When adulteress Thérèse and her lover Laurent murder her sickly husband Camille, the ghost of Camille haunts them after their marriage, transforming their passion for each other into hatred.

One of the most important, though controversial, French novelists of the late nineteenth century, and founder of the Realist movement, was Émile Zola (1840-1902). He was the most important example of the literary genre of naturalism, and an integral part of developing theatrical naturalism. "The Kill" is the second book in Zola's "Les Rougon-Macquart", a twenty-volume series about a fictional family during the Second French Empire. The Kill, a second...

Paris, the storybook capital of romance-of strolls down cobblestone streets and kisses by the Seine-may not be the ideal location to mend a wounded heart. But pragmatic professional writer Anna, who has been unlucky in love in L.A., has come here with keys to her aunt's empty apartment. Bilingual and blessed with dual citizenship, she seeks solace in the delectable pastries, in the company of old friends, and in her exciting new job: translating a...

A down-on-his-luck college professor attempts to forget his troubles in Paris, only to be drawn into the dangerous world of a mysterious woman.

In the eighteenth century, Laurence Sterne explores the temptations of the French capital in a teasing study of foreign mores and Restif de la Bretonne provides an eye-witness account of the Revolution. From the 1800s, Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola offer fascinating portraits of the city's teeming humanity; the Goncourt brothers chronicle the explosion of artistic talent; Huysmans describes an evening at the Folies Bergere. Colette chronicles the...