France

Maybe the worst indignity for a Paris cop is to be shot dead by an old granny he is trying to help cross the street in Paris on a frosty morning. An old lady needs protection with so many druggies around these days. Dressed as an elderly Vietnamese woman, Inspector Van Thian goes to...Read more

Every year the storks set off on their miraculous 12,000-mile migration from Northern Europe to Central Africa. Then one year, inexplicably, they do not return.

At the invitation of the wealthy Swiss ornithologist Max Boehm, a young French academic, Louis Antioch, agrees to...Read more

Antoine, a fanatic billiards player, is asked to watch over a Paris art gallery. When he scuffles with a thief a statue falls and severs his right hand. His maverick investigation leads to the discovery of a series of gruesome killings. Soon Antoine finds himself the prime suspect in the...Read more

A collaboration between William Heinemann, Secker & Warburg and Octopus Books to create a series of omnibus editions of certain authors which would be available at low prices. The works of Simenon, and especially with an emphasis on the Maigret stories, were an obvious choice for...Read more

In another Epicurean journey in France, renowned wine critic Benjamin Cooker’s world gets turned upside down one night in Paris. He retreats to the region around Tours to recover. There a flamboyant British dandy, a spectacular blue-eyed blond, a zealous concierge and touchy local police...Read more

The year is 1918, the war on the Western Front all but over. An ambitious officer, Lieutenant Henry D'Aulnay-Pradelle, sends two soldiers over the top and then surreptitiously shoots them in the back to incite his men to attack the German lines.

When another of D'Aulnay-...Read more

Some favors simply cannot be refused. Tonio agrees to write a love letter for Dario, a low-rent Paris gigolo. When Dario is murdered, a single bullet to the head, Tonio finds he has been left a small vineyard near Naples. The wine is undrinkable, but an elaborate scam has been set up. The...Read more

June 1945. The war is over. As dawn breaks across the hills of Provence, 15-year-old Pierrot stumbles across the body of Capitaine Patrocle, a local hero of the Resistance, who has been murdered. In his wallet, Pierrot finds a letter, which he conceals beneath his cap. It provides the key...Read more

Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of...Read more

Dany Longo is blonde, beautiful, disturbed, passionate--and nearsighted. As she speeds through the south of France in a purloined Thunderbird on an errand for her employer and his wife, no one, including Dany herself, knows where she is headed--or why she is going there.Read more

Maigret is a few years short of his retirement and has just refused promotion to the post of Head of the Police Judiciare, preferring the human contact he enjoys as Head of the Criminal Division. His wish is granted when Madam Nathalie Sabin-Levesque, an elegant but highly nervous lwoman,...Read more

Set against a high-profile hunt for the latest criminal gang to hit Paris, Maigret is determined to track down the murderer of a quiet crook for whom he cannot help feeling affection and respect.Read more

When a long lost friend pays a visit to Maigret's office, he is shocked to learn that the man's roommate has been murdered. With the help of his old friend, Maigret delves into the life of the victim and finds a complex web of relationships that leads him to the culprit.Read more

Egypt, 528 BC. Kel, a young scribe recently hired by the prestigious Guild of Interpreter, arrives at work one morning to find the entire staff slaughtered. He flees in panic, taking with him the mysterious coded papyrus his colleagues had been deciphering. Thus he becomes prime suspect at...Read more