European Literature

Claudine et son père ont quitté leur village de Montigny pour s'installer à Paris, où la jeune fille va découvrir la vie parisienne avec le soutien de son cousin Marcel, son ami, son confident et son complice. Elle finit par s'habituer à la vie dans cette ville qu'elle trouvait dure au début, et commence à sortir et à mener une vie mondaine. Elle ne tarde pas de tomber amoureuse de Renaud, chroniqueur de la vie mondaine, un grand séducteur aux tempes grisonnantes. Malgré l'hostilité de Marcel dont c'est... le père, elle finit par épouser Renaud.

L'ambassadeur américain voyage en Angleterre avec sa famille et s'installe dans un chateau hanté.

À Édimbourg dans les années trente, Mademoiselle Brodie enseigne dans une des écoles de filles les plus huppées d'Écosse. Ses méthodes d'éducation très personnelles et son charisme lui valent l'admiration de ses élèves les plus brillantes, un petit groupe de jeunes filles qu'elle nomme le "clan Brodie". Face à elle se dresse la presque intégralité de ses collègues, choqués par son enseignement d'avant-garde qui jure tant avec la rigueur historique observée dans l'école.

FEAT DESC 1617, Vardø, au nord du cercle polaire, en Norvège. Maren Magnus-datter, vingt ans, regarde depuis le village la violente tempête qui s'abat sur la mer. Quarante pêcheurs, dont son frère et son père, gisent sur les rochers en contrebas, noyés. Ce sont les hommes de Vardø qui ont été ainsi décimés, et les femmes vont désormais devoir assurer seules leur survie.

Comment, au fil de hasards qui n'en sont pas, Ambroise, le thanatopracteur amoureux des vivants et sa grand-mère Beth vont rencontrer la jolie Manelle et le vieux Samuel, et s'embarquer pour un joyeux road trip en corbillard, à la recherche d'un improbable dénouement ? Un conte moderne régénérant, ode à la vie et à l'amour des autres. Tout lecteur fermera heureux, ému et réparé, ce deuxième roman qui confirme le talent de Jean-Paul Didierlaurent.

Considered to be French novelist Victor Hugo's masterpiece, Les Miserables, which was published in 1862, is a sprawling historical and philosophical epic that covers from 1815 through the Paris Uprising in 1832. Notable for its many subplots and digressions from the main storyline, the novel's stated aim is a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, which can be seen most clearly in the story of the central character Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who struggles to shake the sins of his past and become a good man.

Mirae was meant to save her queendom, but the ceremony before her coronation ends in terror and death, unlocking a strange new power within her and foretelling the return of a monster even the gods fear. Amid the chaos, Mirae’s beloved older brother is taken—threatening the peninsula’s already tenuous truce. Desperate to save her brother and defeat this ancient enemy before the queendom is beset by war, Mirae sets out on a journey with an unlikely group of companions while her unpredictable magic gives her terrifying visions of a future she must stop at any cost.

Byron's exuberant masterpiece tells of the adventures of Don Juan, a handsome and charming young man naturally gifted with the ladies. After his first illicit love affair at the age of 16 in his native Spain, he is exiled to Italy. Following a dramatic shipwreck, his exploits take him to Greece, where he is sold as a slave, and to Russia, where he becomes a favorite of the Empress Catherine, who sends him on to England.

Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel, is regarded by many as her masterpiece. Molly Gibson is the daughter of the doctor in the small provincial town of Hollingford. Her widowed father marries a second time to give Molly the woman's presence he feels she lacks, but until the arrival of Cynthia, her dazzling stepsister, Molly finds her situation hard to accept. Intertwined with the story of the Gibsons is that of Squire Hamley and his two sons.

"Notre vie avait-elle irrémédiablement basculé ? Ne serait-elle plus jamais comme avant ? Étrange, cette notion d'avant et d'après. Je sentais que nous venions de perdre quelque chose d'essentiel. Aucune projection dans l'avenir. Aucun espoir. Rien. Le vide. Une ombre planait désormais sur notre vie. Et j'avais peur."

Between the years of 1762 and 1763, James Boswell kept a journal of his time in London. During his time, he met the renowned writer, moralist, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, with whom Boswell would form a close relationship. This account, told with much detail and candor, was one of the various journals written by Boswell, but it is the journal that has undergone the least amount of censorship, leading it, and the racy material within, to be deemed a best seller upon publication.

After completing a dangerous mission training police officers in war-torn Afghanistan, Detective Maria Kallio returns to Finland as the head of a new special crimes unit. But what awaits her in her home country is her most challenging and unsettling case yet. Three immigrant Muslim girls, all members of the same social club, have gone missing under mysterious circumstances. When the body of a fourth girl is found in the snow, strangled with her own headscarf, the investigation takes on a grim new urgency.

Revered for his magnificent works of fiction, Jorge Luis Borges thought of himself primarily as a poet. Poems of the Night is a moving collection of the great literary visionary's poetic meditations on nighttime, darkness, and the crepuscular world of visions and dreams, themes that speak implicitly to the blindness that overtook Borges late in life—and yet the poems here are drawn from the full span of Borges's career.

The Sorrows of Young Werther was Goethe's first major success, turning him from an unknown into a celebrated author practically overnight. Napoleon Bonaparte considered it one of the great works of European literature. He thought so highly of it that he wrote a soliloquy in Goethe's style in his youth and carried Werther with him on his campaigning to Egypt.

Conte philosophique considéré comme l'un des chefs-d'œuvre de Voltaire, "Candide" frappe par sa légèreté, et sa justesse. Le héros est un jeune homme crédule à qui son précepteur, Pangloss, inculque une théorie très simpliste sur l'optimisme. Les mésaventures du jeune héros mettent à mal cette doctrine. Cela permet à Voltaire de se moquer de toutes les théories métaphysiques qui ne résistent pas à l'épreuve des faits.

Margaret of Anjou, queen of England, cannot give up on her husband - even when he slips into insanity. And as mother to the House of Lancaster's last hope, she cannot give up on her son - even when England turns against them. This gripping tale of a queen forced to stand strong in the face of overwhelming odds is, at its heart, a tender tale of love. Award-winning author Susan Higginbotham will once again ask listeners to question everything they know about right and wrong, compassion and hope, duty to one's country, and the desire of one's own heart.

Due uomini condividono lo stesso nome, Asle. Uno è un uomo di successo, l’altro alza il gomito troppo spesso. Viene da pensare che siano la stessa persona, eppure a volte si incontrano e si parlano. Il tempo e lo spazio li seguono come due rette che a volte sembrano intersecarsi, su quella che potrebbe essere la costa sudoccidentale della Norvegia, tra i ghiacci, il mare scuro e i fiordi. Tra amori fugaci, alcool, gruppi rock e sigarette, i due Asle si incontrano per la prima volta. Si assomigliano, si vestono allo stesso modo ed entrambi vogliono fare i pittori.

Rainbow Valley was written in 1919 by L. M. Montgomery for the series that began with Anne of Green Gables. Anne and Gilbert's children are growing up! Their new friends, the Merediths, live in the Manse nearby. When the Merediths aren't playing in the graveyard or riding pigs through town, they meet up with the Blythes to play, fish, and study insects in Rainbow Valley!

"Comment on se marie" regroupe quatre courts récits d'Émile Zola, qui relèvent de l'étude de mœurs. Quatre mariages, quatre milieux sociaux différents et un seul regard. Si, chez les bourgeois, le mariage est une transaction financière, chez d'autres l'amour est possible. L'auteur montre les différences de modes de vie pour mieux laisser apprécier l'absolue similarité des rapports conjugaux, et l'inexorable défaite du mariage tel que le XIXe siècle l'imposait aux hommes et aux femmes.

Quel tyran se dissimule derrière cette jeune noble qui cache sous ses draps le cadavre de son amant ? Jusqu'où Julien est-il prêt à s'embarquer pour une nuit d'amour que Thérèse lui promet, s'il l'aide à se débarrasser du corps ? Aimer n'est-ce pas se condamner déjà ?