The Paris Affair

From the internationally best-selling author of Sarah's Key Tatiana de Rosnay comes an irreverent yet heartfelt collection of short stories that examines our most intimate and forbidden desires Late nights at the office... Hotel rooms and secret rendezvous... Lingering perfume... Sizzling texts... What takes place in Paris when husbands and wives tangle with infidelity? In this compulsively readable collection, Tatiana de Rosnay paints a portrait of forbidden loves in many shades - sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, sometimes heartfelt, always with a dry wit and unflinching authenticity. A PARIS AFFAIR will take you on a vacation overseas, into the hidden lives of husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, where illicit desire wars with duty, and where a French take on romance will surprise you every 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 book was a total delight -- Cat Sebastian, author of Two Rogues Make a Right on Best Laid Plaids Have kilt, will travel. Sweden, 1930 Two years ago, Dr. Ainsley Graham proved the existence of ghosts and fell in love—hard to top that. But a trip to Sweden to research at a prestigious university for the summer is nothing to sneeze at, especially since his partner, psychologist Joachim Cockburn, will be teaching alongside him. A change of scenery might be just the thing. Their idyllic trip to Sweden is interrupted by a ghost with a proclivity for rude hand gestures and graphic curse words—and a ghastly history begging to be investigated. Life among the living is complicated, too, by a gruff professor who can’t take his eyes off Ainsley, and an enticing new job offer for Joachim. What starts as an adventurous trip abroad turns into mayhem, murder, and…a magical moose? And everyone—well, perhaps not the moose—is a suspect in the death of the ghostly young man who brings them together to expose secrets, loves lost, and a crime that will shock them all. Kilty Pleasures Book 1: Best Laid Plaids Book 2: Where There’s a Kilt, There’s a Way

Long-buried secrets rise from the ashes of war... In the wake of the Battle of Waterloo, Paris is a house divided. The triumphant Bourbons flaunt their victory with lavish parties, while Bonapartists seek to avenge their defeat only to face capture and execution. Amid the turmoil, British attaché and intelligence agent Malcolm Rannoch and his wife, Suzanne, discover that his murdered half-sister, Princess Tatiana Kirsanova, may have borne a child—a secret she took to the grave. Malcolm suspects Tatiana's silence was owed to more than mere fear of impropriety. As Malcolm and Suzanne scour the ballrooms and boulevards of Paris in search for answers, they learn that the child was just one of many secrets Tatiana had been keeping. The princess was the toast of Paris when she arrived in the glamorous city, flirting her way into the arms of more than a few men—perhaps even those of Napoleon himself—and the father must be among them. But in the melee of the Napoleonic Wars, she was caught up in a deadly game, and now Malcolm and Suzanne must race against time to save her child from a similar fate... "Shimmers like the finest salons in Vienna." —Deborah Crombie "Meticulous, delightful, and full of surprises." —Tasha Alexander "Glittering balls, deadly intrigue, sexual scandals. . .the next best thing to actually being there!" —Lauren Willig

Nell is determined to find her beloved missing au pair in this vibrant adventure set in, and underneath, Paris. Penelope Magnificent spends as little time as possible with her awful parents—a grocery-mogul father and a fashion-obsessed mother who loves expensive purses more than she does her daughter. But when they mention an important trip to Paris, Nell begs to come along. Paris holds something very dear to her: her old au pair Perrine—Pear—who lives there. Pear used to write to Nell every week, promising to come to her rescue, but recently the letters stopped. With the help of a savvy bellboy named Xavier, Nell sets out from her parents’ ultra-fancy Parisian hotel to find her beloved Pear. But Pear’s old neighbors and coworkers are strangely tight-lipped. And as Nell’s search for the truth takes her and Xavier to some of the darkest, most mysterious parts of the city, a sinister plot comes to light involving the destruction of a cherished—and delicious—part of Parisian life. Food, fashion, and intrigue abound in this delightful caper from the author of The Secret Starling.

An NPR Best Book of 2017 Heiress to the nearly forty-billion-dollar L’Oréal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt was the world’s richest woman and the fourteenth wealthiest person. But her gilded life took a dark yet fascinating turn in the past decade. At ninety-four, she was embroiled in what has been called the Bettencourt Affair, a scandal that dominated the headlines in France. Why? It’s a tangled web of hidden secrets, divided loyalties, frayed relationships, and fractured families, set in the most romantic city—and involving the most glamorous industry—in the world. The Bettencourt Affair started as a family drama but quickly became a massive scandal, uncovering L’Oréal’s shadowy corporate history and buried World War II secrets. From the Right Bank mansions to the Left Bank artist havens; and from the Bettencourts’ servant quarters to the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy; all of Paris was shaken by the blockbuster case, the shocking reversals, and the surprising final victim. It all began when Liliane met François-Marie Banier, an artist and photographer who was, in his youth, the toast of Paris and a protégé of Salvador Dalí. Over the next two decades, Banier was given hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts, cash, and insurance policies by Liliane. What, exactly, was their relationship? It wasn’t clear, least of all to Liliane’s daughter and only child, Françoise, who became suspicious of Banier’s motives and filed a lawsuit against him. But Banier has a far different story to tell... The Bettencourt Affair is part courtroom drama; part upstairs-downstairs tale; and part characterdriven story of a complex, fascinating family and the intruder who nearly tore it apart.

Apparently, false rumors about Marie Antoinette are all the fashion in 1783. Marie Antoinette is facing hostility from the populace, inflamed by rumors circulated in pamphlets throughout Paris. The rumors claim that she has dozens of lovers, drinks the blood of poor people, holds satanic masses at Versailles, and more, when nothing could be further from the truth. On the advice of the handsome, enigmatic Captain von Bauer, Joseph II-emperor of Austria and Marie Antoinette's brother-decides that mystery-solving violinist Theresa Schurman is the ideal candidate for a spy to discover the source of these vile slanders.Theresa is only too glad to get away from Vienna for a while, unwilling to commit herself yet to marrying Zoltan-a Hungarian baron she met when she was fifteen-and running out of reasons to postpone her decision. She is eager, too, to explore a new musical scene and broaden her artistic education. But when the captain confounds her expectations and places her as a bookkeeper in the establishment of Rose Bertin, milliner to the queen, she begins to lose hope that she will ever achieve her musical aims-or the emperor's goal of exposing the pamphleteers.A chance encounter with the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, an extraordinary black violinist and expert swordsman, sets Theresa on the path to unraveling the mystery. But will the chevalier's patron, the powerful duc de Chartres, confound her efforts and put her-and the captain's-lives in danger?Be prepared for music, mystery, love, and murder in this riveting tale of pre-revolutionary Paris.

Imagine seeing your loving husband pop up on your best friend’s dating app. Now imagine that’s the best thing that happens to you all week... When Charlie sees a man who is the spitting image of her husband, Oliver, on a dating app, her heart stops. Her first desperate instinct is to tell herself she must be mistaken—after all, she only caught a glimpse from a distance as her friends laughingly swiped through the men on offer. But no matter how much she tries to push her fears aside, she can’t let it go. Because she took that photo. On their honeymoon. When other signs of betrayal begin to surface, Charlie does the only thing she can think of to defend herself—she signs up for the app to catch Oliver in the act. But Charlie soon discovers that infidelity is the least of her problems. Nothing is as it seems, and nobody is who she thinks they are...