( Read more... )

The Man Who Watced the Trains Go By (1938 ( Read more... )

The Cathedral (1898)
by J.K. Huysmans, translated by Clara Bell
339 pages - Dedalus European Classics

This novel picks up the story of the protagonist Durtal after the events of the previous novel, En Route. Durtal moves away from Paris to Chartres, home of what many consider to be the greatest example of cathedral building ( Read more... )

Three Beds in Manhattan (1946)
by Georges Simenon, translated by Lawrence G. Blochman
190 pages - Doubleday & Company

'It was all over. That phrase summed it up. He had run the cycle. He had looped the loop to come back to the point where Destiny had been leading him, where Destiny, in fact, had first met him. In the all-night lunch counter, ( Read more... )

The Friend of Madame Maigret (1950 ( Read more... )

The Madman of Bergerac (1932 ( Read more... )

Monsieur Monde Vanishes (1952)
by Georges Simenon, translated by Jean Stewart
174 pages - Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

'He was lucid, not with an everyday lucidity, the sort one finds acceptable, but on the contrary the sort of which one subsequently feels ashamed, perhaps because it confers on supposedly commonplace things the grandeur ascribed to ( Read more... )

The Hotel Majestic (1942 ( Read more... )

The Bar on the Seine (1931)
by Georges Simenon, translated by David Watson
154 pages - Penguin Books

"They say it's good to talk. That's just more fiction. The only thing that could help would be to start your life again from the beginning, right from the cradle." (pg.150)

Inspector Maigret of the Paris Police goes to see a criminal who is ( Read more... )

The Black Sheep (1842)
by Honore de Balzac, translated by Donald Adamson
339 pages - Penguin Classics

'All human passions work harmoniously together whenever they are leading to reckless folly.' (pg.76)

Philippe and Joseph are two brothers whose father dies while they are young. Philippe is a soldier who quits the army once Napoleon is defeated, ( Read more... )