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Here’s the book for October 2026: Antigone by Jean Anouilh

Antigone by Jean Anouilh (1944) retells Sophocles’ myth under the German Occupation. Antigone defies Creon’s ban and buries her brother Polynices. She chooses revolt and death over a reasonable compromise. Creon, the pragmatist, tries to save the state and talk her out of it. The play sets youthful absolutism against the politics of the possible.

Here’s the book for September 2026: Le livre de ma mère by Albert Cohen

Book of My Mother (Le Livre de ma mère, 1954) is Albert Cohen’s lyrical memoir for his mother, who died in Marseille in 1943 while he was in exile in London. It grew from wartime pieces published in La France libre and became a hymn to her total, self-sacrificing love. Cohen also accuses himself of neglect and ingratitude toward her. The style is intimate, repetitive, and grief-stricken rather than chronological. He hoped the book would make other sons gentler with their living mothers.

Here’s the book for August 2026: François le Champi by George Sand

A champi was a child abandoned in the fields by his parents. As they grow up, say “the good people,” champis become lazy and thieves. No, not if they are loved, replies George Sand. A poor woman, La Zabelle, and then Madeleine, a young woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, take in a beautiful child and love him so deeply that he returns their love a hundredfold. In this book, there is nothing but love: maternal love and filial love, frivolous love or passionate love. George Sand’s pastoral novels unfold in the woods and fields, in farmyards and village festivals. They radiate purity. They are also an act of faith and hope in a better future for the poor and the unfortunate. For them, George Sand fought all her life.

Here’s the book for July 2026: Le Temps des secrets by Marcel Pagnol

The holidays in La Treille continue, but they are no longer the same: Lili now has to work in the fields with his father, and Marcel meets Isabelle, the daughter of the poet Loïs de Montmajour. Then comes the start of sixth grade and the appearance on the scene of the unforgettable Lagneau…

Urged on by his readers, and for his own pleasure, Pagnol decides to transform his diptych into a tetralogy, turning his Souvenirs d’enfance into a genuine coming-of-age novel in the tradition of Kim or The Jungle Book. In Le Temps des secrets(1960), the young Marcel temporarily betrays Lili’s friendship for the illusion of love, and Pagnol the writer proves — in his portrayal of the alcoholic poet and his grotesque wife — that he has lost none of his vis comica. The project grows in scope, and the book ends without really ending, in anticipation of Le Temps des amours.

Here’s the book for June 2026: Les belles images by Simone de Beauvoir

The Beautiful Images is a novel by Simone de Beauvoir, published in 1966. It follows a woman from the Parisian upper-middle class in the prosperous 1960s, living in a seemingly perfect modern environment. Through her eyes, the book examines social norms, the image people project, and the pressure of appearances. Beauvoir offers a sharp yet elegant critique of consumer society and the roles imposed on women. A concise, ironic, and strikingly relevant novel about inauthenticity and the search for meaning.

Here’s the book for May 2026: Charlotte by David Foenkinos

Charlotte Salomon is born into a family stricken by suicide and a country at war. But there is something exceptional about her – she has a gift, a talent for painting. And she has a great love, for a brilliant, eccentric musician. But just as she is coming into her own as an artist, death is coming to control her country. The Nazis have come to power and, as a Jew in Berlin, Charlotte’s life is narrowing, and she knows every second is precious.

Inspiring, unflinching, terrible and hopeful, Charlotte is the heartbreaking true story of a life filled with curiosity, animated by genius and cut short by hatred.

Here’s the book for April 2026: Un homme qui dort by Georges Perec

(A Man Asleep) by Georges Perec is a short, hypnotic novel written in the second person. It follows a 25-year-old Parisian student who, one day, simply stops everything: he abandons his studies, his friends, his ambitions, and even the smallest daily routines. The narrative becomes an inventory of absence and progressive detachment, cataloguing what the man no longer possesses or desires. Through a flat, repetitive, almost medical voice, Perec explores radical indifference, voluntary disappearance into sleep and emptiness. The book is both a quiet existential experiment and one of the most striking portraits of depression and withdrawal in modern French literature.

Here’s the book for March 2026: Tartuffe by Molière

Renowned for his satirical works, Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673) delighted in lampooning the social pretensions and conceits of 17th-century French society. In this 1664 verse comedy with serious overtones, Tartuffe, a penniless scoundrel and religious poseur, is invited by a gullible benefactor to live in his home.

Here’s the book for February 2026: L’armée des ombres by Joseph Kessel

It was in London, in 1943, that Joseph Kessel, an unrivaled storyteller and the foremost chronicler of our time, wrote Army of Shadows. This is not only one of his masterpieces but the symbolic novel of the Resistance, which the author presents as follows: “France no longer has bread, wine, or fire. But above all, it no longer has laws. Civil disobedience, individual or organized rebellion, have become duties toward the fatherland.”Never has France waged a higher or more beautiful war than those fought in the cellars where its free newspapers are printed, on the nocturnal fields and secret coves where it welcomes its free friends and from which its free children depart, in the torture chambers where, despite the pincers, the red-hot needles, and the crushed bones, French men and women die as free human beings.Everything you are about to read here was lived by people of France.

Here’s the book for January 2026: La maison Tellier et autres nouvelles by Guy de Maupassant

This collection of nine realist short stories explores everyday life, provincial customs, and human desires with irony and subtlety.The title story follows the girls from a Rouen brothel closed for a countryside First Communion, revealing tenderness and social hypocrisy. The other tales (Sur l’eau, Une partie de campagne, Boule de Suif, etc.) depict ordinary people facing greed, loneliness, or love, often with a biting twist. A concise, impactful classic of naturalism.

La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils

The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils, published in 1848, is a romantic and tragic novel that delves into the complexities of love and the social conventions of 19th-century France. Inspired by a true story, it portrays the passionate yet doomed romance between Marguerite Gautier, a Parisian courtesan afflicted with tuberculosis, and Armand Duval, a young man whose sincere love is thwarted by societal prejudices. Through poignant prose, Dumas fils explores themes of sacrifice, disillusionment, and the pursuit of authenticity in a world dominated by appearances.

Therese Desqueyroux by François Mauriac

Thérèse Desqueyroux, a motherless orphan, attempted to poison her husband, Bernard. To preserve family honor, Bernard testifies in her favor in court, and Thérèse is acquitted. As the novel begins, she is on her way to the Argelouse estate, where she must face the man she tried to kill. In one of his most austere works, Mauriac portrays the introspection of a soul seeking forgiveness for her sins, in a coldly unforgiving and rigid bourgeois world that leaves no room for tragic deviations.

My Mother’s Castle by Marcel Pagnol

In this second volume of Childhood Memories, Marcel Pagnol recounts his Provençal childhood, centered around the family’s vacation home, “the castle,” where he spends idyllic summers. The story highlights his tender bond with his mother, Augustine, his adventures with his friend Lili, and moments of simple joy in the Garrigue. The narrative blends nostalgia, humor, and emotion, painting a vivid portrait of Provence and childhood.

The Dead Woman in Love and other stories by Theophile Gautier

“The Dead Woman in Love and Other Stories” is a collection of supernatural and romantic tales by French author Théophile Gautier, originally published in the 19th century. The centerpiece, “La Morte Amoureuse” (1836), follows Romuald, a young priest who falls in love with Clarimonde, a beautiful vampiress. Their forbidden romance blurs the lines between life and death, as Clarimonde survives by drinking Romuald’s blood, while he grapples with his religious duties and passionate desires. The story explores themes of love transcending death, temptation, and the conflict between spiritual and carnal worlds.

Courrier sud by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Courrier Sud (Southern Mail), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s first novel, published in 1929, is a poetic blend of adventure and introspection drawn from his experiences as an airmail pilot. The story follows Jacques Bernis, a solitary pilot flying the perilous Toulouse-Dakar route for the Latécoère company, navigating deserts, storms, and mechanical risks. Interwoven with vivid depictions of flight and the Sahara, the narrative explores Bernis’s fleeting, tragic love affair with Geneviève, a married woman, reflecting his struggle to reconcile his isolated aviator’s life with human connection. The novel’s lyrical prose and themes of courage, solitude, and the clash between duty and desire foreshadow Saint-Exupéry’s later works like The Little Prince.

Claudine’s house by Colette

Claudine’s House, the first of Colette’s best-selling Claudine novels, is a tender and heartfelt portrayal of childhood and memory. On its first publication, its popularity was such that the Claudine series gave rise to a musical stage play and an entire range of related merchandise. In an idyllic setting of countryside and woods, Colette spent her childhood surrounded by a warm and loving family. Years later, her memories and experiences inspired her to create a series of snapshots of the innocence of provincial life. At once poignant and vividly alive, her recollections portray a magical world, filled with the beauty and the warmth of human relationships and, above all, the lasting impressions made by her wonderful mother. 

Lucrèce Borgia by Victor Hugo

Indifferent to the hatred of all Italy, Lucrezia Borgia parades at the Venice carnival. Who could worry this powerful woman steeped in adultery, incest, and crime? She is afraid, however, and trembles. for a simple captain whom she seeks among the crowd. His name is Gennaro. He is in love with her, he who holds the Borgias in aversion and insults their coat of arms. However, Gennaro is none other than her son, born of her incestuous love affair with his own brother, and the young man knows nothing of her past and origins. Lucrezia is a monster, but also a woman and a mother. How to protect her child, how to save him from the fury of a husband who believes him to be her lover? In 1833, this tragic melodrama surpassed all of Victor Hugo’s triumphs.

Colline by Jean Giono

Deep in Provence, a century ago, four stone houses perch on a hillside. Wildness presses in from all sides. Beyond a patchwork of fields, a mass of green threatens to overwhelm the village. The animal world—a miming cat, a malevolent boar—displays a mind of its own.

The four houses have a dozen residents—and then there is Gagou, a mute drifter. Janet, the eldest of the men, is bedridden; he feels snakes writhing in his fingers and speaks in tongues. Even so, all is well until the village fountain suddenly stops running. From this point on, humans and the natural world are locked in a life-and-death struggle. All the elements—fire, water, earth, and air—come into play.

Traité sur la tolérance by Voltaire

In 1762 Jean Calas, a merchant from Toulouse, was executed after being falsely accused of killing his son. As it became clear that Calas was in fact persecuted for being a Protestant, Voltaire began a campaign to get his sentence overturned—and in the process made the case for some of the most important values upheld by the Enlightenment, from religious tolerance to freedom of thought. Treatise on Toleration is the story of that case and a screed against fanaticism—a book that is as fresh and urgent today as it was when it was first published in 1763.

The Devil’s Pool by George Sand

Set in rural France during the 19th century, the story follows the lives of two young lovers, Germain and Marie, as they navigate the challenges and conflicts of their social and cultural backgrounds. Germain, a poor peasant, and Marie, a wealthy landowner’s daughter, find themselves irresistibly drawn to each other despite the societal barriers that separate them. Their love affair is forbidden and faces opposition from their families and the rigid class divisions of their community. As the narrative unfolds, Sand delves into the themes of social inequality, the limitations imposed by tradition, and the power of love to challenge societal norms. She paints a vivid picture of rural life, capturing the beauty of the natural surroundings and the struggles faced by the working class.

Mercure by Amélie Nothomb

On an island, an old gentleman and a young girl live sheltered from any reflection. A nurse arrives to treat the young girl. While more and more trusting relationships are formed between them, the nurse discovers the elements of a mystery and a drama which stem from the strange law that the old man makes reign on the island.

Letters from My Windmill by Alphonse Daudet

A collection of vivid and lyrical tales by the nineteenth-century French novelist celebrates his beloved region of Provence.

les contes de la bécasse by Guy de Maupassant

Every year, a baron who is passionate about hunting brings together his hunting friends around him. At the end of the meal, the spell designates a guest who must tell a story. Small stories that are in turn funny and touching, where we take pleasure in ridiculing some and laughing at others. Why is the brave Morin nicknamed by everyone “this pig of Morin”? What were the adventures of a country lady when her garden was looted by thieves? What is the story of this old man dancing in the alleys of the Luxembourg nursery in Paris? Many questions whose answers can be found in these mischievous tales!

la chamade by Françoise Sagan

Like many of Sagan’s novels, this is a story of lost love. A couple meet and move in together, but the woman cannot get used to his life, his working-class existence. She leaves her lover to return to her affair with a man of means…

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout. Passing through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand—whether train or elephant—overcoming set-backs and always racing against the clock.

Manon des sources by Marcel Pagnol

A formidable storyteller, Marcel Pagnol recounts the revenge of Manon who discovers the existence of the source searched in vain by her father, and which was known to the other villagers. Shepherdess, “beautiful wild woman”, Manon is the flamboyant heroine of this Provençal novel.

La douleur by Marguerite Duras

Written in 1944 and first published in 1985, Duras’s riveting account of life in Paris during the Nazi occupation and the first months of liberation depicts the harrowing realities of World War II–era France “with a rich conviction enhanced by [a] spare, almost arid, technique” (Julian Barnes, The Washington Post Book World ). Duras, by then married and part of a French resistance network headed by François Mitterand, tells of nursing her starving husband back to health after his return from Bergen-Belsen, interrogating a suspected collaborator, and playing a game of cat and mouse with a Gestapo officer who was attracted to her. The result is “more than one woman’s diary . . . [it is] a haunting portrait of a time and a place and also a state of mind” (The New York Times).

La fin de la jalousie et autres nouvelles by Marcel Proust

Deeply in love with the beautiful Françoise Seaune, Honoré de Tenvres is constantly moved by this incredible love. Until the day she is told that she has a reputation for being an easy woman. Upset, he suddenly discovers the torments of jealousy… Worldly, voluptuous and cruel, the characters in these short stories by Proust flit around with a refinement that announces the heroes of In Search of Lost Time. There are 4 novels.

The Game of Love and Chance by Marivaux

The Game of Love and Chance is a three-act romantic comedy by French playwright Marivaux. The Game of Love and Chance was first performed 23 January 1730. In this play, a young woman is visited by her betrothed, whom she does not know. To get a better idea of the type of person he is, she trades places with her servant and disguises herself. However, unbeknownst to her, her fiancé has the same idea and trades places with his valet.

La femme au collier de velours by Alexandre Dumas

Une mort très douce is a short autobiographical story by Simone de Beauvoir, published in 1964, which describes how the author lived the last months of her mother’s life with her. According to Sartre, this book is the best she has written.

La femme au collier de velours by Alexandre Dumas

The first chapter of this short novel is in fact autobiographical. Dumas discusses at some length Charles Nodier (1780-1844), writer and close friend with whom he was welcomed in Paris in his early days and thanks to whom he was introduced into the intellectual life of the capital. At the end of this first chapter, Dumas explains that Nodier told him a story, which he relates in the rest of the novel. From the start the tone is set: reality and fiction are inextricably intertwined…

La peste by Albert Camus

Published in 1947, this novel is set in the city of Oran in Algeria. The plague descended upon the city, resulting in the deaths of many people. The state of the plague is still unknown, as the prefecture refuses to worry public opinion. The prefect orders the city gates to be closed after a few weeks. Oran is isolated from the rest of the world, and its inhabitants are entrapped in the plague. Camus compares the plague and war, as well as the rise of Nazism, without quoting either one.

Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano

Patrick Modiano opens Dora Bruder by telling how in 1988 he stumbled across an ad in the personal columns of the New Year’s Eve 1941 edition of Paris Soir. Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Dora Bruder, who had run away from her Catholic boarding school, the ad sets Modiano off on a quest to find out everything he can about Dora and why, at the height of German reprisals, she ran away on a bitterly cold day from the people hiding her. He finds only one other official mention of her name on a list of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz in September 1942.

Les armoires vides by Annie Ernaux

In this portrait of her Norman childhood, we find some of the recurring themes in Annie Ernaux, such as the importance of the figure of the mother, to whom she will devote her text Une femme, and that of the father, about whom she will write The place. The tension between two social environments, that of her parents, former workers who opened a bar, and the bourgeois environment with which she is increasingly confronted as she pursues her studies. The contradictory feelings that this tension between two social environments inspires in him, namely a mixture of shame, contempt, and love for his family, are also omnipresent images of his work.

White Dog by Romain Gary

 Set in the tumultuous Los Angeles of 1968, Romain Gary’s story begins when a German shepherd strays into his life: “He was watching me, his head cocked to one side, with that unbearable intensity of dogs in the pound waiting for a rescuer.” A lost police canine, this “white dog” is programmed to respond violently to the sight of a black man and Gary’s attempts to deprogram it—like his attempts to protect his wife, the actress Jean Seberg; like her endeavors to help black activists; like his need to rescue himself from the “predicament of being trapped, lock, stock and barrel within a human skin”—lead from crisis to grief.

Anna, soror.. by Marguerite Yourcenar

A few weeks after the start of spring 1925, Anna, soror was written during a stay in Naples. Never was a romantic invention more immediately influenced by the places where it was located. Anna and Miguel’s love story is similar to the love story of Byblis and Caunus in Greek mythology. It is the joy and pain of a forbidden passion.

Jean de Florette by Marcel Pagnol

The story takes place in Provence, in the small village of white Bastides. Ugolin, Papet’s nephew and the last of the Soubeyran clan, plans to create a large plantation of carnations and make a fortune by reselling these flowers, with the financial support of his uncle. But the well of the Mas de Massacan not providing enough water for such a plantation, the two men decided to buy the field of Pique-Bouffigue aux Romarins where they knew that there was a spring. But Pique-Bouffigue, busy in his fig tree cutting branches to make traps, refuses to sell his property…

For a Night of Love (and the flood) by Emile Zola

Julien plays the flute every day for the beautiful Thérèse de Marsanne, whom he sees from his window every day. Despite her daily serenades, the young girl does not look at him and ignores him until the evening, when she invites him into her room. Julien rushes, but is he really prepared for anything for a night of love? Two short dramatic stories that use a new facet of the author of Rougon-Macquart are presented below.

The princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette

“Mademoiselle de Chartres married the Prince of Cleves at the court of Henri II. Immediately after her marriage, she professed her love for the Duke of Nemours during a ball at Court. Despite the violence of their feelings, the two young people remain silent. Madame de Cleves, a model of virtue, confesses her guilty love to her husband one day. And this admission is not helpful. The prince is afflicted with suspicion and jealousy, leading him to believe that he is being deceived. Now, the princess has to take charge of her destiny.”

Salt on my Skin by Benoîte Groult

“This highly-charged novel follows the passionate relationship between mismatched lovers: a Parisian intellectual and a Breton fisherman, brought together by lust. Through love-letters and exotic encounters around the world, their life-long affair evolves—liberating them from the restrictions and disappointments dealt by real life.”

Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I am alone on earth, without a brother, neighbour, friend, or society other than myself. » Rousseau was at the twilight of his life when he found refuge far from the torrent of the world in a blissful solitude magnified by the beauty of nature. In a lyrical, admirably sensitive way, the philosopher walks to meet himself. Between memories and meditations, he embraces the pleasure of memory and writing, in the pure consciousness of existence.

Mademoiselle Fifi and other stories by Guy de Maupassant

Mademoiselle Fifi and Other Stories.

Mademoiselle Fifi is, in reality, a young Prussian officer, occupying France in 1870, blond, with a slim waist, ferocious and brutal, so nicknamed because he despises everything and everyone and repeats constantly: “Fi, fi SO “. He will find stronger than him. Unsatisfied provincials, surprise lovers, prostitutes, wives of notaries, ruined nobles, fishing friends, everyone has their accurate and moving portrait. These stories are brief, as demanded by the daily press which published them successfully. Brief but spending the essential.

le silence de la mer de Vercors

The Silence of the Sea by Vercors tells the story of an old man and his niece who show their resistance by refusing to speak to the German officer they have to accommodate, even though he is an educated young man who dreams of a reconciliation between the two countries. The novel was secretly published during the Occupation in France and quickly became a symbol of mental resistant against the Germans.

la femme rompue de simone de beauvoir

These three long stories draw us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises. In the title story, the heroine’s serenity is shattered when she learns that her husband is having an affair. In “The Age of Discretion,” a successful, happily married professor finds herself increasingly distressed by her son’s absorption in his young wife and her worldly values. In “The Monologue,” a rich, spoiled woman, home alone on New Year’s Eve, pours out a lifetime’s rage and frustration in a harrowing diatribe. Enthralling as fiction, suffused with de Beauvoir’s remarkable insights into women, The Woman Destroyed gives us a legendary writer at her best.

noces duivi de l’été de albert camus

A second collection of essays, Noces (1938; “Nuptials”), contains intensely lyrical meditations on the Algerian countryside and presents natural beauty as a form of wealth that even the very poor can enjoy. Both collections contrast the fragile mortality of human beings with the enduring nature of the physical world.

Le collier rouge by jean-christophe rufin

In 1919, in a small town in the province of Berry, France, under the crushing heat of summer heat wave, a war hero is being held prisoner in an abandoned barracks. In front of the door to his prison, a mangy dog barks night and day. Miles from where he is being held, in the French countryside, a young extraordinarily intelligent woman works the land the land, waiting and hoping. A judge whose principles have been sorely shaken by the war is travelling to an unknown location to sort out certain affairs of which it is better not to speak.

L’amant by Marguerite Duras

An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France’s Prix Goncourt, The Loverhas been acclaimed by critics all over the world since its first publication in 1984.

Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras’s childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France’s colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts.

Here’s the book for September 2022: La Petite Fille de Monsieur Linh by Philippe Claudel

Traumatized by memories of his war-ravaged country, and with his son and daughter-in-law dead, Monsieur Linh travels to a foreign land to bring the child in his arms to safety. The other refugees in the detention center are unsure how to help the old man; his caseworkers are compassionate but overworked. Monsieur Linh struggles beneath the weight of his sorrow and becomes increasingly bewildered and isolated in this unfamiliar, fast-moving town. And then he encounters Monsieur Bark. They do not speak each other’s language, but Monsieur Bark is sympathetic to the foreigner’s need to care for the child. Recently widowed and equally alone, he is eager to talk, and Monsieur Linh knows how to listen. The two men share their solitude and find friendship in an unlikely dialogue between two very different cultures. 

Monsieur Linh and His Child is a remarkable novel with an extraordinary twist, a subtle portrait of friendship, and a dialogue between two cultures.

Marius by Marcel Pagnol

His three comedies—Marius (1929), Fanny (1931), and César (1936), known as the Marseille trilogy—deal with the lives of a Marseille fishmonger, Fanny, her lover Marius who goes off to sea, César the father, and his friend Panisse. The salty language of the people and Pagnol’s ability to capture the atmosphere of the port at Marseille made the plays universally appealing, and the films made from them influenced the later Neorealists. The plays also inspired the Broadway musical Fanny, which was later adopted into a motion picture.

Terre des hommes by antoine de saint-exupéry

The National Book Award-winning autobiographical book about the wonder of flying from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of the beloved children’s classic The Little Prince.

A National Geographic Top Ten Adventure Book of All Time

Recipient of the Grand Prix of the Académie Française, Wind, Sand and Stars captures the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight. Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying. 

Bonjour tristesse de françoise sagan

“A sensational 1954 French novel that has become a contemporary classic.

Endearing, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old Cécile is the very essence of untroubled amorality. Freed from the stifling constraints of boarding school, she joins her father—a handsome, still-young widower with a wandering eye—for a carefree, two-month summer vacation in a beautiful villa outside of Paris with his latest mistress, Elsa. Cécile cherishes the free-spirited moments she and her father share while plotting her own sexual adventures with a “tall and almost beautiful” law student. But the arrival of her late mother’s best friend, Anne, intrudes upon a young girl’s pleasures. And when a relationship begins to develop between the adults, Cécile and her lover set in motion a plan to keep them apart…with tragic, unexpected consequences.

The internationally beloved story of a precocious teenager’s attempts to understand and control the world around her, Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse is a beautifully composed, wonderfully ambiguous celebration of sexual liberation, at once sympathetic and powerfully unsparing.”

La Main gauche et autre nouvelles de Guy de Maupassant

“The Left Hand is a short story written by Guy de Maupassant in 1889. It is the story of a group of friends who tell themselves stories to frighten themselves when one of them, a judge, tells the story of a murder they have to solve. This murder is that of a man who lives in a mansion. The man was killed by strangulation; it is a hand mark on his neck that tells us this. A person who knew the dead man told the judge that there was a hand in the house. The hand of the enemy of the dead man, who was hung by a chain on a piece of furniture. That’s how through our imagination we can guess that the murderer is the hand that to take revenge for the murder of its owner killed the man.“

Zadig ou la Destinée by Voltaire

“This story is a philosophical, romantic satire, attacking religious mania, the foibles of people in general, and the burdens of being virtuous and happy. Voltaire uses ancient Babylon as his setting, which provides a great contrast to France of the Enlightenment; Babylonians though scientifically and technologically advanced, had a closed culture ruled by an absolute monarch. In brief, the story chronicles the adventures of Zadig, a benevolent and charismatic figure who reveres the good and the beautiful. Despite incidental amorous detours, Zadig’s love for Queen Astarte glows as a paragon of sublime fidelity to woman.”

Nouvelles orientales by Marguerite Yourcenar

“These novels published in 1938 includes ten short stories of oriental inspiration, which are tales and legends. Passionate and fascinating, Yourcenar invites us to immerse ourselves in the imagination of the Balkans, China, and even Japan. The short stories are easy to read. Marguerite Yourcenar was inspired by tales or oriental miscellaneous facts to write them with her own style. The themes are universal: lost love, regret, transcendence, redemption, and heroism. “

I won’t tell you more, Oriental Tales is a collection that you must read once in your life!

Les rois maudits de Maurice Druon

Accursed! Accursed! You shall be accursed to the thirteenth generation!”

The Iron King – Philip the Fair – is as cold and silent, as handsome and unblinking as a statue. He governs his realm with an iron hand, but he cannot rule his own family: his sons are weak and their wives adulterous; while his red-blooded daughter Isabella is unhappily married to an English king who prefers the company of men.

A web of scandal, murder, and intrigue is weaving itself around the Iron King; but his downfall will come from an unexpected quarter. Bent on the persecution of the rich and powerful Knights Templar, Philip sentences Grand Master Jacques Molay to be burned at the stake, thus drawing down upon himself a curse that will destroy his entire dynasty…

Claude Gueux de Victor hugo

Claude Gueux was a poor workman, living in Paris about eight years ago, with his mistress and child. Although his education had been neglected, and he could not even read, the man was naturally clever and intelligent and thought deeply over matters. Winter came with its attendant miseries,—want of work, want of food, want of fuel. The man, the woman, and the child were frozen and famished. The man turned thief. I know not what he stole. What signifies, as the result was the same: to the woman and child it gave three days’ bread and warmth; to the man, five years imprisonment. He was taken to Clairvaux,—the abbey now converted into a prison, its cells into dungeons, and the altar itself into a pillory. This is called progress.

La vie devant soi de Romain Gary

The Life Before Us is the story of an orphaned Arab boy, Momo, and his devotion to Madame Rosa, a dying, 68-year-old, 220-lb. survivor of Auschwitz and retired “lady of the night.”

Momo has been one of the ever-changing ragbag of whores’ children at Madame Rosa’s boardinghouse in Paris ever since he can remember. But when the check that pays for his keep no longer arrives and as Madame Rosa becomes too ill to climb the stairs to their apartment, he determines to support her any way he can.

La nausée de Jean-Paul sartre

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which “spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time ― the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain.”

Zazie dans le métro de Raymond Queneau

Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with Gabriel, her female-impersonator uncle. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that becomes wilder and more manic by the minute. In 1960 Queneau’s cult classic was made into a hugely successful film by Louis Malle. Packed full of wordplay and phonetic games, Zazie in the Metro remains as stylish and witty as ever.

Thérèse raquin de Emile Zola

In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Therese Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband’s earthy friend Laurent, but their animal passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime that will haunt them forever. THERESE RAQUIN caused a scandal when it appeared in 1867 and brought its 27-year-old author a notoriety that followed him throughout his life. Zola’s novel is not only an uninhibited portrayal of adultery, madness, and ghostly revenge, but also a devastating exploration of the darkest aspects of human existence.

La gloire de mon père de Marcel Pagnol

Bathed in the warm clarity of the summer sun in Provence, Marcel Pagnol’s childhood memories celebrate a time of rare beauty and delight. Marcel Pagnol never forgot the magic of his Provencal childhood, and when he set his memories to paper late in life the result was a great new success. My Father’s Glory appeared on the scene like a fresh breeze, captivating readers with its sweet enchantments. Pagnol recalls his days hunting and fishing in the hill country, his jaunts about Marseilles, his schoolboy diversions, and above all his family: his anticlerical father and sanctimonious uncle, his mild and beautiful mother, and many others. This bright and lively book sparkles with the charm and magic that were Marcel Pagnol’s own.

Here’s the book for September 2026: Le fantôme de l’opéra by Gaston Leroux.

A book suitable for level B1/B2. You don’t have to buy the book.