The Lemoine Affair

Their friend Marcel Proust had killed himself after the fall in diamond shares, a collapse that annihilated a part of his fortune. This is the first-ever translation into English of this startling tour-de-force by one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. The Lemoine Affair was inspired by the real-life French scandal involving Henri Lemoine, who claimed he could manufacture diamonds from coal and convinced numerous people—including officers of the De Beers diamond mine company and Proust himself—to invest in the scheme. In a series of pastiches—imitations written in the style of other writers—Proust tells the story of the embarrassment rippling across high society Paris in the wake of the scandal, poking fun at himself (in one story, a character declares that Marcel Proust is so embarrassed he’s suicidal) while lampooning some of France’s greatest writers, including Flaubert, Balzac, and Saint-Simon. Full of sophisticated wit and dazzling wordplay, and rife with allusions to his friend and fictional characters, many Proust scholars see the dead-on mimicry of The Lemoine Affair—written soon after Proust’s rejection of society life—as the work by which he honed his own unique, masterly voice. The Art of The Novella Series Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE The secret daughter of a French politician and a famous actress drops the startling revelation that will shatter her family in this beguiling debut novel of intrigue and betrayal. NAMED ONE OF SUMMER’S BEST BOOKS BY The Skimm • Marie Claire • LitHub • Subway Book Review • Paperback Paris Margot Louve is a secret: the child of a longstanding affair between an influential French politician with presidential ambitions and a prominent stage actress. This hidden family exists in stolen moments in a small Parisian apartment on the Left Bank. It is a house of cards that Margot—fueled by a longing to be seen and heard—decides to tumble. The summer of her seventeenth birthday, she meets the man who will set her plan in motion: a well-regarded journalist whose trust seems surprisingly easy to gain. But as Margot is drawn into an adult world she struggles to comprehend, she learns how one impulsive decision can threaten a family’s love with ruin, shattering the lives of those around her in ways she could never have imagined. Exposing the seams between private lives and public faces, The Margot Affair is a novel of deceit, desire, and transgression—and the exhilarating knife-edge upon which the danger of telling the truth outweighs the cost of keeping secrets.

This is the first translation into English in its entirety of Marcel Proust's Pastiches et Mélanges, published by Gaston Gallimard in 1919. The first part, Pastiches, contains nine literary parodies about a fraudster, Henri Lemoine, who claimed to be able to manufacture diamonds. The pastiches are in the manner of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Henri de Régnier, Michelet, Émile Faguet, Renan and the Goncourt brothers. The second part, Mélanges, consists of four sections: the destruction of cathedrals in the First World War, the separation of church and state, a drama about madness, and Proust's love of reading. Proust is best known for writing À la recherche du temps perdu (variously translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time), widely considered to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The Melody beneath the Words is the first translation into English in its entirety of Marcel Proust's Pastiches et Mélanges, published by Gaston Gallimard in 1919. The first part, Pastiches, contains nine literary parodies about a fraudster, Henri Lemoine, who claimed to be able to manufacture diamonds. The pastiches are in the manner of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Henri de Régnier, Michelet, Émile Faguet, Renan and the Goncourt brothers. The second part, Mélanges, consists of four sections: the destruction of cathedrals in the First World War, the separation of church and state, a drama about madness, and Proust's love of reading. Proust is best known for writing À la recherche du temps perdu (variously translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time), widely considered to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The Melody beneath the Words is the first translation into English in its entirety of Marcel Proust's Pastiches et Mélanges, published by Gaston Gallimard in 1919. The first part, Pastiches, contains nine literary parodies about a fraudster, Henri Lemoine, who claimed to be able to manufacture diamonds. The pastiches are in the manner of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Henri de Régnier, Michelet, Émile Faguet, Renan and the Goncourt brothers. The second part, Mélanges, consists of four sections: the destruction of cathedrals in the First World War, the separation of church and state, a drama about madness, and Proust's love of reading. Proust is best known for writing À la recherche du temps perdu (variously translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time), widely considered to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century.

A new translation from the original French manuscripts of Marcel Proust's The Lemoine Case (L'Affaire Lemoine). This edition contains a new Afterword by the translator, a timeline of Proust's life and works and a glossary of philosophic concepts in his body of work. Published in 1921 as a novella, this work explores themes of identity, deception, and the nature of truth through a tale about a man named Lemoine, who gains fame and adoration by falsely claiming to be a renowned military hero. In an argument for Nietzsche's Subjectivism, Proust questions the reliability of appearances and the power of social constructs in shaping public perception. The novella delves into the complexities of human behavior, offering reflections on the allure of personal narratives and the intricate interplay between truth and falsehood.

"This moving book is both an act of defiance — a way to construct a home outside of borders — and a timely manifesto on the need for more equitable housing policy in America, weaving her scholarship in economic justice together with her firsthand experience of the many places she’s lived. “Home Bound” is not just a resonant personal history, but also a thoroughly researched investigation of home." —Rajpreet Heir, The New York Times Book Review "Readers of Home Bound will likely experience that pleasant rush of recognizing something personal in someone else’s reality, of answering, yes, home feels like this to me, too." —Chicago Review of Books "Bee’s lyrical, emotive prose takes readers through her life with an intimacy that draws and keeps them close. . . . [Home Bound will] appeal to a variety of reader, challenging singular beliefs of what it means to be a daughter, sister, lover, wife, lawyer, and mother." —Library Journal, starred review In this singular and intimate memoir of identity and discovery, Vanessa A. Bee explores the way we define “home” and “belonging” — from her birth in Yaoundé, Cameroon, to her adoption by her aunt and her aunt’s white French husband, to experiencing housing insecurity in Europe and her eventual immigration to the US. After her parents’ divorce, Vanessa traveled with her mother to Lyon and later to London, eventually settling in Reno, Nevada, as a teenager, right around the financial crisis and the collapse of the housing market. At twenty, still a practicing evangelical Christian and newly married, Vanessa applied to and was accepted by Harvard Law School, where she was one of the youngest members of her class. There, she forged a new belief system, divorced her husband, left the church, and, inspired by her tumultuous childhood, pursued a career in economic justice upon graduation. Vanessa’s adoptive, multiracial, multilingual, multinational, and transcontinental upbringing has caused her to grapple for years with foundational questions such as: What is home? Is it the country we’re born in, the body we possess, or the name we were given and that identifies us? Is it the house we remember most fondly, the social status assigned to us, or the ideology we forge? What defines us and makes us uniquely who we are? Organized unconventionally around her own dictionary-style definitions of the word “home,” Vanessa tackles these timeless questions thematically and unpacks the many layers that contribute to and condition our understanding of ourselves and of our place in the world.

What is The Secret of Chimneys? A young drifter finds out when a favor for a friend pulls him into the heart of a deadly conspiracy in this captivating classic from Agatha Christie. Little did Anthony Cade suspect that an errand for a friend would place him at the center of a deadly conspiracy. Drawn into a web of intrigue, he begins to realize that the simple favor has placed him in serious danger. As events unfold, the combined forces of Scotland Yard and the French Sûreté gradually converge on Chimneys, the great country estate that hides an amazing secret.

Now in a convenient eBook bundle, this Modern Library edition provides the most authoritative, critically acclaimed translation of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece in six volumes, In Search of Lost Time, which includes Swann’s Way, Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way, Sodom and Gomorrah, The Captive, The Fugitive, and Time Regained. Graham Greene considered Marcel Proust “the greatest novelist of the twentieth century, just as Tolstoy was in the nineteenth.” Edmund Wilson proposed that he was “perhaps the last great historian of the loves.” And Virginia Woolf celebrated Proust for “his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity.” The prolific French master dazzled many of the most cherished authors of our time, and now his signature work comes alive in this practical and completely accessible eBook bundle. For these Modern Library volumes, D. J. Enright revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworkings of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s and Andreas Mayor’s translations to match the definitive French editions published in recent decades. Expertly and lovingly crafted to rival Marcel Proust’s original in elegance, precision, and emotional resonance, here is In Search of Lost Time as it was meant to be read.

* INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Amazon Editors' Pick for Best Book of the Year in Fiction "Visceral and haunting" (New York Times Book Review) · "Hopeful" (Washington Post) · "Powerful" (Los Angeles Times) · "Thrilling" (TIME) · "Tantalizingly beautiful" (Elle) · "Suspenseful, atmospheric" (Vogue) · "Aching and poignant" (Guardian) · "Gripping" (The Economist) Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny's dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption? Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds.