Humor France

There is so much to write about the French. Because they invented cinemas, bicycles, cars, photography, radioactivity, but also the bra, the croque-monsieur, the garbage can, and dentures. Because the French express themselves in a language qualified as one of the sexiest, albeit with sounds so often considered animalistic: coucou, quoi, oui…. Because in France, we intrinsically like to rebel against everything: system, government, our employer, and we go so far as to go on strike preventively against a law that does not yet exist. A country where artists transform urinals into works of ...

As hotel manager Tom Eastham’s retirement approaches, his best friend tries to persuade him to get back into the sport which he gave up over thirty years earlier. Initially unwilling to brave the roads after so long off the bike, he gradually comes around to the idea of having another bash at cycling and takes to the Lancashire lanes once more. This light-hearted but incisive account traces his first six months back in the saddle, during which time the life-enhancing possibilities of cycling gradually dawn on him as he samples various facets of the sport, complemented by some rather ...

A new collection from David Sedaris is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris has inspired hilarious pieces, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his attempts to learn French. His family is another inspiration. You Cant Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant...

Read by the author and available digitally for the first time From the star of No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain's New York Times-bestselling chronicle of travelling the world in search the globe's greatest culinary adventures "Bourdain shows himself to be one of the country's best food writers...

Anatole France (1844-1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist who wrote several best sellers. The Revolt of the Angels is a mischievous take on the theology of modern society; it chronicles the thoughts of Arcade, a lowly guardian angel, as he discovers the ugly truths of his divine master in the library of his human charge As Maurice, the young man abandoned by Arcade, struggles to get his guardian back, one gets a view of a wide variety of the author’s artistic personalities, most of whom are fallen angels.

Sally Jay Gorce is a woman with a mission. It’s the 1950s, she’s young, and she’s in Paris. Having dyed her hair pink, she wears evening dresses in the daytime and vows to go native in a way not even the natives can manage. Embarking on an educational program that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realizes he’s single and wants to marry her); nights in cabarets and jazz clubs in the company of assorted “citizens of the world”; an entanglement with a charming psychopath; and a bit part in a film financed by a famous matador.

More than 40,000 listeners have enjoyed this story on cassette. Now anyone who's ever dreamed of getting away from it all can enjoy the charms and challenges of A Year in Provence on CD! Peter Mayle and his wife had been to Provence as tourists. They had dreamed of one day trading the long, gray...

Julie has her freedom, a dream job as a pastry chef, and a corpse growing cold on her floor... Welcome to Beldoc, a small town in the heart of Provence, imbued with lavender and fresh baked bread! You can idle around, or you can puzzle out a murder mystery. When a man dies on her watch in her pâtisserie, newly divorced chef Julie Cavallo is dismayed. It isn’t that she’s a suspect. The local gendarmerie captain signs off the death as a natural event. A heart attack. But for a reason she won’t discuss, Julie suspects Maurice Sauve was poisoned. What’s a girl to do? She’ll ignore ...

Renowned cookbook writer Paul Stuart, renewed and refreshed from his time in Tuscany, has returned to Scotland to work on his new book. Writing, though, is complicated by Paul's changed domestic circumstances. His editor and new girlfriend, Gloria, has moved in with him despite not being specifically invited, and she's brought her two rather demanding Siamese cats. When Paul's cousin, Chloe, suggests Paul visit her in the French countryside, Paul jumps at the chance. However, once he arrives, he finds his fortunes tangled up with the infamous local restaurant.

What do fairy tales, such as “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Hansel and Gretel,” have to do with French peasant life in the eighteenth century? What does a cat massacre reveal about the relationship between artisans and the bourgeois in early modern France? In Robert Darnton’s, The "Great Cat Massacre," the underlying themes of fairy tales and the circumstances surrounding a large killing of cats provide the answers to these questions and reveal the attitudes and concerns of peasants and artisans in eighteenth century France.

Simon Shaw, a rumpled, fortyish English advertising executive, has decided to leave it all behind, and heads of to France to transform an abandoned police station in the Luberon into a small but world-class hotel. On his side, Simon has a loyal majordomo and a French business partner who is as practical as she is ravishing. But he hasn't counted on the malignant local journalist—or on the mauvaise types who have chosen the neighboring village as the site of their latest bank robbery.

Introduction to Le Tour Once more I want to inspire you to travel – to France. I have been delighted at the lovely responses I have received to my books and have enjoyed supplying more precise suggestions to some of you personally. This book ties together our journeys in France as a cohesive tour de France. Most of this book comprises of fresh writing but to make the tour flow I have included relevant excerpts from my four book French Travel Series. If you are unfamiliar with those books, I hope you will go on to enjoy the full story of our experiences in French regions such as Provence, ...

When Thomas Hardy, (who is anything but a famous author), finds himself being ejected from his home he makes a decision. Forced to change his lifestyle, he decides to stop writing manuals for flat pack furniture and try his hand at fiction. This darkly humorous tale with a hint of a thriller follows Tom as he stumbles through his new life, staggering from disaster to disaster, as he attempts to come up with a plot for his new endeavour. What he hadn't bargained for was the unfortunate chain of events he sets off, causing real life to start to mimic his story, as he is pursued by a serial ...

Set in Hollywood, Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseille, Peter Mayle’s newest and most delightful novel is filled with culinary delights, sumptuous wines, and colorful characters. It’s also a lot of fun. The story begins high above Los Angeles, at the extravagant home and equally impressive wine...

Sylvestre Bonnard is a mild-mannered, kind-hearted book collector and antiquarian, a little tyrannized by his housekeeper maybe, but nonetheless respected and eminent in his field of research into the abbeys, abbots and monks of medieval France. He has spent his life with his books, and knows little of the ways of the world. Resigned to reaching old age and retirement without being able to complete his life's work, he suddenly comes across the one thing that would not only complete it, but that would crown it with success. He heads off on an adventure to get his hands on this treasure and ...

From the satirical pen of one of France's greatest cynics comes the story of Candide - young, innocent, guileless - who is cast upon the world after Baron Thunder-ten-trockh learns that his lusty daughter, Cunegonde, has tried to seduce the young man. The novel chronicles Candide's adventures with his blindly optimistic tutor, Dr. Pangloss, through any number of disastrous experiences, as they search for the answers to life's perennial questions.

From the acclaimed author of American Mermaid (“Sublime”—NYTBR) comes a wise, funny, and wildly original examination of female desire and the price women pay for giving in to their appetites. A LIT HUB MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR “A wild, wonderful essential novel.” —Claire...

`The entertaining story of how a man in his fifties found a new life in Paris.' - Living France Tony Davison is bored, tired and fed up with life. He has lost his job and his wife, and doesn't have much of a future.. In despair, he sells his house and most of his belongings and sets off for Paris for a weekend holiday. But what started off as a quick holiday break soon turns into a once in a lifetime experience. It's Never Too Late tells the uplifting story of Tony's search for a new life and happiness in a new country. Full of the gentle humour which are so much a hallmark of Vernon ...

When young would-be-musketeer, Guillaume Jaucourt, falls dead from poison, his master Porthos finds himself ensnared in a deadly web of secrets. As the apprentice's carefully constructed identity unravels, revealing deception upon deception, the trail leads uncomfortably close to Porthos's own past and family. The swashbuckling sleuths—Porthos, Athos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan—must navigate the dangerous streets of 1625 Paris while evading the Cardinal's guards. With each revelation comes a new suspect and a deeper mystery: Who was Guillaume Jaucourt really? What secrets died with him? And...

SETTLING DOWN is the fourth and final instalment of THE RELUCTANT EXPAT, Alan Laycock’s light-hearted account of his life in Spain. ***The first part of Alan's sequel, THE CONTENTED EXPAT, is now available.***