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When Hawk Mallen took over the company Joanne worked for, it seemed he'd taken over her life as well. Now he was in charge, Hawk seemed to expect his new assistant's duties to extend out of office hours.<

Un homme las, blasé de tout, fatigué de la vie et de l'amour, qui n'a plus goût à rien, échoue dans un hôtel de province. On ne sait rien de lui, si ce n'est qu'il est âgé d'une trentaine d'années. Des bruits venant de la chambre voisine, attirent son attention. Il se lève, intrigué, et remarque en hauteur, sous le plafond, un trou qui lui permet de voir… Et il regardera… fasciné, les épisodes de la vie humaine qui se déroulent de l'autre coté. Le sexe, bien sûr, tient une place importante, chambre d'hôtel oblige. Par le prisme du héros, qui reprend goût à la vie, tout en se perdant, nous devenons également voyeurs. Le réalisme cru, mais empreint de lyrisme, et le sujet même de ce roman paru en 1908, n'ont probablement pas été du goût de tout le monde à l'époque… <

'Le feu' a reçu le Prix Goncourt en 1916.

La vie poignante d'une escouade de 17 poilus durant la première année de la première guerre mondiale. Malgré les conditions de vie atroces, l'amitié unit des hommes de toutes conditions et de toutes origines. A lire impérativement…

Cet ouvrage paraît en novembre 1916 et remporte le Prix Goncourt. Sous forme de carnet de guerre, Henri Barbusse relate, souvent à la première personne ou par dialogues interposés, la vie quotidienne d'une compagnie de fantassins pris dans le chaos des combats qui paralysent l'Europe depuis deux ans.

Peinture bouleversante de la première guerre mondiale, 'Le Feu' relate le quotidien des soldats Volpate, Lamuse et de leurs camarades. Pris dans la sale guerre malgré eux, ils en racontent l'horreur avec leurs mots de 'bonhommes'. La peur au ventre, ils voient tomber leurs camarades les uns après les autres, hébétés.

" Du mécanique plaqué sur du vivant ". Cette formule n'est pas elle-même plaquée mécaniquement par Bergson sur le rire! Bien au contraire, c'est un Bergson à la fois psychologue, sociologue, philosophe de l'art et moraliste qui écrit Le Rire. Essai sur la signification du comique en 1900, au cœur d'une œuvre dont ce livre est une étape majeure, et d'un moment dont il traverse tous les enjeux. Une diversité infinie donc, mais plus que jamais dans une intuition, dans une écriture d'une simplicité extrême qui en font un chef-d'œuvre unique. <

In staff meetings and singles bars, on freeways and fairways-there are aggravating people lurking everywhere these days. But bestselling humorist Henry Beard has the perfect comeback for all prickly situations, offering a slew of quips your nemesis won't soon forget, or even understand. Henry's gift is his ability to make fun of popular culture and the current zeitgeist. In X-Treme Latin he provides Latin with an attitude, an indispensable phrasebook that taps the secret power of Latin to deliver, in total safety, hundreds of impeccable put-downs, comebacks, and wisecracks. Within its pages you will learn how to insult or fire coworkers, blame corporate scandals on someone else, cheer at a World Wrestling Entertainment match, talk back to your computer or Game Boy, deal with your road rage, evade threatening situations, snowboard in style, talk like Tony Soprano, and much more. With dozens more zingers for quashing e-mail pranks, psyching out your golf opponent, giving backhanded compliments, talking back to the television, and evading awkward questions, X-Treme Latin is destined for magnus popularity and will have readers cheering, "Celebremus!"<

Hunters of Dune and the concluding volume, Sandworms of Dune, bring together the great story lines and beloved characters in Frank Herbert's classic Dune universe, ranging from the time of the Butlerian Jihad to the original Dune series and beyond. Based directly on Frank Herbert's final outline, which lay hidden in a safe-deposit box for a decade, these two volumes will finally answer the urgent questions Dune fans have been debating for two decades.

At the end of Chapterhouse: Dune-Frank Herbert's final novel-a ship carrying the ghola of Duncan Idaho, Sheeana (a young woman who can control sandworms), and a crew of various refugees escapes into the uncharted galaxy, fleeing from the monstrous Honored Matres, dark counterparts to the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. The nearly invincible Honored Matres have swarmed into the known universe, driven from their home by a terrifying, mysterious Enemy. As designed by the creative genius of Frank Herbert, the primary story of Hunters and Sandworms is the exotic odyssey of Duncan's no-ship as it is forced to elude the diabolical traps set by the ferocious, unknown Enemy. To strengthen their forces, the fugitives have used genetic technology from Scytale, the last Tleilaxu Master, to revive key figures from Dune's past-including Paul Muad'Dib and his beloved Chani, Lady Jessica, Stilgar, Thufir Hawat, and even Dr. Wellington Yueh. Each of these characters will use their special talents to meet the challenges thrown at them.

David Ogden, Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA and a man of legendary achievements, has died. His private papers, including a copy of a shocking set of assignments, are found in a lockbox. It appears that in the last month of his life, with tumors spreading throughout his brain, David Ogden had ordered his best-trained and most loyal agents, identified only by code name, to carry out a series of bizarre deeds. The assignments include the firebombing of a seedy rooming house in Florida, the fixing of a college basketball game in New York, the killing of a cruise director in the Caribbean and a rape. The agents were instructed to complete these orders within a five-day period-but for what purpose? Nobody knows. The director was clearly deranged from his illness, and the plans must be reversed before news of his dementia leaks out. But in his instructions to his agents, Ogden wrote “Gibralter Rules apply”: there can be no recall of these orders, no CIA contact with the agents.

Only the Sensitives can stop them.

Brain Damage is the third exciting thriller featuring the Sensitives, the tough-talking, irrepressible group whose receptiveness to the thoughts of others is so acute as to be virtually telepathic. It is a gift that is both a miracle and a curse for these extraordinary people, who are treated as either delinquents or demigods by the very intelligence agency that expects them to solve its most unsolvable problems.

In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing -- her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.

Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth -- that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?

Holly Black spins a seductive tale at once achingly real and chillingly enchanted, set in a dangerous world where pleasure mingles with pain and nothing is exactly as it appears.

Welcome to the realm of very scary faeries!

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces the sixteen-year-old back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms -- a struggle that could very well mean her death.

Newcomer Holly Black's enormously powerful voice weaves teen angst, riveting romance, and capriciously diabolical faerie folk into an enthralling, engaging, altogether original reading experience.

When seventeen-year-old Valerie Russell runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.

But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. Impulsive Lolli talks of monsters in the subway tunnels they call home and shoots up a shimmery amber-colored powder that makes the shadows around her dance. Severe Luis claims he can make deals with creatures that no one else can see. And then there's Luis's brother, timid and sensitive Dave, who makes the mistake of letting Val tag along as he makes a delivery to a woman who turns out to have goat hooves instead of feet.

When a bewildered Val allows Lolli to talk her into tracking down the hidden lair of the creature for whom Luis and Dave have been dealing, Val finds herself bound into service by a troll named Ravus. He is as hideous as he is honorable. And as Val grows to know him, she finds herself torn between her affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.

Bestselling author Holly Black follows her breakout debut, , with a rich, harrowing, and compulsively readable parable of betrayal, abuse, friendship, and love.

« Tout est grand dans ce célèbre roman, sans que rien ne bouge. Eugénie est une sorte de sainte selon l'homme, toujours fidèle à une même pensée, mais toute naturelle. […] Eugénie est le premier personnage de ce drame d'amour […] En Grandet, ce rocheux Grandet, il y a une source de tendresse émouvante, quand il se cache pour voir sa fille à la toilette. […] Au rebours on trouvera dans Eugénie tous les stratagèmes du coeur, et un vrai courage à affronter le terrible homme aux gants de cuir. On a tout dit sur Grandet. On a moins remarqué ce mot de reine, lorsque Eugénie se trouve maîtresse d'une immense fortune et assiégée d'intrigues. Elle répond : « Nous verrons cela» comme son père faisait. […] Ainsi l'âme de Grandet finit par être sauvée. Balzac laboure la terre. »<

1830. La Comédie humaine – Études de mœurs. Premier livre, Scènes de la vie privée – Tome II. Deuxième volume de l’édition Furne 1842

Lors d'une soirée, l'avoué Derville surprend une conversation entre la vicomtesse de Grandlieu et sa fille éprise d'un prétendant sans fortune. Afin de prévenir celle-ci d'une mauvaise aventure, l'avoué Derville raconte une histoire de jeunesse où, simple clerc, il fut témoin d'une transaction entre Gobseck, usurier hors du commun, et la comtesse de Restaud… Jean-Esther Gobseck est un virtuose dans son domaine, il pratique l'usure comme on pratique un art. Dans ce portrait d'un de ses plus puissants personnages, Balzac écrit, là, son premier chef d'oeuvre.