Unimaginably rich. Blanche de Rigny has always considered herself the black sheep of the family. And a black sheep on crutches at that. But it turns out her family tree has branches she didn't even know existed. And many of them are rotten to the core. As Blanche learns more about the legacy left by her wealthy Parisian ancestors, she decides a little family tree pruning might be in order. But great wealth also brings great responsibility - a form of richesse oblige, perhaps - and Blanche has a plan to use her inheritance to cure the world of its ills. Spanning two centuries, from Paris on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War to the modern day, this unforgettable family saga lays bare the persistent and poisonous injustice of inequality. In her trademark razor-sharp style, Hannelore Cayre again delivers the sardonic humour and devilish creativity that made The Godmother an international bestseller.

    Florville decides that before she can marry him she must confess all of her sins to him so that they will have no secrets. The tales are sordid and come together in an entirely unexpected way for both the narrator and the reader.

    Surely the Mediterranean sea breeze will blow away memories of the disastrous anniversary dinner-that-never-was??During a chance visit to a nearby perfumery, Rosie meets the owner, Jean-Michel de Fleurenne, whose distillery and crumbling chateau are desperately in need of her PR expertise. Everyone knows you should never mix business with pleasure… but in the heat of Provence the rules seem to melt away. The soft perfume of the lavender fields and the rich citrus aromas of the fruit trees are blissfully intoxicating and soon, maybe all too soon, Rosie is falling madly in love with a certain impossibly handsome French perfumier and his aristocratic life at Chateau de Fleurenne.But if French is the language of love then why doesn't the path of true love run smoothly for Rosie?

    Fascinated by the crime she has witnessed, Anne Desbaresdes returns several times to the scene, forming a relationship with a man who also saw the murder, and drinking through the afternoon with him as he patiently answers her eager questions. Slowly, they find themselves being taken over by forces which threaten their own stability.Moderato Cantabile is a carefully woven tapestry of emotion, in which the characters' inner lives are reflected by the story's spaces and landscapes.

    She is a wife, a mother, and the owner of Happy People Read and Drink Coffee, a cozy literary cafe in Paris. But when she suddenly loses her beloved husband and daughter in a tragic car accident, the world as she knows it instantly vanishes. Trapped and haunted by her memories, Diane retreats from friends and family, unable and unwilling to move forward. But one year later, Diane shocks her loved ones and makes the surprising decision to move to a small town on the Irish coast, finally determined to heal and rebuild her life alone—until she meets Edward, the attractive yet taciturn Irish photographer who lives next door. At first abrasive and unwelcoming, Edward initially resents Diane’s intrusion into his life of solitude . . . until he can no longer keep her at arm’s length, and they fall into a surprising and tumultuous romance. But will it last when Diane leaves Ireland, and Edward, for the home she once ran away from in Paris? At once heartbreaking and uplifting, Diane’s story is deeply felt, reminding us that love remembered is love enduring.

    He turns out to be a bird who discusses maths with anyone who will listen. So when Mr Ruche learns of his friend's mysterious death in the rainforests of Brazil he decides that with the parrot's help he will use these books to teach Max and his twin brother and sister the mysteries and wonders of numbers and shapes.But soon it becomes clear that Mr Ruche has inherited the library for reasons other than pure enlightenment, and before he knows it the household are caught up in a race to prevent the vital theorems falling into the wrong hands.Charming, fresh, with a narrative which races along, the novel takes the reader on a delightful journey through the history of mathematics.

    A rough draft that Miller ultimately abandoned, the story describes Miller's first wondrous glimpse of Paris and underscores several of the recurrent themes of his work. These previously unpublished memoirs capture Miller's troubled relationship with his second wife, June; reflections on what he left behind in New York's sweltering summer of 1927; and the anticipation of all that awaits him in Europe. Paris 1928 presents Miller's views on Europe on the brink of great changes, counterpointed by his own personal sexual revelry and freedom of choice. Illustrations in this edition are by Australian artist and filmmaker Garry Shead.

    . . Rufin maintains a perfect balance between impatient detachment and compassionate curiosity. "The Abyssinian," like Thackeray's " Vanity Fair," carries the weight of history with good-humoured finesse' "The Times "'An ambitious first novel, dashing, abundant and, when necessary, vividly theatrical' "Times Literary Supplement"'[A] remarkably assured first novel . . . Rufin's writing is elegantly readable' "Independent"'It is old-fashioned enough to be delightful, and new enough to be moving' "Glasgow Herald "'Rufin offers the reader at least three different novels in the space of a single book: a tale of diplomatic intrigue, a voyage of discovery to a virtually unknown civilisation, and a chronicle of the adventures and loves of his irrepressible hero' "Daily Telegraph"

    Alone and against incredible odds, he almost succeeds. Then a mulatto named Friday appears and teaches Robinson that there are, after all, better things in life than civilization.

    Mohammed Ahmed, a Moroccan girl raised as a boy in order to circumvent Islamic inheritance laws regarding female children, remains deeply conflicted about her identity. In a narrative that shifts in and out of reality moving between a mysterious present and a painful past, Ben Jelloun relates the events of Ahmed's adult life. Now calling herself Zahra, she renounces her role as only son and heir after her father's death and journeys through a dreamlike Moroccan landscape. A searing allegorical portrait of North African society, The Sacred Night uses Arabic fairy tales and surrealist elements to craft a stunning and disturbing vision of protest and rebellion against the strictures of hidebound traditions governing gender roles and sexuality.

    In this, his first book, never before published in the U.S., the famous French sailor, Moitessier, describes his shipwreck on the Chagos atoll in the Indian Oceans, his building of Marie-Therese II, and his leisurely voyage to the West Indies, where he met disaster.

    It is sure to capture the hearts of book lovers everywhere. Guylain Vignolles lives on the edge of existence. Working at a job he hates, he has but one pleasure in life ...Sitting on the 6.27 train each day, Guylain reads aloud. And it's this release of words into the world that starts our hero on a journey that will finally bring meaning into his life. For one morning, Guylain discovers the diary of a lonely young woman: Julie. A woman who feels as lost in the world as he does. As he reads from these pages to a rapt audience, Guylain finds himself falling hopelessly in love with their enchanting author ...The Reader on the 6.27 is a tale bursting with larger-than-life characters, each of whom touches Guylain's life for the better. This captivating novel is a warm, funny fable about literature's power to uplift even the most downtrodden of lives. 'The humanity of the characters ...the re-enchantment of everyday life, the power of words and literature, tenderness and humour ...

    The Pursuit of Happiness and A Special Relationship were both Sunday Times bestsellers in paperback.That was the year my life fell apart, and that was the year I moved to Paris.When Harry Ricks arrives in Paris on a bleak January morning he is a broken man. He is running away from a failed marriage and a dark scandal that ruined his career as a film lecturer in a small American university. With no money and nowhere to live, Harry swiftly falls in with the city’s underclass, barely scraping a living while trying to finish the book he’d always dreamed of writing. A chance meeting with a mysterious woman, Margit Kadar, with whom Harry falls in love, is his only hope of a brighter future. However, Margit isn’t all she seems to be and Harry soon has to make a decision that will alter his life forever.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Composed in the tumultuous aftermath of World War II, largely in the Danish prison cell where the author was awaiting extradition to France on charges of high treason, the book offers a unique perspective on the war, the postwar political purges in France, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s own dissident politics.  The tale of a man imprisoned and reviled by his own countrymen, the Fable follows its character’s decline from virulent hatred to near madness as a result of his violent frustration with the hypocrisy and banality of his fellow human beings. In part because of the story’s clear link to his own case—and because of the legal and political difficulties this presented—Céline was compelled to push his famously elliptical, brilliantly vitriolic language to new and extraordinary extremes in Fable for Another Time. The resulting linguistic and stylistic innovation make this work stand out as one of the most original and revealing literary undertakings of its time. Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) was a French writer and physician best known for the novels Journey to the End of the Night (1932) and Death on the Installment Plan (1936). Céline was accused of collaboration during World War II and fled France in 1944 to live first in Germany, then in Denmark, where he was imprisoned for over a year; an amnesty in 1951 allowed him to return to France. Céline remains anathema to a large segment of French society for his antisemitic writings; at the same time his novels are enormously admired by each new generation.

    She was sunk in deep melancholy. Tears gushed from her beautiful eyes. The cause of her grief was known, as well as the fears she entertained lest that grief should displease the king, her father. The old man, Mambres, ancient magician and eunuch of the Pharoahs, was beside her, and seldom left her. He was present at her birth. He had educated her, and taught her all that a fair princess was allowed to know of the sciences of Egypt. The mind of Amasidia equaled her beauty. Her sensibility and tenderness rivaled the charms of her person; and it was this sensibility which cost her so many tears.The princess was twenty-four years old, the magician, Mambres, about thirteen hundred. It was he, as every one knows, who had that famous dispute with Moses, in which the victory was so long doubtful between these two profound philosophers. If Mambres yielded, it was owing to the visible protection of the celestial powers, who favored his rival. It required gods to overcome Mambres!