Academy Award winner Jean Dujardin stars in this French , romantic-laugh-out-loud-comedy that is all about the long and short of falling in love. When successful lawyer Diane ( Virginie Efira) gets a call from the man who has found her mobile phone, she is immediately intrigued and charmed. As she and Alexandre (Dujardin) chat and make plans to meet, it becomes evident that the chemistry between them is great indeed. However, when they meet the next day it turns out there may be one small problem. New relationships are always awkward and for Diane & Alexandre the challenges in their relationship could be somewhat of a tall order. Despite his charisma and good looks, Alexandre comes up a bit short ( almost 2 feet, actually). Is Diane out of his reach or can they meet in the middle? They're both looking for love but society is watching and judging. A perfect match in every way butone, will this new couple be up for the challenge? Will they be UP FOR LOVE?

​Pipioli le souriceau rêve d'aller en Afrique comme son amie l'hirondelle. Le merle Zigomar accepte de l'y emmener...mais il n'a aucun sens de l'orientation. Un voyage inattendu les attend.

Bart le Baraqué est le plus grand et le plus robuste de tous les pirates de l'Atlantique.
Mo la Mauvaise est la plus folle et la plus formidable de tous les pirates du Pacifique.
Quand leurs routes se croisent, c'est une compétition sans merci qui s'engage pour déterminer qui est le meilleur pirate du monde. Après avoir nagé avec les requins, lancé des boulets de canon et avalé des tonnes de galette, ils en viennent à comparer leurs butins. L'un des deux parviendra-t-il à battre son rival ?
Ce conte épique de l'union de deux capitaines pirates est dit dans le jargon de loup de mer et magnifiquement illustré. Alors, larguez les amarres, et vivez une fantastique aventure maritime !

Voici un livre enchanté à lire et à relire pour entrer dans le nonde merveilleux des princes et princesses, rêver de robes couleur de lune, de carrosses magiques et, aussi, pour rire des grenouilles qui cherchent en vain leurs princes charmants !

Charlotte s'ennuie. Entre sa grande sœur et son petit frère, personne ne s'occupe d'elle..."Puisque c'est comme ça, on va faire attention à moi !" Attention, Charlotte passe à l'action!

Lorsque Thomas s’est engagé comme mousse sur un bateau avec son frère, il ne pensait pas se retrouver naufragé sur une île déserte ! Pas si déserte que ça, finalement…

John adore sa vie en Alaska, au milieu de la forêt. Mais son père veut l’initier à sa passion : la chasse… Et John n’ose pas lui dire qu’il ne veut pas tuer des animaux. 

The periodical "J'aime Lire' is a joy to read for the 7yo to 10yo. It has a good diversity of topics and actvities to stimulate your children's imagination and to encourage them to read. You will find a story, different short comics and games written and created by the best youth literature authors.

The periodical "J'aime Lire' is a joy to read for the 7yo to 10yo. It has a good diversity of topics and actvities to stimulate your children's imagination and to encourage them to read. You will find a story, different short comics and games written and created by the best youth literature authors.

This monthly periodical is exclusively written for French beginners learners. You will find articles with vocabulary about different topics such as politics, cooking, arts and culture as well as a short story and some activities about French language. A CD ROM goes with each periodical. 

This monthly periodical is exclusively written for French intermediate and advanced learners.You will find articles with vocabulary about different topics such as politics, cooking, arts and culture as well as a short story and some activities on the French language. You can hear all the articles in the CD that goes with the magazine.

In Isabelle's (Diane Kruger) family, every first marriage has ended in divorce. To circumvent her family's curse Isabelle devises a plan: marry and divorce a complete stranger before wedding her faultless fiancé Pierre. After her initial plan backfires she targets Jean-Yves, an adventurous yet quirky travel writer whom, she tries to manipulate with her powers of seduction.

A series of misadventures beset them as they take on Africa and then Moscow in whirwind succession, breaking Isabelle of her comfortable routine existence. Despite her best efforts to make him fall for her, things don't go to plan and Isabelle experiences the rush of life-on-the edge. will she discover that love doesn't always come in the perfect package?

La Brousse en folie is a New Caledonian comic book about four men, their families, their friends and their community living in New Caledonia. Discover a humoristic island way of life with all its different ethnicities and its typical speech.

La Brousse en folie is a New Caledonian comic book about four men, their families, their friends and their community living in New Caledonia. Discover a humoristic island way of life with all its different ethnicities and its typical speech.

La Brousse en folie is a New Caledonian comic book about four men, their families, their friends and their community living in New Caledonia. Discover a humoristic island way of life with all its different ethnicities and its typical speech.

The new adventure of Constant Kérel, the unusual politician who has to save himself to win the election.

Follow Constant Kérel, an usual politician and his adventure for the election race.

A humoristic comic book about intellectual and wealthy men and women and their daily issues. A deep reflexion about society.

When the sailor Machin embarks on a boat, nothing goes well.

Follow the adventures of Tintin, a courageous, young Belgian reporter with his faithful dog Milou around the world.

This volume refers to a flight that Tintin and his friends fail to catch, as they become embroiled in a plot to kidnap an eccentric millionaire from a supersonic business jet on an Indonesian island.

​

Follow the adventures of Marsupilami, a black-spotted yellow monkey-like creature with his family, firends and enemies.

This comic is centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, human-like creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest.

When Handy Smurf and Clumsy Smurf are installing a fence for Farmer Smurf, Handy Smurf mistakenly hits Clumsy Smurf with his hammer, so Papa Smurf is called to attend Clumsy Smurf's injury. The three Smurfs are grateful that Papa Smurf is there when they need him and Papa Smurf becomes Doctor Smurf.

Frimeur des Îles is a New Caledonian comic book about two friends from Nouméa who loves going out, surfing and buying fancy equipments for their cars. They depict the new urban society of Nouméa.

Follow the adventures of Tintin, a courageous, young Belgian reporter with his faithful dog Milou around the world.

In this volume, Tintin and his friends travel to the (fictional) South American nation of San Theodoros to rescue their friend Bianca Castafiore, who has been imprisoned by the government of General Tapioca. Once there, they become involved in the anti-government revolutionary activities of Tintin's old friend General Alcazar.

Frimeur des Îles is a New Caledonian comic book about two friends from Nouméa who loves going out, surfing and buying fancy equipments for their cars. They depict the new urban society of Nouméa.

Léannie is a French teenage girl living in New Caledonia. This comic book depicts her daily life on the island.

Léannie is a French teenage girl living in New Caledonia. This comic book depicts her daily life on the island.

The series follows the adventures of a village of indomitable Gauls as they resist Roman occupation in 50 BC. They do so by means of a magic potion brewed by their druid Panoramix which temporarily gives the recipient superhuman strength.

The resistance of the Gaulish village against the Romans causes friction between dictator Julius Caesar and the Roman Senate, whose power had been reduced by Caesar. With their Magic Potion which gives them superhuman strength and is known only to their druid Getafix, they easily stand up against Rome and her laws.

The series follows the adventures of a village of indomitable Gauls as they resist Roman occupation in 50 BC. They do so by means of a magic potion brewed by their druid Panoramix which temporarily gives the recipient superhuman strength.

When a bard woman, named Bravura arrives, the women are stunned by her singing and the men laugh at it; much to her annoyance. Over the next few days, Bravura exhorts Impedimenta (and later other village women) to resist the authority of her husband. Impedimenta then quarrels with Vitalstatistix, who joins Cacofonix in the forest. Impedimenta is then made chief by the women, while the men do not dare vote against their wives.

The series follows the adventures of a village of indomitable Gauls as they resist Roman occupation in 50 BC. They do so by means of a magic potion brewed by their druid Panoramix which temporarily gives the recipient superhuman strength.

Unhygienix has run out of fresh fish. Since his stock has to be transported from Lutetia (modern-day Paris), it will be some time before the next delivery. However Getafix says he can't wait since he needs some for his potion. Asterix and Obelix volunteer to resolve the issue by going fishing, to which end they borrow a boat from Geriatrix. After a storm, they get lost, but despite Obelix's concerns, they do not reach the edge of the world; instead, following a brief encounter with the pirates, they arrive on an island (which the reader surmises is Manhattan Island) with delicious birds that the Gauls call "gobblers" (turkeys), bears and "Romans" with strange facial paintings (Native Americans).

Follow the adventures of Tintin, a courageous, young Belgian reporter with his faithful dog Milou around the world.

Tintin is invited to China in the midst of the 1931 Japanese invasion, where he reveals the machinations of Japanese spies and uncovers a drug-smuggling ring.

Lucky Luke closes down the corrupt settlement of Fenton Town, Texas and arrests the owner, Dean Fenton. Fenton brags about his town to the Daltons while in prison. A mix-up with the newly installed telegraph results in Joe Dalton being released for 'good behavior'.

​

Winner of the Prix Femina award in 1987, this historical novel is set a thousand years ago in France, and follows the story of Odilon de Bernay, who serves as page to Liebaut de Malbry. Absire's books have won several prizes - "Lazarus" was his seventh award-winning novel.

Follow the adventures of Tintin, a courageous, young Belgian reporter with his faithful dog Milou around the world.

Tintin is informed by Thomson and Thompson of a case involving the ramblings of a drunken man, later killed, found with a scrap of paper from what appears to be a tin of crab meat with the word "Karaboudjan" scrawled on it. It leads him to a ship called the Karaboudjan, where he is abducted by a syndicate of criminals who have hidden opium in the crab tins.

Follow the adventures of Tintin, a courageous, young Belgian reporter with his faithful dog Milou around the world.

Tintin discovers a riddle left by Haddock's ancestor, the 17th century Sir Francis Haddock, which could lead them to the hidden treasure of the pirate Red Rackham. To unravel the riddle, Tintin and Haddock must obtain three identical models of Sir Francis's ship, the Unicorn, but they discover that criminals are also after these model ships and are willing to kill in order to obtain them.

The series follows the adventures of a village of indomitable Gauls as they resist Roman occupation in 50 BC. They do so by means of a magic potion brewed by their druid Panoramix which temporarily gives the recipient superhuman strength.

Gluteus Maximus, an athletic Roman legionary, is chosen as one of Rome's representatives for the upcoming Olympic Games in Greece. Gaius Veriambitius, his centurion, hopes to share in the glory of Olympic victory. While training in the forest, Gluteus Maximus encounters Asterix and Obelix, who unintentionally outdo him at running, the javelin and boxing, thanks to the power of the magic potion.

Papa Smurf's lab explodes while he is making the formula "Ad Capitis mala et alios dolores sanandos" (which is how much Brainy Smurf is able to read because he is unable to translate it properly like he claims), and when the other Smurfs arrive, Papa Smurf is unconscious. A Smurf goes to the home of the good wizard Homnibus to ask for help. Homnibus realizes that Papa Smurf has fallen sick due to using sulfur in the formula, but he lacks some ingredients needed for the cure, so he sends his servant Oliver to buy some. The Smurf goes along with Oliver and learns about money and the humans' commerce system.

​

The first lines of Le quai de Ouistreham (which means “the Ouistreham quay”) immediately announce the general theme of the book. “The ‘credit crunch’. That’s what everyone is talking about, without really knowing what to say about it, or how to approach the subject.”

However, though the credit crunch is a subject that hovers in your mind throughout the whole book, what this piece of investigative journalism really is about is how people at the bottom of the social ladder, with no diplomas or valuable work experience, deal with unemployment while still desperately trying to get a job.

​

On the journey back to the Zelandonii territory, Jondalar's home, many of the tribes Ayla encounters mistake Ayla's extreme creative intelligence and even her common-sense reasoning for supernatural powers. Jondalar and Ayla both insist that she has no such gifts, but they do not stay in one place long enough to convince anyone otherwise. Ayla continues to have prophetic dreams.

​

​

​

​

Blue Bay Palace is narrated by Maya, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks in Mauritius. Blue Bay sounds like it might be a decent place to grow up, but it's a poor little corner of this paradise, the side of the village where no one, for example has a car. Maya had ambitions to get out, but a day after she turned sixteen she met Dave, the spoilt and rich son of a Brahman family from Mahébourg ("It was only half an hour away from Blue Bay, but another world"). And so she too goes to work at Le Paradis, the resort where Dave works -- the hotel where he is, in fact, Maya's father's boss.

In The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah, 1944 is coming to a close and nine-year-old Raj is unaware of the war devastating the rest of the world. He lives in Mauritius, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, where survival is a daily struggle for his family. When a brutal beating lands Raj in the hospital of the prison camp where his father is a guard, he meets a mysterious boy his own age. David is a refugee, one of a group of Jewish exiles whose harrowing journey took them from Nazi occupied Europe to Palestine, where they were refused entry and sent on to indefinite detainment in Mauritius.

In July 1891, Arthur Rimbaud returns from Africa seriously ill. The furious poet decides to spend the last days of his life with his sister Isabelle. How can we explain this reconciliation? The mystery remains... Hospitalized in Marseille, he is at the end of his rope, with no strength left. The infection in his leg is so severe that it has to be amputated. To convalesce, he has no choice but to return to Charleville, to his childhood home. His mother, the terrible and ferocious Vitalie, hardly speaks to him through the long weeks of his agony. It is Isabelle, his young sister, who welcomes him, cares for him, comforts him. She goes with him when he decides against all reason to return to Africa. It is in her arms that he dies in Marseille on 10 November 1891.Since there is no evidence about what happened and what was said between the brother and the sister during those weeks, Philippe Besson has decided to invent it, and has chosen Isabelle's point of view to tell the tale. It is an audacious risk that succeeds. Through the pages of a fictitious private diary, he presents an indirect and tragic portrait of a woman overshadowed by her brilliant and scandalous brother. Devoted until the poet's last breath, Isabelle conscientiously collects his final confessions about his life, his loves, his poetry. But what does she understand, this virgin steeped in religion? And does she already know that she will betray him, later, when it comes time to take care of posterity? Torn between her love and her doubts, her admiration and her frustrations, Besson's Isabelle gradually appears as the sacrificial figure in the mythical struggle between the poet and his mother.
After the success of A Boy from Italy, the film adaptation of His Brotherby Patrice Chéreau, the 2003 RTL-Lire grand prize for Late Autumn, and the numerous translations of his books, Philippe Besson confirms his precocious rise to prominence.

The novel presents an engaging extraterrestrial, the Euguelion of the title (pronounced you-gaily-un, the name means "the bringer of good news"), who visits the Earth. Through the eyes of this sister from another planet--one eye happy, one sad--we are given a wickedly witty portrait of the situation of women in our world. "To resist is good," proclaims the Euguelion, "to transgress is better."

​

Les Diaboliques (The She-Devils) is a collection of short stories written by Barbey d'Aurevilly and published in France in 1874. Each story features a woman who commits an act of violence, or revenge, or some other crime. It is considered d'Aurevilly's masterpiece.

​

​

​

​

​

​

In 1975, the Khmer Rouge came to full power in Cambodia and began systematically to eliminate whole classes of society. The Cambodian genocide was among the grossest and most thorough of all the purges carried out by Left on Right or vice-versa in the years after 1945. The methods employed by the executioners in The Killing Fields, and by the torture teams in the interrogation complex at Tuol Sleng, had an abominable tang of inventiveness about them: the use of palm-leaf fibres to decapitate counter-revolutionaries, for instance, or the cages full of spiders and scorpions with which the torturers extracted meaningless confessions from their internees. François Bizot was a captive and this book his his memoir of his experience as a prisoner of the Khmers Rouges.

Set earlier than most of Balzac's Comedie Humaine, the novel covers the years 1803-6, when Napolean was making himself first Consul and then Emperor. The inclusion of Napoleon himself, as well as figures like Talleyrand and Fouche, makes this a historical novel. But it is also an early example of the detective story, in which the sinister, implacable police agent, Corentin, stalks his way towards vengeance on his aristocractic enemies.

Balzac starts with a rather gloomy  view of Parisians: gloomy, pallid and dull, with no values other than a preoccupation with gold and pleasure. Everyone is striving to be better than his station, and the artist (who presumably includes Balzac himself) labours long and hard for little reward.  The air is foul, the streets are dirty and it’s not a pretty picture of Paris at all. Only people transcend these  negativities, and then only when they are young  and innocent.Henri de Marsay, natural son of Lord Dudley and the Marquise de Vordac strolls out one day into the Tuileries in this Paris.  His circumstances were unfortunate for Lord Dudley had married his mother off to an old gentleman called M. de Marsay who brought Henri up as his own (for the price of a life interest in the fund that Henri was to inherit).  Before long de Marsay died and his mother remarried, to de Vordac; she had lost interest in both her son and Lord Dudley (partly because of the war between France and England, and partly because fidelity was never fashionable in Paris). Dudley himself had never taken any interest in the product of his fling, and so it was that Henri had no father other than de Marsay, who, prior to his death was a gambler and a wastrel.

​

​

​

Life begins when you meet a beautiful blond from Tucson, USA. You're no longer just Daniel, a pint-sized Parisian film freak. You're Bogart, Brando, and Redford all rolled into one - even though you're only eleven!

Life begins when you meet a boy from France who calls you "Baby" and thinks you're a dish. You're no longer just Lauren, a precocious child who dreams of passion. You're in love - even though you're not quite twelve.

Trouble begins with a romantic old rogue and a yen for faraway places. Before you know it, there you are, adrift on the canals of Venice - young, in love, on the lam, and a long, long way from eleven!

Gary is a teenager living with his mum Nicole in Wellington. He never knew his father and his mother refuses to answers his questions. One day, Gary meets a French girl in a bar where she tells him that she knows his dad.

Bernanos is a liberal French Catholic writer who, among other things, spoke out against the Franco terror in Spain. More lately he has lived in Brazil. These "letters" are motivated by a love of justice and human dignity that is moving, even if its expression is often abstract and other-worldly.

​

​

Le Gône du Chaâba is an autobiographical novel. The title itself is a clever play on one of his regional language's words. 'Gone' is a term for 'kid' or 'lad' in the Lyonnais dialect of Arpitan used in his native region and city, while 'Chaâba' is an Arabic word, used in the book as the name of a shantytown in Sétif, Algeria. Both Azouz Begag and the protagonist of the novel grew up in a shanty town outside Lyon, almost entirely inhabited by Algerian or Kabyle immigrant workers. The language and culture were predominantly a mix of Algerian Arabic, Kabyle Tamazigh and Arpitan. The problems of the ghetto-like environments established by and for guest workers in France after WWII, of the individual children of these ghettos who are French Citizens by dint of being born in France and even often from French parents and for whom 'breaking out' is both very difficult and statistically improbable, and Azouz Begag's own success in managing being part of the mainstream of French culture without having to forget any part of his heritage but rather by accumulating all cultural influences, are at the heart of the novel.

Breathe is the haunting confession of nineteen-year-old Charlene Boher. From her prison cell, Charlene recounts her lonely adolescence. Growing up shy and unpopular, Charlene never had many friends. That is, until she meet Sarah, a beautiful and charismatic American-French girl who moved back to Paris for high school. Much to Charlene's shock and delight, the two girls quickly develop an intense friendship. With Sarah by her side, Charlene finally begins to feel accepted and even loved.

However, after a brief idyllic period, the girls' relationship becomes rocky and friendship veers towards obsession. As Sarah drops Charlene for older, more glamorous friends, Charlene's devotion spirals into hatred. Unfolding slowly and eerily towards a shocking conclusion, Breathe is an intense, convincing portrait of a possessive and ambiguous friendship.

In 1506, Michelangelo―a young but already renowned sculptor―is invited by the Sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn. The sultan has offered, alongside an enormous payment, the promise of immortality, since Leonardo da Vinci’s design had been rejected: “You will surpass him in glory if you accept, for you will succeed where he has failed, and you will give the world a monument without equal.”

Michelangelo, after some hesitation, flees Rome and an irritated Pope Julius II―whose commission he leaves unfinished―and arrives in Constantinople for this truly epic project. Once there, he explores the beauty and wonder of the Ottoman Empire, sketching and describing his impressions along the way, and becomes immersed in cloak-and-dagger palace intrigues as he struggles to create what could be his greatest architectural masterwork.

Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants―constructed from real historical fragments―is a story about why stories are told, why bridges are built, and how seemingly unmatched pieces, seen from the opposite sides of civilization, can mirror one another.

The Radiant Way is a 1987 novel by British novelist Margaret Drabble. The novel provides social commentary and critique of 1980s Britain, by exploring the lives of three Cambridge-educated women with careers as knowledge professionals.

Jazz, aliens, and witchcraft collide in this collection of short stories by renowned author Emmanuel Dongala. The influence of Kongo culture is tangible throughout, as customary beliefs clash with party conceptions of scientific and rational thought. In the first half of Jazz and Palm Wine, the characters emerge victorious from decades of colonial exploitation in the Congo only to confront the burdensome bureaucracy, oppressive legal systems, and corrupt governments of the post-colonial era. The ruling political party attempts to impose order and scientific thinking while the people struggles to deal with drought, infertility, and impossible regulations and policies; both sides mix witchcraft, diplomacy, and violence in their efforts to survive. The second half of the book is set in the United States during the turbulent civil rights struggles of the 1960s. In the title story, African and American leaders come together to save the world from extraterrestrials by serving vast quantities of palm wine and playing American jazz. The stories in Jazz and Palm Wine prompt conversations about identity, race, and co-existence, providing contextualization and a historical dimension that is often sorely lacking. Through these collisions and clashes, Dongala suggests a pathway to racial harmony, peaceful co-existence, and individual liberty through artistic creation.

​

​

​

Bni Blouden is a small Algerian village in the mountains where life goes on at its normal pace. Down below, in the fertile valley, the French colonists have the good life. The year is 1939, still some time from Algerian freedom. However, the Arabs in Bni Blouden talk about striking and soon the country is in an uproar. When a fire breaks out, the strikers are accused of being arsonists and the strike leaders are arrested. This straightforward plot outline fails to convey the beauty of Dib’s novel. Its strength is in conveying what makes this simple village, with its simple people, a place of importance, a place of beauty, even. We see it primarily through the eyes of Omar and we see it as a place where ordinary men and women are trying to scratch out a miserable living in a country that has been torn from them by a colonizing power. They are not great people – (Bni Boublen may not be a wonderful place. They don’t know much, the people who live there, although they have the reputation of being educated. They know even less about Bni Boublen., says Comandar, Omar’s mentor) – but they have their dignity, they are individuals and Dib shows us how they much they matter. In short, they are worth fighting for and Dib shows us why.

​Begins like a hopeful novel about an Iranian refugee starting a new life, then develops into an interesting epistolary novel as the main character decides to write letters to Montesquieu to improve her French. This is where she reflects on cultural differences, and the current regime in Iran as opposed to life in the West. The last third of the book throws the reader into an unexpected direction as an event triggers painful memories which resurface and threaten her newfound wellbeing and freedom

Hadriana in All My Dreams, winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, takes place primarily during Carnival in 1938 in the Haitian village of Jacmel. A beautiful young French woman, Hadriana, is about to marry a Haitian boy from a prominent family. But on the morning of the wedding, Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion and collapses at the altar. Transformed into a zombie, her wedding becomes her funeral. She is buried by the town, revived by an evil sorcerer, and then disappears into popular legend.

Set against a backdrop of magic and eroticism, and recounted with delirious humor, the novel raises universal questions about race and sexuality.

​it is a very good book and it is interesting how we pick up on what people think of us. What we think of people and what we do with it.. Our spirit can fight our destiny but eventually it does catch up with us. We let go and everything is alright. Like Cohelo, Delacourt is a very spiritual writer because of the synchronicity he respects where timing is everything.

​

The story La chaussure sur le toit consists of ten short stories on the same theme: a shoe placed on the roof of the building opposite, in Paris. Each chapter is equivalent to a story with a well-defined character and a well-founded character: a dreamy child, a burglar in love, three crazy thugs, an undocumented immigrant, a television presenter, a melancholic dog, a homosexual firefighter, an eccentric lady, a contemporary artist, an angel in pants.

​

​

​

​

​

This book makes you want to go to Paris again, and to spend some time in the "historical" streets of this great city ! really ! Loved it, it's also very well written.​

​

When Things of the Spirit Come First is Simone de Beauvoir's 'first' work of fiction. After a number of false starts, in 1937 she submitted this collection of interlinked stories to a publisher. But it was turned down by both Gallimard and Grasset. It consists of five short stories which are weaved together in such a way that it to structurally similar to a more traditional novel. The first, "Maurcelle", tells the story of the oldest of three siblings. She marries an abusive artist. The second, "Chantal", tells the story of a lycee philosophy teacher (like de Beauvoir). She idealizes her life and becomes involved in the lives of her students but ultimately refuses to help them. "Lisa" is the third and shortest story, about a girl who struggles to live a spiritual life while existing in a physical body. "Anne", the fourth story, is the result of many of de Beauvoir's earlier attempts at writing. It parallels the story of her friend Elisabeth Mabille (Zaza) who died soon after her mother refused to allow her to marry Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The final story, "Marguarite" expresses the existential views that de Beauvoir herself believed that life itself should be experienced, rather than spirituality.

Le Colonel Chabert (English: Colonel Chabert) is an 1832 novella by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). It is included in his series of novels (or Roman-fleuve) known as La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy), which depicts and parodies French society in the period of the Restoration (1815–1830) and the July Monarchy (1830–1848).

The plot of Gobseck, set during the French Restoration, concerns Anastasie de Restaud, née Goriot.[2] Anastasie de Restaud is the daughter of a rich bourgeois who has married into the aristocracy, but is bored by her marriage, which is loveless and passionless.[2]

Anastasie de Restaud has an affair with Maxime de Trailles, and spends her fortune on de Trailles.[2] She turns to the usurer Jean-Esther van Gobseck for financial assistance. Maître Derville acts as Gobseck’s lawyer. Subsequently, both Anastasie's marriage is destroyed and her family fortune is lost.[2]

In this classic Catholic novel, Bernanos movingly recounts the life of a young French country priest who grows to understand his provincial parish while learning spiritual humility himself. Awarded the Grand Prix for Literature by the Academie Francaise, The Diary of a Country Priest was adapted into an acclaimed film by Robert Bresson. "A book of the utmost sensitiveness and compassion...it is a work of deep, subtle and singularly encompassing art."

The Skin of Sorrow is Honoré de Balzac's 1831 novel that tells the story of a young man, Raphaël de Valentin, who discovers a piece of shagreen, in this case a rough untanned piece of a wild ass's skin, which has the magical property of granting wishes. However the fulfillment of the wisher's desire comes at a cost, after each wish the skin shrinks a little bit and consumes the physical energy of the wisher. "The Wild Ass's Skin" is at once both a work of incredible realism, in the descriptions of Parisian life and culture at the time, and also a work of supernatural fantasy, in the desires that are fulfilled by the wild ass's skin. Balzac uses this fantastical device masterfully to depict the complexity of the human nature in civilized society

​

​

The story of the infernal rise of Évariste Gamelin, a young Parisian painter, involved in the section for his neighborhood of Pont-Neuf, The Gods Are Athirst describes the dark years of the Reign of Terror in Paris, from Year II to Year III. Fiercely Jacobin, Marat and Robespierre's most faithful adherent, Évariste Gamelin soon becomes a juror on the Revolutionary Tribunal.

​

Light in August, a novel that contrasts stark tragedy with hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, a lonely outcast haunted by visions of Confederate glory; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.

​

​In a small village in the Sologne, Fifteen-year-old François Seurel narrates the story of his relationship with seventeen-year-old Augustin Meaulnes. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood.

One of the greatest French novelists, Balzac was also an accomplished writer of shorter fiction. This volume includes twelve of his finest short stories – many of which feature characters from his epic series of novels the Comédie Humaine. Compelling tales of acute social and psychological insight, they fully demonstrate the mastery of suspense and revelation that were the hallmarks of Balzac’s genius. In “The Atheist’s Mass,” we learn the true reason for a distinguished atheist surgeon’s attendance at religious services; “La Grande Breteche” describes the horrific truth behind the locked doors of a decaying country mansion, while “The Red Inn” relates a brutal tale of murder and betrayal. A fascinating counterpoint to the renowned novels, all the stories collected here stand by themselves as mesmerizing works by one of the finest writers of nineteenth-century France.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Jean-Claude Fignolé’s Les Possédés de la pleine lune begins and ends with death and madness, but is infused with humor and love throughout. A whirl of unresolved tension on the level of both form and content, the narrative unfolds in a spiral and does not lend itself to easy summarizing. Characters double and overlap, time collapses on itself, spaces alternate between the insular and the world, and language is at once pointed and wildly capacious. Fignolé leads the dance, of course, yet allows a tangle of other voices to reach the reader’s ear. The result is choral and chaotic—a moving but unromanticized portrait of a Haitian community in all its ambivalence and idiosyncrasy

Les Possédés de la pleine lune by Jean-Claude Fignolé (review). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265974380_Les_Possedes_de_la_pleine_lune_by_Jean-Claude_Fignole_review [accessed May 23 2018].

It is about a fictitious island, inhabited by great auks, that existed off the northern coast of Europe. The history begins when a wayward Christian missionary monk lands on the island and perceives the upright, unafraid auks as a sort of pre-Christian society of noble pagans. Mostly blind and somewhat deaf, having mistaken the animals for humans, he baptizes them. This causes a problem for The Lord, who normally only allows humans to be baptized. After consulting with saints and theologians in Heaven, He resolves the dilemma by converting the baptized birds to humans with only a few physical traces of their ornithological origin, and giving them each a soul.

The Red Lily tells of the affair between a woman of the world, married to a politician, with an artist. A trip to Florence (which symbolizes the title) crowns this carnal and mystical union. Soon, jealousy insinuates itself into the lover's heart, who ends the affair.
This novel by Anatole France, unique in its genre, now rehabilitated and returned to fashion, is partially autobiographical, since it is based on the, at first passionate affair, between the author and Mrs. de Caillavet

A compilation of 5 CDs of artists who sang in the TV show "La Chance aux chansons" in the 80's and the 90's

If you loved her performance at Fête de la Musique, you will love her first CD. Enjoy the incredible sound of New Caledonian Julia Paul with this first EP.

​

" I ama cave'skeeper, I live above it. Below, it's hollow, narrow, cool, humid and quiet. I often tell those owrds to myself ; they resonate and confort my solitude.

A woman on a cruiseship, tell a small group of officers the mysterious circumstances of her birth.

Her mother, Emmanuelle, became pregantn when she was 16 without having slept with a man. The news of this  weird pristine pregnancy was spread in the country with people becoming crazy. The young woman decided to leave Saint-Denis, her birthplace, and went for a long trip to Aigues-Mortes, facing a lot of crazy adventures.

This monthly periodical is exclusively written for French beginners learners.You will find articles with vocabulary about different topics such as politics, cooking, arts and culture as well as a short story and some activities on the French language. You can hear all the articles in the CD that goes with the magazine.

Phillip has a lot on his mind. At home, in his unnecessarily large, excessively expensive house, he is attempting to become a Taoist master of love with his wife, Alice, but his quest is forever being interrupted by the requests of his twin daughters -- "Can we have a pony, please?"; "We want to go to boarding school." At work, in his shed/office at the bottom of the garden, between countless games of Minesweeper and FreeCell, Phillip is trying to pay the mortgage by writing the instruction manuals to Korean bread-making machines. And at parties where he is concerned that he is not taken seriously -- he is variously mistaken as a waiter and a rhinoplastic surgeon -- Phillip tells the world he is, in fact, a screenwriter.

Above all, Phillip is obsessing about his best friends, Barry and Sean. They are rich, more successful, and, most worryingly, they give great presents. Their gifts are always exquisite -- a full set of Italian crockery, a handmade corkscrew from Venice; they give them on birthdays, at parties, and quite often for no reason whatsoever; and, increasingly, these presents break all bounds of generosity.

They are gifts that hurt a man's pride. And they can never be matched. Which doesn't mean Phillip won't try.

The text of this Norton Critical Edition is that of the corrected edition scrupulously prepared by Noel Polk, whose textual note precedes the text. David Minter's annotations are designed to assist the reader with obscure words and allusions.

"Backgrounds" begins with the appendix Faulkner wrote in 1945 and sometimes referred to as another telling of The Sound and the Fury and includes a selection of Faulkner’s letters, excerpts from two Faulkner interviews, a memoir by Faulkner's friend Ben Wasson, and both versions of Faulkner's 1933 introduction to the novel.

"Cultural and Historical Contexts" presents four different perspectives, two of them new to the second edition, on the place of the American South in history. Taken together, these works—by C. Vann Woodward, Richard H. King, Carolyn Porter, and Robert Penn Warren—provide the reader with valuable contexts for understanding the novel.

"Criticism" includes seventeen essays on The Sound and the Fury that collectively trace changes in the way we have viewed this novel over the last four decades. The critics are Jean-Paul Sartre, Irving Howe, Ralph Ellison, Olga W. Vickery, Cleanth Brooks, Michael Millgate, John T. Irwin, Myra Jehlen, Donald M. Kartiganer, David Minter, Warwick Wadlington, John T. Matthews, Thadious M. Davis, Wesley Morris and Barbara Alverson Morris, Minrose C. Gwin, André Bleikasten, and Philip M. Weinstein. A revised Selected Bibliography also is included.

Although this novella stands out from his body of work in that it’s a playful yet sinister fairy tale, it brilliantly fuses F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ongoing lush fantasies about the extremes of wealth with his much more somber understanding of what underpins it.  Loosely inspired by a summer he spent as a teenager working on a ranch in Montana, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is Fitzgerald’s hallucinatory paean to the American West and all its promises.

It’s the story of John T. Unger, a young Southerner who goes to Montana for summer vacation with a wealthy college classmate. But the classmate’s family proves to be much more than simply wealthy: They own a mountain made entirely of one solid diamond. And they’ve gone to dreadful lengths to conceal their secret … meaning John could be in danger.

But the family also has a daughter, lovely Kismine, and with her help, John may yet escape the fate her family has meted out to all their other guests so far …

Bouvard et Pécuchet details the adventures of two Parisian copy-clerks, François Denys Bartholomée Bouvard and Juste Romain Cyrille Pécuchet, of the same age and nearly identical temperament. They meet one hot summer day in 1838 by the canal Saint-Martin and form an instant, symbiotic friendship. When Bouvard inherits a sizable fortune, the two decide to move to the countryside. They find a 94-acre (380,000 m²) property near the town of Chavignolles in Normandy, between Caen and Falaise, and 100 miles (160 km) west of Rouen. Their search for intellectual stimulation leads them, over the course of years, to flounder through almost every branch of knowledge

​