Melanie Benjamin

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

California

A Novel

A captivating novel based on the story of the extraordinary real-life American woman who secretly worked for the French Resistance during World War II--while playing hostess to the invading Germans at the iconic Hotel Ritz in Paris--from the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue. In March 1940, the Nazis sweep Paris and immediately take up residence in one of the city's most iconic sites: The Hotel Ritz. There, under a roof legendary for its unprecedented luxury and for its fabled residents--including Coco Chanel, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Cole Porter, Hemingway, Balanchine, Doris Duke, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and now Hermann Gèoering--the Nazis rule over a paralyzed city. But two residents of the Ritz refuse to be defeated: its director, Claude Auzello, and his beautiful American actress wife, Blanche. They not only oversee the smooth workings of the hotel, but both Blanche and Claude throw themselves fearlessly into the dangerous and clandestine workings of the French Resistance. This is a true-to-life novel of a courageous woman and her husband who put their marriage--and ultimately their lives--in jeopardy to fight for freedom. Intimate, fearless, and moving, it spins a brilliantly and unforgettably vivid human portrait at a time of unimaginable crisis and sacrifice.

Mistress of the Ritz

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Jean Edward Smith

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Arkansas

How Eisenhower, de Gaulle, and Von Choltitz Saved the City of Light

Prize-winning and bestselling historian Jean Edward Smith tells the “rousing” (Jay Winik, author of 1944) story of the liberation of Paris during World War II—a triumph achieved only through the remarkable efforts of Americans, French, and Germans, racing to save the city from destruction. Following their breakout from Normandy in late June 1944, the Allies swept across northern France in pursuit of the German army. The Allies intended to bypass Paris and cross the Rhine into Germany, ending the war before winter set in. But as they advanced, local forces in Paris began their own liberation, defying the occupying German troops. Charles de Gaulle, the leading figure of the Free French government, urged General Dwight Eisenhower to divert forces to liberate Paris. Eisenhower’s advisers recommended otherwise, but Ike wanted to help position de Gaulle to lead France after the war. And both men were concerned about partisan conflict in Paris that could leave the communists in control of the city and the national government. Neither man knew that the German commandant, Dietrich von Choltitz, convinced that the war was lost, schemed to surrender the city to the Allies intact, defying Hitler’s orders to leave it a burning ruin. In The Liberation of Paris, Jean Edward Smith puts “one of the most moving moments in the history of the Second World War” (Michael Korda) in context, showing how the decision to free the city came at a heavy price: it slowed the Allied momentum and allowed the Germans to regroup. After the war German generals argued that Eisenhower’s decision to enter Paris prolonged the war for another six months. Was Paris worth this price? Smith answers this question in a “brisk new recounting” that is “terse, authoritative, [and] unsentimental” (The Washington Post).

The Liberation of Paris

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Sena Jeter Naslund

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

A fictional tale inspired by the life of Marie Antoinette presents the story of a teenage empress's daughter who is forced to leave her family home to marry the future king of France and who rebels against the formality and rigid protocol of court life. By the author of Ahab's Wife. 100,000 first printing.

Abundance, a Novel of Marie Antoinette

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#paperback #fiction #historical #historicalfiction #romance #france #love 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Arizona

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Orphan comes an unforgettable historical novel about a secret collection of Dior gowns that ties back to the first female pilots of WWII and a heartbreaking story of love and sacrifice. England, 1939: The Penrose sisters couldn't be more different. Skye is a daring and brash pilot, and Liberty the one to defy her at every turn. Even if women aren't allowed in the Royal Air Force, Skye is determined to help the war effort. She's thrilled when it reunites her with her childhood soulmate, Nicholas. She's less thrilled to learn Nicholas is now engaged to an enigmatic Frenchwoman named Margaux Jourdan. Paris, 1947: Designer Christian Dior unveils his glamorous first collection to a world weary of war and grief. He names his debut fragrance Miss Dior in tribute to his beloved sister Catherine, who forged a friendship with Skye and Margaux through her work with the French Resistance. Present Day: Fashion conservator Kat Jourdan discovers a priceless collection of Dior gowns in her grandmother's vacant cottage. As she delves into the mystery of their origin, Kat begins to doubt everything she thought she knew about her beloved grandmother.

The Paris Secret

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Lynne Olson

Dust jacket has slight crease lower left corner, see photo

Alabama

The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The little-known true story of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the woman who headed the largest spy network in occupied France during World War II, from the bestselling author of Citizens of London and Last Hope Island “Brava to Lynne Olson for a biography that should challenge any outdated assumptions about who deserves to be called a hero.”—The Washington Post NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE WASHINGTON POST In 1941 a thirty-one-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of a vast intelligence organization—the only woman to serve as a chef de résistance during the war. Strong-willed, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country’s conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. Her group’s name was Alliance, but the Gestapo dubbed it Noah’s Ark because its agents used the names of animals as their aliases. The name Marie-Madeleine chose for herself was Hedgehog: a tough little animal, unthreatening in appearance, that, as a colleague of hers put it, “even a lion would hesitate to bite.” No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence—including providing American and British military commanders with a 55-foot-long map of the beaches and roads on which the Allies would land on D-Day—as Alliance. The Gestapo pursued them relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of its three thousand agents, including Fourcade’s own lover and many of her key spies. Although Fourcade, the mother of two young children, moved her headquarters every few weeks, constantly changing her hair color, clothing, and identity, she was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape—once by slipping naked through the bars of her jail cell—and continued to hold her network together even as it repeatedly threatened to crumble around her. Now, in this dramatic account of the war that split France in two and forced its people to live side by side with their hated German occupiers, Lynne Olson tells the fascinating story of a woman who stood up for her nation, her fellow citizens, and herself. “Fast-paced and impressively researched . . . Olson writes with verve and a historian’s authority. . . . With this gripping tale, Lynne Olson pays [Marie-Madeleine Fourcade] what history has so far denied her. France, slow to confront the stain of Vichy, would do well to finally honor a fighter most of us would want in our foxhole.”—The New York Times Book Review

Madame Fourcade's Secret War

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#hardcover #ya #france #italy #cooking #recipes #cuisine #food

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Oklahoma

Great Adventures in European Regional Cooking

Recipes feature traditional dishes served at Italian and French inns, hotels, and restaurants

The World Class Cuisine of Italy and France

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Emmanuel Carrere

Linda Coverdale

Georgia

A Memoir

SELECTED BYTHE NEW YORK TIMES AS ONE OF THE 50 BEST MEMOIRS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS

"You begin this memoir thinking it will be about one thing, and it turns into something else altogether--a book at once more ordinary and more extraordinary than any first impressions might allow."--The New York Times

"Moving...Carrère's prose is precise and measured...Through interviews with friends and relatives of both families, he creates powerful portraits that celebrate ordinary lives."--The New Yorker

Award-winning author Emmanuel Carrère's,Lives Other Than My Own is an act of generous imagination that unflinchingly records devastating loss and, equally vividly, the wealth of human solace that follows in its wake.

In Sri Lanka, a tsunami sweeps a child out to sea, her grandfather helpless against the onrushing water. In France, a young woman succumbs to illness, leaving her husband and small children bereft. Present at both events, Emmanuel Carrère sets out to tell the story of two families--shattered and ultimately restored. What he accomplishes is nothing short of a literary miracle: a heartrending narrative of endless love, a meditation on courage and decency in the face of adversity, an intimateand reverent look at the extraordinary beauty and nobility of ordinary lives.

Precise, sober, and suspenseful, as full of twists and turns as any novel,Lives Other Than My Own confronts terrifying catastrophes to illuminate the astonishing richness of human connection: a grandfather who thought he had found paradise--too soon--and now devotes himself to helping his neighbors rebuild their village; a husband so in love with his ailing wife that he carries her in his arms like a knight does his princess; and finally, Carrère himself, longtime chronicler of the tormented self, who unexpectedly finds consolation and even joy as he immerses himself in the lives ofothers.

Lives Other Than My Own

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Delaware

New Adventures in the South of France

Encore Provence

Prescribing books that offer therapeutic benefits to his customers, a literary apothecary in a floating bookstore on the Seine struggles with private heartbreak before embarking on a journey of healing at the side of a blocked writer and a lovelorn chef. Reading-group guide available.

The Little Paris Bookshop

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Amanda Vaill

Gifted artist Gerald Murphy and his elegant wife, Sara, were icons of the most enchanting period of our time; handsome, talented, and wealthy expatriate Americans, they were at the very center of the literary scene in Paris in the 1920s. In Everybody Was So Young--one of the best reviewed books of 1998--Amanda Vaill brilliantly portrays both the times in which the Murphys lived and the fascinating friends who flocked around them. Whether summering with Picasso on the French Riviera or watching bullfights with Hemingway in Pamplona, Gerald and Sara inspired kindred creative spirits like Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Nicole and Dick Diver in Tender is the Night were modeled after the Murphys). Their story is both glittering and tragic, and in this sweeping and richly anecdotal portrait of a marriage and an era, Amanda Vaill "has brought them to life as never before" (Chicago Tribune).

Gerald and Sara Murphy - A Lost Generation Love Story

"A wonderfully bittersweet and beautifully written biography of that glittering couple whose tragic glamor inspired, amazed, and perplexed so many of the artistic giants of the lost generation". -- Deirdre Bair"There was a shine to life wherever they were", said Archibald MacLeish describing his friends Gerald and Sara Murphy. The real-life models for Nicole and Dick Diver in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, the Murphys have appeared in virtually every book about the Lost Generation, for their apartment in Paris and their Mediterranean Villa America were the center of social and artistic life for the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Stravinsky, John Dos Passos, Jean Cocteau, Cole Porter, and others. Gerald Murphy, the organizer of magical parties, was a brilliant painter whose work is currently undergoing a serious revival. Sara Murphy, an heiress who wore her pearls to the beach, was an enigmatic beauty whose allure enthralled Picasso (he painted her many times) aswell as Fitzgerald and Hemingway.They seemed to live an enchanted life, until 1929 when tragedy struck them in what Gerald called "our most vulnerable spot, our children". The story of their struggle to hold their charmed circle together through the dark years of the thirties and forties is as moving as the account of their creative lives is sparkling.Everybody Was So Young is both a portrait of two extraordinary people and a biography of a glamorous era that can ne

Everybody Was So Young

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Nina George

Ohio

Covers have sticker residue and pen marks. There are a couple creases on the spine as pictured. Inside pages of the book are in great condition. 

Connecticut

Germinal

Cortina Co. Staff

Oregon

Conversational French in Twenty Lessons

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Peter Mayle

Unable to resist an exciting job offer in Marseille, Sam and Elena find their happy return to the region's coastal sunshine and delectable cuisine challenged by an increasingly violent competition for waterfront property. By the author of The Vintage Caper. 100,000 first printing.

The Marseille Caper

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A great education book for your students, with plenty of illustrations. #hardcover #france #historical #history #homeschool 

Wisconsin

France 1660-1800

What Life Was Like During The Age of Reason

Michigan

The Joys of Cultivating a Potager

The tradition of the kitchen garden, or potager, has for centuries been a cornerstone of the French country way of life. In the French Kitchen Garden is a lovingly written, beautifully illustrated guide to cultivating a potager. Georgeanne Brennan offers advice on adapting a kitchen garden to any climate or space. Punctuated with impromptu recipes for delicious dishes incorporating the fresh produce of each season, this book encourages everyone to adopt the creative, relaxed style of the French country cook.

In the French Kitchen Garden

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#paperback #family #historical #fiction #war #england #france 

Virginia

From the million-copy Sunday Times bestseller comes a gripping story of family secrets, all-consuming love and the chaos of war.

2011. When Lucy's troubled father Tom passes away, she travels to Cornwall to visit his childhood home - the once-beautiful Carlyon Manor. Before he died, Tom had been researching an uncle she never knew he had. Determined to find out why, Lucy tracks down Beatrice Ashton, a local woman who seems to know more than she lets on, and has an extraordinary story to tell . . . 

1935. Growing up in Cornwall, Beatrice plays with the children of Carlyon Manor - especially pretty, blonde Angelina Wincanton. Then, one summer at the age of fifteen, she falls in love with a young visitor to the town: Rafe, whom she rescues from a storm-tossed sea.

On the surface, her life seems idyllic. But the dark clouds of war are gathering, and nobody, not even the Wincantons, will be left untouched.

A Gathering Storm is a powerful tale of courage and betrayal, spanning from Cornwall to London and Occupied France, in which friendship and love are tested, and the consequences span generations.

Praise for Rachel Hore's novels:
'Compelling, engrossing and moving' SANTA MONTEFIORE
'Simply stunning . . . I savoured every moment' DINAH JEFFERIES
'A story that stirs the deepest emotions' WOMAN & HOME
'An emotive and thought-provoking read' ROSANNA LEY
'Hore tackles difficult subjects with a clever, light touch and a sunny positivity. Her women are brave and good and you desperately want them to win'  DAILY MAIL
'An elegiac tale of wartime love and secrets' TELEGRAPH
'A tender and thoughtful tale' SUNDAY MIRROR

The Gathering Storm

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New Jersey

A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century

The son of a carpenter, Julian Sorel is inspired by the writings of Napoleon to conquer the heights of society. His initial plan to work his way up through the church is, however, thwarted when he is forced to accept employment as a tutor--and this rash social entrepreneur certainly has not
considered the dangers of falling in love. Stendhal's novel is an amusing and piquant study of hypocrisy and free will in post-Napoleonic France.

The Red and the Black

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Ann Mah

Louisiana

“If you enjoyed Sarah’s Key and Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, then this wonderful book by Ann Mah is for you.” -- Tatiana de Rosnay Sweetbitter meets The Nightingale in this page-turning novel about a woman who returns to her family’s ancestral vineyard in Burgundy and unexpectedly uncovers a lost diary, an unknown relative, and a secret her family has been keeping since World War II. To become one of only a few hundred certified wine experts in the world, Kate must pass the notoriously difficult Master of Wine examination. She’s failed twice before; her third attempt will be her last chance. Suddenly finding herself without a job and with the test a few months away, she travels to Burgundy to spend the fall at the vineyard estate that has belonged to her family for generations. There she can bolster her shaky knowledge of Burgundian vintages and reconnect with her cousin Nico and his wife, Heather, who now oversee day-to-day management of the grapes. The one person Kate hopes to avoid is Jean-Luc, a talented young winemaker and her first love. At the vineyard house, Kate is eager to help her cousin clean out the enormous basement that is filled with generations of discarded and forgotten belongings. Deep inside the cellar, behind a large armoire, she discovers a hidden room containing a cot, some Resistance pamphlets, and an enormous cache of valuable wine. Piqued by the secret space, Kate begins to dig into her family’s history—a search that takes her back to the dark days of World War II and introduces her to a relative she never knew existed, a great–half aunt who was a teenager during the Nazi occupation. As she learns more about her family, the line between resistance and collaboration blurs, driving Kate to find the answers to two crucial questions: Who, exactly, did her family aid during the difficult years of the war? And what happened to six valuable bottles of wine that seem to be missing from the cellar’s collection?

The Lost Vintage

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#hardcover #fiction #youngadultfiction #paris #ya #youngadult #romance #poetry #heartbreak #france 

Pennsylvania

"A pure delight." -- #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon For fans of Eleanor & Park and Emergency Contact comes a sweeping romance about the love that got away. Eugene and Tatiana could have fallen in love, if things had gone differently. If they had tried to really know each other, if it had just been them, and not the others. But that was years ago and time has found them far apart, leading separate lives. Until they meet again in Paris. What really happened back then? And now? Could they ever be together again after everything?

In Paris with You (1st Edition)

5b6d2ab6-3a34-4fba-8fd4-28cf7f656cf3-1

Antony Mason

Andrew S. Hughes

Jen Green

Explores the French painter's life and development as an artist, his involvement with Fauvism, and his continued experimentation with art.

Matisse

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Light sticker damage on front dust jacket 📸

An English expatriate living in France, Bennett is hired by Julian Poe, an entrepreneur out to corner the lucrative truffle market, and finds himself coping with underworld crime, the gorgeous Anna, village busybodies, and an unusual order of monks. 150,000 first printing. Tour.

Anything Considered

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#paperback #humor #marriage #dianejohnson #france

Illinois

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST "If one were to cross Jane Austen and Henry James, the result would be Diane Johnson."—San Francisco Chronicle The national bestseller and inspiration for the major motion picture starring Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson! Called "stylish... refreshing... genuinely wise” by The New York Times Book Review,this delightful comedy of manners and morals, money, marriage, and murder follows smart, sexy, and impeccably dressed American Isabel Walker as she lands in Paris to visit her stepsister Roxy, a poet whose marriage to an aristocratic French painter has assured her a coveted place in Parisian society—until her husband leaves her for the wife of an American lawyer. Could "le divorce" be far behind? Can irrepressible Isabel keep her perspective (and her love life) intact as cultures and human passions collide? "Social comedy at its best" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), Le Divorce is Diane Johnson at her most scintillating and sublime.

Le Divorce

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Asha Lemmie

Florida

Following her New York Times bestselling debut Fifty Words for Rain, Asha Lemmie's next sweeping and evocative novel introduces a determined young woman’s search for the larger-than-life literary figure she believes to be her father. When tragedy forces Delphine Auber, an aspiring writer on the cusp of adulthood, from her home in postwar Paris, she seizes the opportunity to embark on the journey she's long dreamed of: finding the father she has never known. But her quest—spanning from Paris to New York’s Harlem, to Havana and Key West—is complicated by the fact that she believes him to be famed luminary Ernest Hemingway, a man just as elusive as he is iconic. She desperately yearns for his approval, as both a daughter and a writer, convinced that he holds the key to who she's truly meant to be. But what will happen if she is wrong, or if her real story falls outside of the legend of her parentage that she’s revered all her life? The Wildest Sun is a dazzling, unexpected, and transportive story about coming into adulthood—from escaping our pasts, to the stories we tell ourselves, to the ambition that drives us—as we seek to find out who we are.

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Save this search

Melanie Benjamin

Mistress of the Ritz

Jean Edward Smith

The Liberation of Paris

Sena Jeter Naslund

Abundance, a Novel of Marie Antoinette

Natasha Lester

The Paris Secret

Lynne Olson

Madame Fourcade's Secret War

Gail Greco

The World Class Cuisine of Italy and France

Emmanuel Carrere; Linda Coverdale

Lives Other Than My Own

Peter Mayle

Encore Provence

Nina George

The Little Paris Bookshop

Amanda Vaill

Everybody Was So Young

Nina George

The Little Paris Bookshop

Emile Zola

Germinal

Cortina Co. Staff

Conversational French in Twenty Lessons

Peter Mayle

The Marseille Caper

Time Life

What Life Was Like During The Age of Reason

Georgeanne Brennan

In the French Kitchen Garden

Rachel Hore

The Gathering Storm

Stendhal; Catherine Slater (Edited and Translated by); Roger Pearson (Introduction by)

The Red and the Black

Ann Mah

The Lost Vintage

Clémentine Beauvais

In Paris with You (1st Edition)

Antony Mason; Andrew S. Hughes; Jen Green

Matisse

Peter Mayle

Anything Considered

Diane Johnson

Le Divorce

Asha Lemmie

The Wildest Sun