940s and here translated for the first time into English, is the work of the mysterious Félix Fénéon. Dandy, anarchist, and critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce, Fénéon carefully maintained his own anonymity, toiling for years as an obscure clerk in the French War Department. Novels in Three Lines is his secret chef-d’oeuvre, a work of strange and singular art that brings back the long-ago year of 1906 with the haunting immediacy of a photograph while looking forward to such disparate works as Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and the Death and Disaster series of Andy Warhol.

Ramses: The Son of Light


Christian Jacq - 1995
    Is Seth planning to leave the world's most powerful empire to Ramses, and not his corrupt brother, Shaanar? Before he knows it, the younger prince is surrounded by enemies and turning to his friends: Moses, the brilliant young Hebrew; Setau, the snake charmer and mage; Ahmeni; the frail scholar; and Set and Nefertari, the two beautiful women Ramses loves.And so begins the journey of the hero the world has yet to know... Let the saga begin.The first in Christian Jacque's bestselling Ramses series, recounting the thrilling story of Ramses, the legendary king who ruled Egypt for more than 60 years. Ramses sets into motion a tapestry of royal intrigue, treacherous plots, and romantic adventures that will keep readers spellbound and hungry for more.

Sunlight on Cold Water


Françoise Sagan - 1969
    He seems to have all that life can offer. But suddenly he is overwhelmed by despair. Nothing seems worth while. In panic at his boredom, and hating Eloise, his model girlfriend, he flees for some peace to his sister and her husband in the provinces.Here he meets Nathalie, the wife of a country lawyer. She falls deeply in love with him, a passion to which he soon responds. But back in Paris her innate goodness contrasts oddly with the frivolity of Gilles’s life. Soon it seems as if their relationship is doomed, as if their happiness is a mere gleam of sunlight on cold water…”

My Friends


Emmanuel Bove - 1924
    Living in a run-down boardinghouse, Baton spends his days searching working-class Paris for the modest comforts of warmth, cheap meals, and friendship, but he finds little. And despite his situation, Baton remains vain and unsympathetic, a Bovian antihero to the fullest. Bove himself called My Friends, published in France in 1923, a "novel of impoverished solitude." The book drew praise from such writers as Rilke, Gide, and, later, Beckett, and is to this day perhaps the author's most celebrated work.

The Heart


Maylis de Kerangal - 2014
    While driving home exhausted, the boys are involved in a fatal car accident on a deserted road. Two of the boys are wearing seat belts; one goes through the windshield. The doctors declare him brain-dead shortly after arriving at the hospital, but his heart is still beating.The Heart takes place over the twenty-four hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, The Heart mesmerized readers in France, where it has been hailed as the breakthrough work of a new literary star. With the precision of a surgeon and the language of a poet, de Kerangal has made a major contribution to both medicine and literature with an epic tale of grief, hope, and survival.

Total Chaos


Jean-Claude Izzo - 1995
    They promised to stay true to one another and swore that nothing would break their bond. But people and circumstances change. Ugo and Manu have been drawn into the criminal underworld of Europe's toughest, most violent and vibrant city. When Manu is murdered and Ugo returns from abroad to avenge his friend's death, only to be killed himself, it is left to the third in this trio, Detective Fabio Montale, to ensure justice is done. Despite warnings from both his colleagues in law enforcement and his acquaintances in the underworld, Montale cannot forget the promise he once made Manu and Ugo. He's going to find their killer even if it means going too far.In Izzo's novels, Marseilles is explosive, tragic, breathtakingly beautiful and deadly. Asked to explain the astounding success of his now legendary Marseilles triology, Izzo credits his beloved native city: "Essentially, I think I have been rewarded for having depicted the real beauty of Marseilles, its gusto, its passion for life, and the ability of its inhabitants to drink life down to the last drop." Fabio Montale is the perfect protagonist in this city of melancholy beauty. A disenchanted cop with an inimitable talent for living who turns his back on a police force marred by corruption and racism and, in the name of friendship, takes the fight against the mafia into his own hands.

Manon Lescaut


Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles - 1731
    It is one of the great love stories, and also one of the most enigmatic: how reliable a witness is Des Grieux, Manon's lover, whose tale he narrates? Is Manon a thief and a whore, the image of love itself, or a thoroughly modern woman? Prevost is careful to leave the ambiguities unresolved, and to lay bare the disorders of passion." This new translation includes the vignette and eight illustrations that were approved by Prevost and first published in the edition of 1753.

The Falsifiers


Antoine Bello - 2007
    Soon his superior reveals that the firm houses the activities of a secret organization, the Consortium for the Falsification of Reality, which rewrites history and falsifies the world as we know it. Who runs the CFR and for what purpose? That’s what Sliv sets out to discover. His only chance: rise all the way to the top in record time.The Falsifiers, a European best-seller, is the first installment of a trilogy. It is followed by The Pathfinders and The Showrunners.

The Juggler


Rachilde - 1900
    Its author, Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (1860-1953), who used the pseudonym Rachilde, was a prolific novelist (over sixty works of fiction), playwright, literary critic and reviewer, and a forceful presence in French literary society of her time. The protagonist of the novel, Eliante Donalger, is in some sense an exaggerated double for her creator--bizarre in appearance, clothing, and interests. Instinctively grasping a medical and psychological truth that the turn-of-the-century scientific world was only beginning to understand, Eliante maintains that there is nothing "natural" about human sexual expression. She claims to be in love with an inanimate (though anthropomorphic and sexually ambiguous) object, a Greek amphora, and the novel traces the rivalry between this faithful partner and an ardent human suitor, a young medical student. It is only through juggling, both literally and metaphorically, that Eliante is able to use her seductive power to maintain desire. The surprise ending challenges the limits of such power in a controversial and surprising twist. Although Rachilde's work has been neglected in the past, the women's movement and feminist criticism have stimulated renewed interest in her fiction. The Juggler is a major rediscovery.

The Mysteries of Paris


Eugène Sue - 1843
    The suspenseful story of Rodolphe, a magnetic hero of noble heart and shadowy origins, played out over ninety issues, garnering wild popularity and leading many to call it the most widely read novel of the 19th century. Sue's novel created the city mystery genre and inspired a raft of successors, including Les Miserables and The Count of Monte Cristo.Sensational, steamy, tightly-plotted, pulpy, proto-socialist, heartbreaking, and riveting, The Mysteries of Paris is doubtless one of the most entertaining and influential works to emerge from the 19th century.

Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation


Marie Darrieussecq - 1996
    . . . A very funny, intelligent book that can be read both for its politics and for its extraordinary depiction of a woman who revels in her bestial transformation."

La Femme de Gilles


Madeleine Bourdouxhe - 1937
    Devastated, Elisa unravels. As controlled as Elena Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment and as propulsive as Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation, La Femme de Gilles is a hauntingly contemporary story of desperation and lust and obsession, from an essential early-feminist writer.Just after her novel was first published in 1937, Madeleine Bourdouxhe disassociated herself from her publisher (which had been taken over by the Nazis) and spent most of World War II in Brussels, actively working for the resistance. Though she continued to write, her work was largely overlooked by history . . . until now.

Don't Worry, Life Is Easy


Agnès Martin-Lugand - 2015
     Diane needs to start over again. After returning from Ireland and turning the page on her stormy relationship with Edward, the brooding Irish photographer, she is determined to rebuild her life in Paris with help from her best friend Féx. She focuses solely on getting her literary caféack on track-until she meets Olivier. He is kind and thoughtful, and she may have a future with him...until she stumbles across her former love at a photography exhibit. What is Edward doing in Paris? Why didn't he reach out? Faced with a hail of questions, her old flame remains cold and unresponsive. Apparently, he, too, has moved on. In order to put the past behind her, Diane must go back over her tracks. Ireland saved her before. Can she get answers there and find peace again?

Night Flight


Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - 1931
    Preface by André Gide. Translated by Stuart Gilbert.

Beside the Sea


Véronique Olmi - 2001
    They stay in a hotel, drink hot chocolate, and go to the funfair. She wants to protect them from an uncaring and uncomprehending world. She knows that it will be the last trip for her boys.Beside the Sea is a haunting and thought-provoking story about how a mother's love for her children can be more dangerous than the dark world she is seeking to keep at bay. It's a hypnotizing look at an unhinged mind and the cold society that produced it. With language as captivating as the story that unfolds, Véronique Olmi creates an intimate portrait of madness and despair that won't soon be forgotten.