French fiction

A local scandal intrudes on Maigret's seaside holiday in book twenty-eight of the new Penguin Maigret series. At what point in the day could the note have been slipped into his pocket, his left breast pocket? It was an ordinary sheet of glazed squared paper, probably torn out of an exercise book. The words were written in pencil, in a regular handwriting that looked to him like a woman's.For pity's sake, ask to see the patient in room 15. When Inspector Maigret's wife falls ill on their seaside holiday, a visit to the hospital leads him on an unexpected quest to find justice for a young girl. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations."His artistry is supreme". (John Banville). "One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century ...Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories".(Guardian). "A supreme writer ...unforgettable vividness". (Independent).

A fictional autobiography of Maigret, Georges Simenon’s brilliant detective. The thirty-fifth book in the new Penguin Maigret series.In this make-believe memoir, Maigret recounts a meeting with the author himself. The account starts with the arrival of Georges Sim, as he is called here, at the Paris Police Judiciaire to soak up atmosphere for his crime novels by dogging the footsteps of Inspector Maigret. The detective is irritated by the audacious young writer who names a character after him and argues that he oversimplifies, in his fiction, the intricate duties of the police investigating a case. Here, Maigret “sets the record straight,” telling readers how he’s different from the invention, and about his courtship and marriage to his beloved Louise. Ingeniously amusing and tender, this is a look inside the mind of the brilliant Maigret like never before.

A new translation of Georges Simenon's novel set in claustraphobic provincial town, book eighteen in the new Penguin Maigret series.Cars drove past along with the trucks and trams, but by now Maigret had realised that they were not important. Whatever roared by like this along the road was not part of the landscape. ... What really counted was the lock, the hooting of the tugs, the stone crusher, the barges and the cranes, the two pilots' bars and especially the tall house where he could make out Ducrau's red chair framed by a window.Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as The Lock at Charenton.

Maigret's old colleague becomes an unexpected rival in book twenty-four of the new Penguin Maigret series.In everyone's eyes, even the old ladies hiding behind their quivering curtains, even the kids just now who had turned to stare after they had passed him, he was the intruder, the undesirable. No, worse, he was fundamentally untrustworthy, some stranger who had just turned up from who knew where to do who knew what.Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret's Rival.

Inspector Maigret investigates when the body of a diamond merchant is found at a Danish aristocrat and his reclusive sister's isolated mansion.

Inspector Jules Maigret investigates the murder of a prominent citizen of a little town on the coast of Brittany and, rather than make a quick arrest of a sad-eyed waitress who has seen too much, stay

Terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World WarAlfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called Chocolat soldier with t

The stories in Igifu summon phantom memories of Rwanda and radiate with the fierce ache of a survivor. From the National Book Award finalist who Zadie Smith says, “rescues a million souls from the col

'Oiled with a brooding tension that never dissipates or resolves, Winter in Sokcho is a noirish cold sweat of a book.' -- Guardian'Narrated in an elegant, enigmatic voice that skilfully summons the te

A reissue of the classic gothic novel that inspired the award-winning muslcalThis reissue of Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera is the first title in The Haunted Library, a new horror classics s