Publisher Comments

Olivier and Madison Malin have what most celebrity magazines would call the perfect life. Olivier is a telegenic version of Sartre: philosopher, gourmand, and media personalitythe darling of Paris's most exclusive cafes, as well as the darling of more than one mistress. And Madison's celebrity has eclipsed even her husband's. An American film star turned Parisian It girl, Madison has buried her Texas upbringing along with a few years from her true age beneath the trappings of an exquisitely decorated salon, an impeccable French accent, and a collection of couture gowns. Together, Olivier and Madison are the toast of Paris's neighborhood of neighborhoods, the Left Bank, where the perfect couple and their friends indulge in fine wines, bon mots, and some exceptional cheeses.

Everything looks flawless, if a touch pretentious. But when their precocious trophy daughter Sabine goes missing at a European mega-amusement park, her self-centered parents are finally forced to focus on something other than their own reflections.

With the sting of a good Camembert, Kate Muir's fiction debut is a sophisticated, fun, and delightfully satirical look at family life along Paris's Left Bank that will have readers of all ages hungry for more.

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Publisher Comments

This story begins in the Paris of the 1930s, when artists and writers stood at the center of the world stage. In the decade that saw the rise of the Nazis, much of the thinking world sought guidance from this extraordinary group of intellectuals. Herbert Lottman's chronicle follows the influential players Gide, Malraux, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Koestler, Camus, and their pro-Fascist counterparts through the German occupation, Liberation, and into the Cold War, when the struggle between superpowers all but drowned out their voices.

"Surprisingly fresh and intense. . . . A retrospective travelogue of the Left Bank in the days when it was the setting for almost all French intellectual activity. . . . Absorbing."Naomi Bliven, New Yorker

"An intellectual history. A history of the interaction between politics and letters. And a rumination on the limitless credulity of intellectuals."Christopher Hitchens, New Statesman

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Publishers Comments

Walking his two young children to school every morning, Thad Carhart passes an unassuming little storefront in his Paris neighborhood. Intrigued by its simple sign—Desforges Pianos—he enters, only to have his way barred by the shop’s imperious owner. Unable to stifle his curiosity, he finally lands the proper introduction, and a world previously hidden is brought into view. Luc, the atelier’s master, proves an indispensable guide to the history and art of the piano. Intertwined with the story of a musical friendship are reflections on how pianos work, their glorious history, and stories of the people who care for them, from amateur pianists to the craftsmen who make the mechanism sing. The Piano Shop on the Left Bank is at once a beguiling portrait of a Paris not found on any map and a tender account of the awakening of a lost childhood passion.

“[Carhart’s] writing is fluid and lovely enough to lure the rustiest plunker back to the piano bench and the most jaded traveler back to Paris.”

–San Francisco Chronicle

“Captivating . . . [Carhart] joins the tiny company of foreigners who have written of the French as verbs. . . . What he tries to capture is not the sight of them, but what they see.”

–The New York Times

“Thoroughly engaging . . . In part it is a book about that most unpredictable and pleasurable of human experiences, serendipity. . . . The book is also about something more difficult to pin down, friendship and community.”

–The Washington Post

“Carhart writes with a sensuousness enhanced by patience and grounded by the humble acquisition of new insight into music, his childhood, and his relationship to the city of Paris.”

–The New Yorker

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

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Publisher Comments

Walks in Hemingway's Paris is the perfect companion to the most romantic and fascinating of cities for those who want to experience Paris beyond the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. Covering all the area of Paris that Hemingway and his fellow expatriates once roamed from Left Bank to Right, Noel Riley Fitch provides an intimate visit to major Parisian landmarks as well as to out-of-the-way cafes, hotels and residences immortalized by "Papa" and his friends.

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Publisher Comments

With the same insight and understanding he brought to his National Book Critics Circle Award–nominated The Black Room at Longwood, in The Angel of the Left Bank Jean-Paul Kauffmann confronts humanity’s struggle with God. His muse is Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Eugène Delacroix’s “spiritual testimony” and certainly one of his masterpieces, a painting that portrays one of the most enigmatic episodes in Genesis.

Throughout his careful, impassioned examination of the work, which Delacroix labored over for eight years and finished in 1861, Kauffmann touches on architecture and art history, philosophy and religion, and the luminous city of Paris itself. Like a detective, he looks for lingering clues in the places Delacroix frequented and the objects he touched some 150 years ago, seeking to connect with the artist’s philosophical and artistic process—and, in turn, to discover what truths we might ultimately glean from it. His journey makes for enthralling reading.

Reviews:

“Kauffmann spins off onto delightful tangents. . . . [He] makes his obsession with this painting and all it represents vivid and visceral.” Los Angeles Times

“French historian Kauffmann sweeps readers up in his magnificent obsession for Eugène Delacroix’s mural. . . . A masterpiece of investigation, explication, introspection, and narrative, brilliantly illuminating an artist’s mind and a scholar’s heart.” Kirkus Reviews

“A passionate narrative . . . [a] quiet and insightful meditation on the human skirmish with divinity.” Los Angeles Times

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