Fiction
- A Good Year - Peter Mayle
Max Skinner is a man at the heart of London's financial universe until his employers embark on a little asset-stripping of their own. Amid the grey London drizzle, there is one potential ray of sunshine: Max's Uncle Harry has left him his estate in his will - an eighteenth-century chateau and vineyard an hour's drive from Avignon.
Peter Mayle spent 15 years in the advertising business, first as a copywriter and then as a reluctant executive, before escaping Madison Avenue in 1975 to write educational books for children. In 1990 Mayle published A Year in Provence, which became an international bestseller; his books have since been translated into more than 20 languages, Mayle has contributed to The Sunday Times, the Financial Times, The Independent, GQ, and Esquire. He and his wife, Jennie, and their dogs live in the south of France.
- A Year in the Merde - Stephen Clarke
“There are lots of French people who are not at all hypocritical, inefficient, aggressive, arrogant, adulterous, or incredibly sexy. They just didn’t make it into my book …” A Year in the Merde shows the French as they really are. The...
- Blackberry Wine - Joanne Harris
Everyday magic, he called it, the transformation of base matter into the stuff of dreams - Layman's alchemy.
Jay Mackintosh is trapped by memory in the old familiar landscapes of his childhood, more enticing than the present, and to which he longs to return.
Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat (made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp) and many other bestselling novels.
For a full biography, please visit Joanne Harris - Author Page.
- Chasing Cézanne - Peter Mayle
Our hero, glamorous art photographer Andre Kelly, is on assignment for glamorous DQ Magazine - run by the glamorous Camilla Porter - in Cape Ferrat on the (you guessed it) glamorous Côte d'Azur. Snooping around an ancestral pile for some snaps, by chance he spies Old Claude, the ancient retainer of the immensely wealthy Denoyer family, packing the family Cezanne into a plumbing van. Puzzled, Andre investigates, and the game is afoot.
Peter Mayle spent 15 years in the advertising business, first as a copywriter and then as a reluctant executive, before escaping Madison Avenue in 1975 to write educational books for children. In 1990 Mayle published A Year in Provence, which became an international bestseller; his books have since been translated into more than 20 languages, Mayle has contributed to The Sunday Times, the Financial Times, The Independent, GQ, and Esquire. He and his wife, Jennie, and their dogs live in the south of France.
- Chocolat - Joanne Harris
Chocolat begins with Vianne Rocher and her six-year-old daughter Anouk arriving in the small village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes--"a blip on the fast road between Toulouse and Bordeaux"--during the carnival.
Three days later, Vianne opens a luxuriant chocolate shop crammed with the most tempting of confections and offering a mouth-watering variety of hot chocolate drinks. It's Lent, the shop is opposite the church, it's open on Sundays and Francis Reynaud, the austere parish priest, is livid.
Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat (made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp) and many other bestselling novels.
For a full biography, please visit Joanne Harris - Author Page.
- Coastliners - Joanne Harris
After three novels which centred around gastronomic pleasures Joanne Harris's new book, Coastliners, focuses on more astringent joys.
Sea, gritty sand and adverse weather conditions replace Chocolat, Blackberry Wine and Five Quarters of the Orange.
Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat (made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp) and many other bestselling novels.
For a full biography, please visit Joanne Harris - Author Page.
- Cross Channel - Julian Barnes
Wise and witty collection of stories of British in France. In these exquisitely crafted and turned stories spanning several centuries, Julian Barnes takes as his universal theme the British in France, our fascination with that country, our various and mixed reasons for being there and our sometimes ambiguous reception.
Julian Barnes is the author of ten novels, including Metroland, Flaubert’s Parrot, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters and Arthur & George; two books of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Table; and also three collections of journalism, Letters from London, Something to Declare, and The Pedant in the Kitchen. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. In France he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Médicis (for Flaubert’s Parrot) and the Prix Femina (for Talking it Over). In 1993 he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg. He lives in London.
- Dial M for Merde - Stephen Clarke
Englishman Paul West has just received an offer he can't refuse: two weeks in the sun, all expenses paid, with a beautiful blonde called Gloria Monday.
M, as Gloria likes to be known, is down south to report on caviar trafficking - but it soon becomes obvious that she's interested in something a lot more fishy than caviar.
Stephen Clarke lives in Paris, where he divides his time between writing and not writing. His first novel, A Year in the Merde, originally became a word-of-mouth hit in 2004, and is now published all over the world. Since then he has published three more bestselling Merde novels, as well as Talk to the Snail, an indispensable guide to understanding the French.
For a full biography, please visit Stephen Clarke - Author Page.
- Five Quarters of the Orange - Joanne Harris
Joanne Harris' sensational novel Five Quarters of the Orange revolves around a recipe book, continuing the theme of culinary intrigue begun in Chocolat and Blackberry Wine. Framboise, the middle-aged narrator, begins her story in Les Laveuses, on the banks of the Loire:
"When my mother died she left the farm to my brother, Cassis, the fortune in the wine cellar to my sister, Reine-Claude, and to me, the youngest, her album and a two-litre jar containing a single black Perigord truffle."
Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat (made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp) and many other bestselling novels.
For a full biography, please visit Joanne Harris - Author Page.
- Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes
Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the great French literary genius, Gustave Flaubert. As Geoffrey investigates the mystery of the stuffed parrot Flaubert borrowed from the Museum of Rouen to help research one of his novels, we learn an enormous amount about the writer's work, family, lovers, thought processes, health and obsessions.
Julian Barnes is the author of ten novels, including Metroland, Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters and Arthur & George; two books of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Table; and also three collections of journalism, Letters from London, Something to Declare, and The Pedant in the Kitchen. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. In France he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Médicis (for Flaubert's Parrot) and the Prix Femina (for Talking it Over). In 1993 he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg. He lives in London.
- French Kissing - Catherine Sanderson
Name: Sally Marshall Status: single mother Age: 32 Nationality: ten years in France, yet still English through and through I like: Living in Paris, playing with my daughter Lila (four years old), the company of good friends, the smell of baking bread…
Catherine Sanderson has been living in Paris for more than a decade, and has been blogging under the pseudonym Petite Anglaise since July 2004. Her website is one of the most widely read and best-loved British personal blogs. She lives in the working class cultural melting pot of Belleville with her daughter.
- Holy Fools - Joanne Harris
Holy Fools is Joanne Harris's most enjoyable novel yet, a beautifully detailed and sharply observed piece that emotionally moves the reader unlike anything she has tackled before. The immense success of Chocolat and Coastliners has made Harris one of the most cherished authors at work today, and each new book is something of an event.
Holy Fools is set in 17th century France, and the central character is Juliette, a former actress and rope dancer who has given up her travelling life to become a teaching nun at a remote abbey. Juliette has settled with her young daughter into an existence very different from that she knew, and she finds comfort from the advice of the wise and friendly abbess.
Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat (made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp) and many other bestselling novels.
For a full biography, please visit Joanne Harris - Author Page.
- Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources - Marcel Pagnol
In a rural French village an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water to grow their own flowers and crops, so are dismayed to hear that a new owner is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour, Jean, tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield throughout the hot summer.
Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) was born in Aubagne, France and had a brilliant literary and film career which made him one of the most respected creative talents in France. He was the first filmmaker elected to the Academie Francaise and a highly-regarded playwright. Pagnol was perhaps best-known to international audiences for his novels Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources which were later adapted by Claude Berri to great acclaim.
- Merde Actually - Stephen Clarke
A year after arriving in France, Englishman Paul West is still struggling with some fundamental questions: What is the best way to scare a gendarme? Why are there no health warnings on French nudist beaches? And is it really polite to sleep with your boss’s mistress?
Stephen Clarke lives in Paris, where he divides his time between writing and not writing. His first novel, A Year in the Merde, originally became a word-of-mouth hit in 2004, and is now published all over the world. Since then he has published three more bestselling Merde novels, as well as Talk to the Snail, an indispensable guide to understanding the French.
For a full biography, please visit Stephen Clarke - Author Page.
- Merde Happens - Stephen Clarke
Paul West is in deep financial merde. His only way out of debt is to accept a decidedly dodgy job that involves him touring America in a Mini, while pretending to be typically British.
Also in the car is Paul's French girlfriend, Alexa, and his American poet friend, Jake, whose main aim in life is to sleep with a woman from every country in the world.
Stephen Clarke lives in Paris, where he divides his time between writing and not writing. His first novel, A Year in the Merde, originally became a word-of-mouth hit in 2004, and is now published all over the world. Since then he has published three more bestselling Merde novels, as well as Talk to the Snail, an indispensable guide to understanding the French.
For a full biography, please visit Stephen Clarke - Author Page.
- Metroland - Julian Barnes
Christopher and Toni found in each other the perfect companion for that universal adolescent pastime: smirking at the world as you find it. In between training as flaneurs and the grind of school they cast a cynical eye over their various dislikes: parents with their lives of spotless emptiness, Third Division (North) football teams, God, commuters and girls, and the inhabitants of Metroland, the strip of suburban dormitory Christopher calls home.
Julian Barnes is the author of ten novels, including Metroland, Flaubert’s Parrot, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters and Arthur & George; two books of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Table; and also three collections of journalism, Letters from London, Something to Declare, and The Pedant in the Kitchen. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. In France he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Médicis (for Flaubert’s Parrot) and the Prix Femina (for Talking it Over). In 1993 he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg. He lives in London.
All the best
