"Commissaire Georges Dupin, a Parisian-born caffeine junkie recently relocated from the glamour of Paris to the remote (if picturesque) Breton coast, is not happy when he is dragged from his morning croissant and coffee to the scene of a curious murder. The local village of Pont-Aven--a sleepy community by the sea where everyone knows one other and nothing much seems to happen--is in shock. The legendary ninety-one-year-old hotelier Pierre-Louis Pennec,...

Brian Bad" Phelan, New Zealander and bomb-disposal expert, likes to live dangerously. While on vacation on the French–Italian border, he helps bring a body out of a rocky, wave-swept cove. The dead woman bears striking similarities to a young woman he met years ago, under mysterious circumstances, shortly before she disappeared in a flooded French cave and Bad is compelled to investigate. Meanwhile, Jesuit Father Daniel Octave is running his own...

McCullough mixes famous and obscure names and delivers capsule biographies of everyone to produce a colorful parade of educated, Victorian-era American travelers and their life-changing experiences in Paris.

When respected American religious symbology expert Dr. Robert Langdon is summoned to the Louvre by French Captain Bezu Fache, he soon discovers that he is the number 1 suspect for the murder of a historian with whom Langdon had been scheduled to meet. Assisted by a French cryptographer and government agent named Sophie, Langdon is challenged to decipher a chain of cryptic codes and puzzles, all the while trying to stay ahead of Fache's lawmen in a...

In the 1960s, renowned artist Alberto Giacometti requests for the writer James Lord to become the subject of one of his portraits. Although this seems like an innocent suggestion at first, Lord is quickly drawn into the strange web of Giacometti's beautiful, controversial and difficult world. The portrait sitting becomes so much more than what it seems at face value, and Lord's entire life sits on the precipice due to his association with the wildly...

"BERLIN, 1939. The dreams that Amanda Sternberg and her husband, Julius, had for their daughters are shattered when the Nazis descend on Berlin, burning down their beloved family bookshop and sending Julius to a concentration camp. Desperate to save her children, Amanda flees toward the south of France, where the widow of an old friend of her husband's has agreed to take her in. Along the way, a refugee ship headed for Cuba offers another chance at...

"It's V-E Day 1946 in London. Former spy Livy Nash is celebrating with her third drink before noon. She went to war to kill Nazis and quickly became one of the toughest agents in France. But her war ended with betrayal and the execution of the man she loved. Now Livy spends her days proofreading a demeaning advice column and her nights alone with black market vodka. But everything changes when she meets Ian Fleming. The man who will create the world's...

Orphan, clock keeper, and thief, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and the owner of a small toy booth in the train station, Hugo's undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message all come...

In an Appalachian city recovering from a plague called the Crumble, Anna waits for her friend's return and the plague's sole survivor Rory finds his solitary life interrupted by Eugenio, who is investigating the cause of the catastrophe.

"Two luminaries of French cinema, Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche, unite for the first time in this piercing look at the elusive nature of true love, and the extent to which we are willing to betray ourselves in its pursuit. Binoche plays Isabelle, a successful painter in Paris whose apparent independence belies what she desires most: real romantic fulfillment. Isabelle reveals deep wells of yearning, vulnerability, and resilience as she tumbles...