The Paris Game

Long dismissed as a vain and arrogant self-seeker chasing glory, Charles de Gaulle is revealed in The Paris Game as a transformative figure of the twentieth century whose unflagging determination brings France back from defeat and saves it from the twin threats of Communism and dictatorship

At a crucial moment in the Second World War, an obscure French general reaches a fateful personal decision: to fight on alone after his government’s flight from Paris and its capitulation to Nazi Germany. Amid the ravages of a world war, three men — a general, a president, and a prime minister — are locked in a rivalry that threatens their partnership and puts the world’s most celebrated city at risk of destruction before it can be liberated. This is the setting of The Paris Game, a dramatic recounting of how an obscure French general under sentence of death by his government launches on the most enormous gamble of his life: to fight on alone after his country’s capitulation to Nazi Germany. In a game of intrigue and double-dealing, Charles de Gaulle must struggle to retain the loyalty of Winston Churchill against the unforgiving opposition of Franklin Roosevelt and the traitorous manoeuvring of a collaborationist Vichy France. How he succeeds in restoring the honour of France and securing its place as a world power is the stuff of raw history, both stirring and engrossing.

The Savage Detectives elicits mixed feelings. An instant classic in the Spanish-speaking world upon its 1998 publication, a critical and commercial smash on its 2007 translation into English, Roberto Bolaño’s novel has also been called an exercise in 1970s nostalgia, an escapist fantasy of a romanticized Latin America, and a publicity event propped up by the myth of the bad-boy artist. David Kurnick argues that the controversies surrounding Bolaño’s life and work have obscured his achievements—and that The Savage Detectives is still underappreciated for the subtlety and vitality of its portrait of collective life. Kurnick explores The Savage Detectives as an epic of social structure and its decomposition, a novel that restlessly moves between the big configurations—of states, continents, and generations—and the everyday stuff—parties, jobs, moods, sex, conversation—of which they’re made. For Kurnick, Bolaño’s book is a necromantic invocation of life in history, one that demands surrender as much as analysis. Kurnick alternates literary-critical arguments with explorations of the novel’s microclimates and neighborhoods—the little atmospheric zones where some of Bolaño’s most interesting rethinking of sexuality, politics, and literature takes place. He also claims that The Savage Detectives holds particular interest for U.S. readers: not because it panders to them but because it heralds the exhilarating prospect of a world in which American culture has lost its presumptive centrality.

In this unforgettable novel, Leonard Cohen boldly etches the youth and early manhood of Lawrence Breavman, only son of an old Jewish family in Montreal. Life for Breavman is made up of dazzling colour – a series of motion pictures fed through a high-speed projector: the half-understood death of his father; the adult games of love and war, with their infinite capacity for fantasy and cruelty; his secret experiments with hypnotism; the night-long adventures with Krantz, his beloved comrade and confidant. Later, achieving literary fame as a college student, Breavman does penance through manual labour, but ultimately flees to New York. And although he has loved the bodies of many women, it is only when he meets Shell, whom he awakens to her own beauty, that he discovers the totality of love and its demands, and comes to terms with the sacrifices he must make.

What happens when a Korean-American preacher’s kid refuses to get married, travels the world, and quits being vegetarian? She meets her polar opposite on an online dating site while sitting at a café in Paris, France and ends up in Paris, Maine, learning how to hunt. A memoir and a cookbook with recipes that skewer human foibles and celebrates DIY food culture, Deer Hunting in Paris is an unexpectedly funny exploration of a vanishing way of life in a complex cosmopolitan world. Sneezing madly from hay fever, Lee recovers her roots in rural Maine by running after a headless chicken, learning how to sight in a rifle, shooting skeet, and butchering animals. Along the way, she figures out how to keep her boyfriend’s conservative Republican family from “mistaking” her for a deer and shooting her at the clothesline.

As she pounded on the door of the Metro to let her in, the train lurched forward and started to move. Running over to look through the window where her younger sister Zoe and cousin Thibault sat alone, she yelled, “go to Thibault’s house.” Watching helplessly, the train disappeared into the tunnel. Anna Dahlia, a middle school girl on a Paris family vacation, wanted to prove her independence and show how responsible she could be. She never thought it would be this tough. While traveling on the Paris Metro with her younger sister and cousin, her purse is stolen while boarding a connecting train. She is left without directions, phone, or wallet. No one is around to help. Will she avoid a panic attack? Where will she find help? Can she make her way? Will her sister and cousin manage on their own? This wasn’t the vacation she expected. ★★★★★ One story, written as two books, told from each sister’s perspective. In the first book, read the story from Anna Dahlia’s viewpoint. Continue with the second book to increase comprehension, add extra details, and story variations with the story seen from her sister Zoe’s point of view. Reading a book twice can dramatically increase reader comprehension. However, encouraging readers to read a story twice can be tough. Providing the same story from another character’s point of view, bringing a change in perspective, and some alternate storylines will excite readers to take a deeper dive into what they have just read.

"The Paris Game is a sexy noir romance--a gritty, thrilling peek between dangerous Parisian sheets." -Tiffany Reisz, Award-Winning and International Bestselling Author of The Original Sinners series (Mira Books) On the darker side of Paris, it's dangerous to not pay your debts... A singer in a jazz club past its prime, Sera Durand must come up with thousands of euros to pay back her boss, a ruthless gangster. A confrontation with her ex, an art dealer profiting on the wrong side of the law, leads her into a questionable wager, but one that could solve her problems. Marc Perron knows a winning proposition when he sees one. Seducing a shy young woman of Sera's acquaintance will be the easiest thing in the world, and the prize, to have Sera in his bed once again, is worth the chance of losing a sizable sum. What he didn't expect was the depth of Sera's desperation. When one of his deals goes awry, Marc's solution could cost them more than money... More praise for 'The Paris Game': "Characters who grab you. A plot that takes hold and won't let go. Sexy and seductive, 'The Paris Game' is modern noir at its best." -Cathy Pegau, author of Rulebreaker and Caught in Amber "Dark, mysterious, sexy. Noir at its best." -Roxy Boroughs, author of A Stranger's Touch