A fictional portrait of the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - pilot, aristocrat and author of Le Petit Prince. Iturbe's last novel, The Librarian of Auschwitz, was a huge success.
Ruthlessly funny memoir of working front of house: the great deception of ease, of luxe, calme et volupte , of lamplight and conversation, while, behind the swing doors, rages a very differe... read more
A beguiling work of auto-fiction - a juggling act that Carrère refined in Limonov, The Kingdom etc. He begins a ten-day retreat, lit by the sun of literary success, but desperate matters in... read more
The spirited companion volume to her Days in the Caucasus: reaching Paris, she cuts her hair and swirls with the beautiful people of 1920s' Paris - Malraux and Kazantzakis, fellow emigr?s ... read more
Louis XV's astronomer sails the seas to observe the transit of Venus; two and half centuries later his telescope draws a man to a woman. A new novel by the author of other, gently off-beat r... read more
The season's most arresting title? Ambitious and witty, this novel about a student researching rural life in the marshlands of western France is another fruit of Enard's wildly leaping imag... read more
From the author of the breathtaking At Night All Blood is Black (winner of the International Booker Prize in 2021), this novel is another marvel. Set in C18th France and Africa, its protagon... read more
Besides telling the dismal, astounding story of one of the world's most notorious miscarriages of justice, this new account seeks out the life of the young French officer before he was consu... read more
Brighton, 1968: a film producer, a novelist and an actress find their private lives encroaching into their public worlds. Pressures build on the trio...
By extraordinary chance, the author discovered an address book in the inner pocket of a vintage diary dating back to 1951. It disclosed an amazing list of luminaries from the European avant-... read more
The author's investigation of her family's history and her own identity was sparked by the arrival of an anonymous postcard bearing four names that arrived over forty years after those four ... read more
SOE sent more than 400 agents into France of whom 39 were women. Vigurs traces them all here, not just the well known ones, and sets them in their context.
The clandestine manoeuvres of one branch of military intelligence, responsible for saving thousands of lives. Airey Neave, Jimmy Langley, Sam Derry and Mary Lindell emerge as central figures... read more
Mathilde Carre joined the French Resistance in 1940 but was captured by the Germans a year later and betrayed her network. She survived working as as a double agent and then - possibly - a t... read more
The spark for this remarkable memoir was a scribbled list of paintings that belonged to the Parisian author's great-grandparents - Degas, Renoir, Monet, Tiepolo etc - of which she knew nothi... read more
An Alpine hotel with a room missing, a private bank in Switzerland, skullduggery over an inheritance, a ravishing young woman - just some of the layers in this fiendish onion of a novel.
Irreverent, witty and often barmy novel about how people make sense of war. Begins in 1940 with a young woman running naked down the boulevard du Montparnasse.
Recounts the author's quest for Adele Hugo, who followed the object of her (unrequited) love, a British soldier, to the Caribbean, and then returned to live out the rest of her days in a Fre... read more
A biography of Marguerite Steinheil (1869-1954), who ascended the social ladder in Belle Epoque Paris on the rungs of many lovers, until a night in May 1908 when her husband and mother were ... read more
For those who would sell their soul for an éclair. Mille-feuilles for autumn, croissants for Sunday mornings, crêpes for tea, cakes and puddings so sublime your hips will forgive you.
Following the catastrophe in which Henry's heir was drowned, England sank into a terrible civil war in which English, Normans, Scots and Welsh competed in the ancient game of thrones.
A brilliant hour-by-hour recreation of what happened on 27 July 1794, from the midnight when Robespierre was in full control to the midnight when he was on the run.