Graham Robb

Napoleon Bonaparte, Marie Antoinette, Baudelaire, Baron Haussmann, the real-life Mimi of La Boheme, Proust, Charles de Gaulle--these and many more are Robb's cast of characters in a series of stories about the Paris you never knew.

"Best-selling author Graham Robb finds that the 2,000-year-old map of Ptolemy unlocks a central mystery of British history. Two years ago, Graham Robb moved to a place of legend called the Debatable Land, an independent territory that once served as a buffer between Scotland and England. The oldest detectable territorial division in Great Britain, the Debatable Land was once the bloodiest region in the country. After most of its population was slaughtered...

Eugene wants to get on in the world. So he has come to Paris, where the streets teem with chancers, criminals, and social climbers-and everyone is out for what he can get. When he finds a place to stay at a shabby boarding house, he sees the potential to make a fortune in two beautiful, aristocratic women who visit the lonely old lodger Goriot. Could they bring Eugene the status and acceptance he craves? Nothing is as it seems in Paris, however, and...