Emile Jovis leaves the old apartment in the rue des Francs-Bourgeois where he has lived for years, to settle, with his family, in Clairevie, a modern housing estate in the suburbs. From this new installation, Jovis promises a lot of happiness. Soon, it must be agreed that Clairevie, where everyone isolates himself in anonymity, hardly replaces his old district of Paris. But Jovis made, thanks to a poorly soundproofed partition, a singular discovery....

Emile Jovis leaves the old apartment in the rue des Francs-Bourgeois where he has lived for years, to settle, with his family, in Clairevie, a modern housing estate in the suburbs. From this new installation, Jovis promises a lot of happiness. Soon, it must be agreed that Clairevie, where everyone isolates himself in anonymity, hardly replaces his old district of Paris. But Jovis made, thanks to a poorly soundproofed partition, a singular discovery....

Psychological novel of a husband and wife, both past 70, whose affection has turned to hate.

Small-town, middle-class doctor Elie Bergelon, urged on by materialistic wife Germaine, has finally referred one of his patients -- the pregnant wife of low-born, ambitious Jean Cosson -- to the ritzy clinic of surgeon Mandalin. As Bergelon and Mandalin are drunk on the night of the delivery, both mother and baby die. Unhinged husband Cosson begins terrorizing Dr. Bergelon with legal actions, death threats, and verbal abuse on the street. Bergelon...

Belle: Spencer Ashby, a teacher, lives a quiet comfortable life married to Christine, a cold, dry-hearted woman. One day, Belle Shermann, an American student and daughter of one of his wife's friends, comes to stay at their villa. The teacher hardly notices her. But his dull uneventful life is turned upside down when Belle is found strangled to death. Ashby, who was alone with the victim but claims he was sleeping in his room at the time of the crime,...

Paris has taken its toll and Maigret is sent to Vichy for the cure, but the Inspector finds it difficult to give his curiosity a rest. He compiles a mental dossier on his fellow guests, including a curious woman he and Madam Maigret note in particular -- the lady in lilac. When a headline in the local paper announces the woman's murder, Maigret -- with some relief -- interrupts his routine to aid the investigation. The arrival of the dead woman's...

This anthology of nineteen short stories by thirteen different authors introduces the reader to L'ecole belge de l'etrange, the Belgian School of the Bizarre. This is a brand of concrete fantasy that has been the hallmark of Belgian fiction since 1975. Though this school has links to both French surrealism and the magic realism of Marquez and other South American authors, Belgium's concrete fantasy, or fantastique reel, is closer to realism than either...