Best Selling Books by Georges Simenon

The extraordinarily patient Maigret cracks a most perplexing case, comme ca. For more than two decades, daring daylight jewelry store heists has plagued the Parisian inspector. When a Corsican immigrant, ex-pimp and sometime police informer, is found shot in the head in his wheelchair with his own gun, an entire generation of conspiracy begins to unravel.

The story of how it all began: an investigation into a dynastic family pulls a young Maigret away from his desk and into a web of fame, money, and corruption. At age twenty-six, Maigret is a secretary at the Saint-Georges district police station: a lowly, mostly deskbound job. Late one night, a young musician comes in. He had been walking home, he says, when he saw a woman at the window of a mansion, shouting for help. Then a gunshot rang out. The mansion belongs to the Gendreau-Balthazar family, Maigret realizes, whose coffee brand is a household name. Such a high-profile case could be his big break—except this family has powerful friends, among them Maigret’s boss. Can the ambitious young officer conduct an honest investigation? Or must he choose between his idealism and his hopes of promotion? A taut and unpredictable thriller, Maigret’s First Case is also a finely shaded psychological portrait of the fledgling genius who will—one day—become France’s most famous detective.

When a woman is found strangled in a stable near Lock 14, Inspector Maigret investigates, but finds her husband both unmoved and unhelpful as he follows a dark trail of whiskey-fueled orgies and a nomadic lifestyle to find the killer. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Restored to print for the first time in more than forty years, The President was hailed by the New York Times as a “tour de force” At 82, the former premier lives in alert and suspicious retirement—self exile—on the Normandy coast, writing his anxiously anticipated memoirs and receiving visits from statesman and biographers. In his library is the self-condemning, handwritten confession of the premier’s former attaché, Chalamont, hidden between the pages of a sumptuously produced work of privately printed pornography—a confession that the premier himself had dictated and forced Chalamont to sign. Now the long-thwarted Chalamont has been summoned to form a new coalition in the wake of the government’s collapse. The premier alone possesses the secret of Chalamont’s guilt, of his true character—and has publicly vowed: “He’ll never be Premier as long as I’m alive... Nor when I’m dead, either.” Inspired by French Premier Georges Clemenceau, The President is a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a probing account of the decline of power.

''The father of contemporary European detective fiction'' Ann Cleeves It had a smell of holidays. The previous evening, in Cannes harbour, with the setting sun, had also had the smell of holidays, especially the Ardena, whose owner swaggered in front of two girls with gorgeous figures.. Dazzled at first by the glamour of sunny Antibes, Maigret soon finds himself immersed in the less salubrious side of the Riviera as he retraces the final steps of a local eccentric. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret on the Riviera. ''Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'' John Gray ''One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories'' Guardian ''A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness'' Independent

It''s closing time at the Gai Moulin, and Jean Chabot and Rene Delfrosse are planning to rob the till to pay of their debts. To their surprise, they stumble upon a dead body. What at first seems to the police an open and shut case proves more complicated when the body turns up next at the zoo, stuffed into a wicker basket. Into the puzzlement steps Maigret, who makes one of the most dramatic and colorful entrances of his career as he sorts out the tangled web of deceit. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Master novelist Georges Simenon’s critically acclaimed tale of the destructive power of lust and guilt “He felt no resentment towards Andree for biting his lip. In the context of their lovemaking, it had its place.” For Tony and Andree, there are no rules when they meet in the blue room at the Hotel des Voyageurs. Their adulterous affair is intoxicating, passionate—and dangerous. It soon turns into a nightmare from which there can be no escape. Heart-pounding and high-stakes, The Blue Room is a stylish and sensual psychological thriller that weaves a story of cruelty, reckless lust, and relentless guilt.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When a young woman with a dark past is found dead on the streets of Paris, Inspector Maigret is on the case A young woman named Lulu, who has a history of brushes with the law and once lived on the streets of the 18th arrondissement, is found murdered in Paris. Maigret is called to the scene and soon learns that her boyfriend, a musician, has gone into hiding upon reading the news of her death. And when the Inspector learns that the young victim was pregnant, he begins to suspect the case might be more sinister than he imagined.

"In 1960, 1961, and 1962, for personal reasons, or for reasons I don''t know myself, I began feeling old, and I began keeping notebooks. I was nearing the age of sixty. Soon I shall be sixty-seven and I have not felt old for a long time. I no longer feel the need to write in notebooks, and those that I did not use I''ve given to my children." -- Preface.

The Widow begins with the chance encounter of two outcasts. One is the widow herself, Tati. Still young, she hasn''t had an easy time of it, even if she''s not about to complain. She lives with her father-in-law on the family farm, putting up with his unwelcome attentions, working her fingers to the bone, improving the property and knowing all the time that her late husband''s sister is scheming to seize it and drive her away. The other is a killer. Just out of prison and in search of a new life, Jean meets up with Tati, who hires him as a handyman and then takes him to bed. Everything goes swimmingly until Jean develops a liking for the girl next door.

An actor, recently divorced, at loose ends in New York; a woman, no less lonely, perhaps even more desperate than the man: they meet by chance in an all-night diner and are drawn to each other on the spot. Roaming the city streets, hitting its late-night dives, dropping another coin into yet another jukebox, these two lost souls struggle to understand what it is that has brought them, almost in spite of themselves, together. They are driven—from moment to moment, from bedroom to bedroom—to improvise the most unexpected of love stories, a tale of suspense where risk alone offers salvation. Georges Simenon was the most popular and prolific of the twentieth century’s great novelists. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan—closely based on the story of his own meeting with his second wife—is his most passionate and revealing work.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Maigret stumbles upon a series of murders in Fontenay-le-Comte while visiting an old school friend On his way home from a conference, Maigret stops to visit an old school friend in Fontenay-le-Comte. A man in the same train car introduces himself and asks if Maigret has come to help solve the murder case. In fact, the man’s brother-in-law had been murdered four days earlier, followed by the murder of a local widow in the same way, a blow to the head with a pipe. While Maigret is in town, a third murder is reported. Maigret soon discovers that there are two warring factions in the town, a clear class separation, and an air of suspicion that only he can put to rest.

A series of murders in Paris force Chief Inspector Maigret to set a trap at the risk of causing another crime.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When a familiar face from Maigret''s past brings him word of a mysterious killing, the Inspector jumps on the case When a long lost friend pays a visit to Maigret''s office, he is shocked to learn that the man''s roommate has been murdered. With the help of his old friend, Maigret delves into the life of the victim and finds a complex web of relationships that leads him to the culprit. Absorbing and impossible to predict, Maigret''s Childhood Friend is a riveting mystery that reveals a new shade to the iconic detective.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Inspector Maigret becomes entangled in the dramas of a small town on his quest to solve the murder of their former postmistress Maigret is called from his usual duties in Paris to investigate a murder in a small village located close to La Rochelle. A local postmistress has been killed and suspicion has fallen on the local schoolmaster. When Maigret gets there, he discovers a very inward-looking community of people who hated the victim because she knew all their secrets. Maigret must determine if one of those secrets was enough to make someone into a killer.

“A writer who, more than any other crime novelist, combined a high literary reputation with popular appeal.” —P. D. James Caught in a spiral of bitter seclusion and drinking since his wife abandoned him and their newborn child eighteen years ago, Hector Loursat, once a respected lawyer, now holes up, unwashed and drunk on Burgundy, in his once grand but increasingly decrepit mansion. He barely notices the goings-on under his roof or the strange, dangerous secret life his daughter and her friends are leading there. He is shaken from his complacency by a gunshot one night and walks into the scene of a murder. Overcoming the inertia of his long isolation and inexplicably drawn to his daughter’s group of young friends, he finds new engagement with the world as he seeks to clear the name of the young man accused of the killing. Simenon, master chronicler of the dark side of the human heart, gives us a detective story that is also a tale of an improbable redemption.