New Releases by Georges Simenon

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré An Inspector Maigret mystery and a gripping tale of lost identity “A man picked up for wandering in obvious distress among the cars and buses on the Grands Boulevards. Questioned in French, he remains mute . . . A madman? In Maigret''s office, he is searched. His suit is new, his underwear is new, his shoes are new. All identifying labels have been removed. No identification papers. No wallet. Five crisp thousand-franc bills have been slipped into one of his pockets.” A distressed man is found wandering the streets of Paris, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. The answers lead Maigret to a small harbour town, whose quiet citizens conceal a poisonous malice.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré A chilling Inspector Maigret mystery set on the Belgian border “She wasn''t an ordinary supplicant. She didn''t lower her eyes. There was nothing humble about her bearing. She spoke frankly, looking straight ahead, as if to claim what was rightfully hers. ‘If you don''t agree to look at our case, my parents and I will be lost, and it will be the most hateful legal error...’” Maigret is asked to the windswept, rainy border town of Givet by a young woman desperate to clear her family of murder. But their well-kept shop, the sleepy community and its raging river all hide their own mysteries.

The city of Simenon''s youth comes to life in this new translation of this disturbing novel set in Liège, book ten in the new Penguin Maigret series. In the darkness, the main room is as vast as a cathedral. A great empty space. Some warmth is still seeps from the radiators. Delfosse strikes a match. They stop a moment to catch their breath, and work out how far they have still to go. And suddenly the match falls to the ground, as Delfosse gives a sharp cry and rushes back towards the washroom door. In the dark, he loses his way, returns and bumps into Chabot. Maigret observes from a distance as two boys are accused of killing a rich foreigner in Liège. Their loyalty, which binds them together through their adventures, is put to the test, and seemingly irrelevant social differences threaten their friendship and their freedom. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret at the "Gai-Moulin". ''Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'' John Gray ''One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century'' Guardian ''A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness'' Independent

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.

Three vintage Maigret novels by legendary mystery author Georges Simenon One of the world ''s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In My Friend Maigret, Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small- time crook on a Mediterranean island. Told in Simenon''s spare, unsentimental prose, Inspector Cadaver is a haunting exploration of provincial hypocrisy and snobbery, in which Maigret encounters a rival sleuth from his past. In Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Simenon''s tenacious detective pieces together the life of a man who for three years lived a secret life-until he is found stabbed to death in an alleyway.

After being wounded while following a man who had mysteriously jumped off a train, Inspector Maigret becomes caught up in an investigtion in a provincial French town terrorized by a maniacal murderer. Original.

Maigret becomes increasingly frustrated as his attempts to prove that a brutal, repulsive murder has been committed at a local bookbinder prove fruitless, in a mystery that revolves around a series of seemingly unconnected incidents and characters, set amongst the backdrop of the Marais district in Paris, in which Madame Maigret holds the vital clue. Original.

Inspector Maigret makes his way from Paris''s luxury hotels through the seedy and squalid streets and alleys of Paris as he tracks a killer on the run. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

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.

Publisher description

A young Frenchman, Joseph Timar, travels to Gabon carrying a letter of introduction from an influential uncle.

Inspector Lognon - a plain-clothes detective with a reputation for misfortune - is shot in the street with the word ''ghost'' on his lips. It soon emerges that he spent the night in the nearby apartment of a beautiful young woman, who has since vanished. While the injured man fights for his life in hospital, Chief Superintendent Maigret discovers that the hapless Inspector may finally have been on to something big. And when he encounters suave art dealer Norris Jonker and his glamorous wife Mirella, Maigret begins to wonder if their strange lifestyle is the reason for Lognon''s presence on the Avenue Junot. In Maigret and the Ghost, Simenon''s tenacious detective is perplexed by a constant stream of conflicting evidence as he explores the underground world of art collecting.

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.

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.

After the death of Oscar Donadieu, a wealthy shipbuilder and tyrannical patriarch, his family begins to disintegrate, a process enchanced by the arrival of ambitious, angry Phillipe Dargens.

Léonard Planchon, a tense man with a harelip, goes to Maigret with an unusual problem. He wants to kill his wife, or perhaps his wife and her lover, who for two years now have been making him sleep on a cot in the dining room. He has even worked out a plan to hide their bodies in concrete. Uneasily investigating a murder that has not yet been committed, Maigret explores the bistros of Montmartre and uncovers a peculiar--and pathetic--ménage à trois. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon

Convinced that Joseph Heurtin, a slow-witted delivery boy, did not commit a brutal murder, Inspector Jules Maigret''s quest for the real killer plunges him into a battle of wits with a criminal mastermind

A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.

"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.

When Maigret receives a visit from an old schoolmate whose mistress has been shot to death, he feels compelled to look into the case. Yet his friend is one of the suspects--along with the dead woman''s four other lovers, each unknown to the others. The basis for a public television Mystery! presentation. Translated by Eileen Ellenbogen. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.