Most Popular Books by Georges Simenon

The tidal regularity of life in a quiet village is broken when the local harbor-master is murdered, and Inspector Maigret must force the killer into the open by using all of his famous instincts.

One of Simenon''s riveting explorations of female psychology, a study in contrasts between two women who are mutually dependent from their school days. Marie is ugly, of somewhat limited intelligence, but her fixation on her friend gives her an uncanny insight into the other''s nature, intentions, and motivations. Sylvie--cold, vicious, ruthless--is also beautiful and compellingly attractive to men. Her desire to hurt extends to her faithful slave, Marie. For a number of years they lose sight of each other, as Sylvie becomes the adored mistress of a rich and elderly man. How and why Marie re-enters Sylvie''s life and achieves a dominating role in their relationship is described with surgical precision by one of the world''s greatest realistic writers.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Inspector Maigret steps in when an anonymous note to the police reports that a body has been burned in a bookbinder’s furnace An anonymous note to the police reports that a body has been burned in the furnace of a bookbinder on the Rue de Turenne. Preliminary investigations turn up suspicious details—and two human teeth of a man who’d been alive not long before. Meanwhile, Madame Maigret has had a strange experience while waiting for her dentist appointment. A woman she had often met on the bench while waiting suddenly leaves her young child in Madame Maigret’s care and disappears for over an hour, returning to take the child and vanishing without explanation. When Maigret’s investigation is blown wide open, it seems the two incidents might be related in ways no one could have predicted.

An actor and a divorcee meet in a deserted New York City bar.

A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré In this brilliant new translation of Georges Simenon’s classic novel, a young man descends into a brutal world of crime “And always the dirty snow, the heaps of snow that look rotten, with black patches and embedded garbage . . . unable to cover the filth.” Nineteen-year-old Frank—thug, thief, son of a brothel owner—gets by surprisingly well despite living in a city under military occupation, but a warm house and a full stomach are not enough to make him feel truly alive in such a climate of deceit and betrayal. During a bleak, unending winter, he embarks on a string of violent and sordid crimes that set him on a path from which he can never return. Georges Simenon’s matchless novel is a brutal, compelling portrayal of a world without pity; a devastating journey through a psychological no man’s land.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Inspector Maigret goes up against a group of American gangsters and finds he just might have met his match In Maigret’s latest adventure, the Inspector learns that his hapless colleague Lognon is being menaced by some notorious American mobsters, and he makes it his mission to bring them to justice, despite threatening warnings that he is out of his depth. As the stakes get higher, Maigret must rely on intel from his FBI friend in Washington, D.C., as well as his own ingenuity, to smoke the Americans out before they can complete the job and silence his star witness—permanently.

When his sexy young wife fails to home one night, Jonas Milk tells his inquisitive neighbours she is visiting a friend. But his innocent attempt to protect Gina''s reputation provokes hostility and suspicion among the residents of the Vieux-Marche - who know very well she has been having flagrant affairs throughout her marriage to the quite little bookseller. Soon Jonas''s small lie leads him into a nightmare of police inquiries and painful discoveries . . .

In a great courtroom drama, Maigret has to explain why he does not believe that Gaston Meurant was capable of slitting his aunt''s throat for money and smothering a small child. But in saving him from the gallows, Maigret must expose some dark secrets about Meurant''s life.

The Murderer is set in a small town on the flat plains of Holland. Dr. Juperus, a local physician, is a man of meditative deliberation, propelled into action when he learns of his wife''s adultery with one of the town''s leading citizens. The icy calm with which Kuperus prepares methodically for murder rivals the bleak chill of his surroundings. Now, having acted, Kuperus is trapped - in the stuffy little town, behind shuttered windows, inside himself. Fearing discovery, yet craving recognition for his daring, Kuperus is caged within his own four walls. --Book jacket.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When the head of a powerful Parisian family business is murdered in his bed, Maigret must pick apart the family''s darkest secrets to reveal the truth "The curious thing was that there seemed to be no grief here, only a strange dejection, a kind of uneasy stupor..." Maigret is called to the home of the high-profile Lachaume family where the eldest brother has been found shot dead. But on his arrival, the family closes ranks and claims to have heard and seen nothing at the time of the murder. Maigret must pick his way through the family''s web of lies, secrets, and deceit, as well as handle Angelot, a troublesome new breed of magistrate who has waded into the case. And it''s the estranged black sheep of the family, Veronique, who may hold the key to it all with her knowledge of the depths to which the family will sink to protect their reputation. Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses is an engrossing mystery that examines the intricate tangle of artifice that can entrap even the most influential families.

''The father of contemporary European detective fiction'' Ann Cleeves 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. This novel has been published in a previous translation as The Flemish Shop. ''Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'' John Gray ''A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness'' Independent

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When suspicion turns on Inspector Maigret for a crime he did not commit, he must use every investigative tool in his arsenal to clear his name. For the first time in his career, Inspector Maigret receives written summons to the Chief Commissioner’s office. There he learns that he has been accused of a horrible assault by an individual with ties to a high-ranking official. He is forbidden from attempting to investigate the case, but with his career and reputation on the line, Maigret must do everything he can to prove his innocence and uncover the motive behind the accusation. A nail-biting dissection of what happens when suspicion falls on the very man tasked with bringing about justice, Maigret Defends Himself is a riveting mystery from Georges Simenon.

The macabre discovery of a corpse in a railway trunk leads the Inspector to the realization that his gun will be used as a vengeance weapon unless he can find his mysterious visitor. The chase sends Maigret across the channel to London to investigate one killing and prevent another.

Against all expectations Marcel Féron has made a “normal” life in a bucolic French suburb in the Ardennes. But on May 10, 1940, as Nazi tanks approach, this timid, happy man must abandon his home and confront the “Fate” that he has secretly awaited. Separated from his pregnant wife and young daughter in the chaos of flight, he joins a freight car of refugees hurtling southward ahead of the pursuing invaders. There, he meets Anna, a sad-looking, dark- haired girl, whose accent is “neither Belgian nor German,” and who “seemed foreign to everything around her.” As the mystery of Anna’s identity is gradually revealed, Marcel leaps from the heights of an exhilarating freedom to the depths of a terrifying responsibility—one that will lead him to a blood-chilling choice. When it first appeared in English in 1964, British novelist and critic Brigid Brophy declared The Train to be “the novel his admirers had been expecting all along from Simenon.” Until The Train, she wrote, the dazzlingly prolific novelist had been “a master without a masterpiece.”

French master detective Maigret investigates the murder of the wife of Francois-Francis and discovers many puzzling circumstances surrounding it...

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When a wealthy aristocrat is found murdered in his home, Inspector Maigret must navigate a high-stakes case in the moneyed world of Paris’s upper crust Maigret is called to the home of Armand de Saint-Hilaire, a highly respected diplomat who has been found by his housekeeper, shot dead in his study. Maigret is urged to be discrete in his investigation, but after interviewing everyone concerned, the inspector is at a loss to the identity of the perpetrator—until he comes across a series of letters spanning decades between the victim and a widowed woman. As Maigret uncovers the details behind the pair’s relationship, he gets closer to discovering the tragic truth behind the official’s demise. With the pressure mounting, the inspector must navigate class divides and his own position in society to uncover the killer. Maigret and the Old People is an absorbing mystery and a thoughtful examination of the different worlds money creates.

Almost anyone could have shot the ex-postmistress of Saint-André-sur-Mer. Why is Maigret there, among an odd assortment of people he has never seen before and charged with the task of digging out their deepest secrets? A secret agenda of his own draws him on.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When he is tasked with solving a seemingly motiveless murder, Inspector Maigret must rely on his famous intuition to discover the truth A retired manufacturer is found murdered with his own pistol in his favorite armchair, shattering the tranquility of a quiet Paris community. The neighbors describe the Josselin household as a bastion of bourgeois compatibility, and Inspector Maigret is stymied by the absence of motive and by the reticence of the bereaved wife. It is not until a chance witness recalls an odd encounter between the deceased and a man in a bistro that the veil of propriety protecting the killer begins to dissolve. Maigret suspects that he’s not being given all the facts in this case as he is drawn deeper into the complex web of family dramas and lies at the heart of it. In Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse, he must rely on his famous intuition above all to uncover the shocking truth.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Inspector Maigret takes a case from a lively old widow whose maid has been poisoned The inexplicable murder of the wealthy Valentine Besson’s maid leads the older woman to believe that she herself was the intended target. Inspector Maigret undertakes the investigation, meeting Mrs. Besson’s dysfunctional family and a cavalcade of suspects. As he delves into the case, Maigret must unravel a tangled web of family politics—and confront Valentine’s stepsons, who may be harboring dark secrets of their own.

Hardworking Dutch family man Kees Popinga loses his money when the shipping firm he works for collapses. Something snaps and from the shell of a modern citizen emerges a calculating paranoiac, capable of random acts of violence - even murder.

Suddenly witness to a man’s dreadful death, Inspector Maigret finds himself faced with a series of sordid events that drove the man to despair in this haunting tale of guilt and tragedy. While stopped at a railway station on the northern edge of Holland, Inspector Maigret catches sight of a traveler acting oddly: the man glances around furtively, pulls out handfuls of coins to pay for purchases, and guards a small suitcase. Maigret decides to follow the man, thinking he’ll help catch a crook—but then the inspector witnesses something terrible. The stranger leaves behind only a passport with a false name and an old, large, dirty gray suit. Struck by guilt, Maigret resolves to figure out who this man was and why events ended so tragically. The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien is a moving and deep exploration into the burdens of conscience and the lengths one might go in pursuit of absolution.

The Inspector has fallen into disfavor with his Paris superiors and has been shunted to a district supervisor''s job on the northern French coast. Here, among mussel-gatherers and lobstermen, Maigret suffers depression and boredom. He is an outsider. Even the local police inspector is dull and predictable, as everything in the coastal villages appears to be. But the discovery of a corpse in the house of a retired judge returns a sense of purpose to Maigret. The Boston Globe called this "one of Simenon''s best Maigrets . . . replete with his customary irony and deft characterization".

''The father of contemporary European detective fiction'' Ann Cleeves Maigret savoured the sensations of his youth again: the cold, stinging eyes, frozen fingertips, an aftertaste of coffee. Then, stepping inside the church, a blast of heat, soft light; the smell of candles and incense. The last time Maigret went home to the village of his birth was for his father''s funeral. Now an anonymous note predicting a crime during All Souls'' Day mass draws him back there, where troubling memories resurface and hidden vices are revealed. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret Goes Home. ''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

For a weekend, the Arbelet family stops in Pouilly, at the Hôtel du Cheval-Blanc. Maurice Arbelet is immediately seduced by the atmosphere of the inn: he will keep in his memory the image of a very pleasant place. Singular characters are found there however: Felix, the night watchman, former colonial soldier who''s become messy and cynical, an uncle of Mme Arbelet, lost for years; M. Jean, the owner of the hotel, who abuses his maids, Rose and Thérèse; and the latter''s husband, a Pole, who only shows up when he needs money. Why does Maurice Arbelet come back alone one afternoon to the Cheval-Blanc? This novel explores the hidden links two different milieus have with one another: the landlords of the inn and their employees, and the members of a middle-class family who frequent the restaurant, related to one of those employees.

''The father of contemporary European detective fiction'' Ann Cleeves 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. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Death of a Harbour Master. ''Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'' John Gray ''A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness'' Independent

A thought-provoking mystery unfolds in a small coastal Dutch town after a host’s private party ends in murder. A French professor is staying in a coastal Dutch town while on a lecture tour—but when his host is murdered, he’s held for questioning as the prime suspect. Maigret’s assistance is requested, so he travels to the northeast of Holland, where he meets the attendees of a small private gathering the week before: Beetje, the coquettish daughter of a local farmer; Madame Popinga, the victim’s wife; Any Van Elst, her sister and a prospective lawyer; and Cornelius, a student at the Naval College; among a few others. While some are content blaming the outsider in their midst, Maigret senses something more enigmatic at play. Why does Conrad Popinga walk Beetje home every night she visits? What does the local crook Oosting know—and why was his cap found in the Popingas’ bathroom, one of the only rooms that overlooks the crime scene? In a town this small, Maigret knows its inhabitants know more than they claim.

Inspector Jules Maigret differs from his English counterparts of the 1930s and 40s in that he is a respectable, bourgeois member of the police force - archetypally French. In this reissued collection of dramatized short stories, Maigret and Simenon look back over four of their greatest cases.

Police Inspector Maigret recounts the case of a man accused of the murder of his wife, and Maigret is unable to save the possibly innocent man from the guillotine

The near fatal shooting of a policeman takes Maigret into the art world-and Madame Maigret helps her husband solve the case. Translated by Margaret Duff. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.