"One of the great masterpieces of James's late period--and the author's own favorite among his works. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY. First published in 1903, The Ambassadors follows the middle-aged Lambert Strether, dispatched from Massachusetts to Paris by his wealthy fiancee to "rescue" her son Chad from the corrupting influences of Europe and its wicked women. Once Strether arrives in Paris, however, Chad introduces him to a world that he finds refined and...

"Nana is probably the most famous character in Les Rougon-Macquart. The novel that bears her name, published in 1880, is the ninth volume in the series. It consists of a number of episodes, or tableaux, in the short but spectacular life of Ana Coupeau, the fourth child of Gervaise Macquart. We first saw her as a young girl in L'Assommoir (1877), her father an abusive alcoholic, her mother Gervaise reduced to a similar degraded state. She works as...

The first volume of Marcel Proust's seven-part masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, Swann's Way introduces the novel's major themes and its narrator, then turns its focus to Charles Swann, a wealthy connoisseur who moves in high-society circles in nineteenth-century Paris, and a victim of an agonizing romance.

"The only thing chillier than a Parisian winter is cold-blooded murder. When French financier Edgar Bowen drowns in a bowl of soup, his former girlfriend, American Rachel Levis, is alarmed by the unnatural death. Who dies eating a nice vichyssoise? But when she overhears a mourner at his funeral describing the circumstances of his death, something sounds even stranger: a bottle of rosé was on the dining table when he died. The only problem: Edgar...

As the Nazis march toward Paris in 1940, American ballerina Lucie Girard buys her favorite English-language bookstore to allow the Jewish owners to escape. She struggles to run Green Leaf Books due to oppressive German laws and harsh conditions, but finds a way to aid the resistance by passing secret messages between the pages of her books. Widower Paul Aubrey wants nothing more than to return to the States with his little girl, but the US Army convinces...

Mauprat is a novel by the French novelist George Sand about love and education. It was published in serial form in April and May 1837.Like many of Sand's novels, Mauprat borrows from various fictional genres - the Gothic novel, chivalric romance, the Bildungsroman, detective fiction and the historical novel. The novel's plot has been called a plot of female socialization, in which the hero is taught by the heroine how to live peacefully in society....

For four decades, Pierre Brossard has eluded capture as one of the most vicious SS officers in history. Condemned to death in absentia he's tenuously protected by an intricate web of Nazi collaborators and an extreme right-wing faction of the Catholic Church. With nothing more than a suitcase and a prayer, Brossard seeks refuge in a monastery outside Salon-de-Provence. He knows the Committee for Justice is closing in. With every reason to fear his...

"1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild devastated French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen-children's libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains...

France, July 1944: a month after the Allied landings in Normandy and the liberation of Europe is under way. In the Pas-de-Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband, Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day. Appalled but determined,...

"Champagne, 1940: Inès has just married Michel, the owner of storied champagne house Maison Chauveau, when the Germans invade. As the danger mounts, Michel turns his back on his marriage to begin hiding munitions for the Résistance. Inès fears they'll be exposed, but for Céline, half-Jewish wife of Chauveau's chef de cave, the risk is even greater--rumors abound of Jews being shipped east to an unspeakable fate. When Céline recklessly follows...