After decades, former lovers come face to face in a novel filled with a "suspenseful dread that makes you want to turn every page at locomotive pace" ( St. Louis Post-Dispatch).Cécile, a stylish forty-seven-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she's exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful, and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. B...

100 simply delicious vegan recipes--good for the planet, and for you--from the chef and blogger behind The Buddhist Chef.A practicing Buddhist for over two decades, Jean-Philippe Cyr, aka The Buddhist Chef, believes that everyone has the power to make their vision of the world a reality--and that the most impactful way to do that is through the food we choose to make, eat, and share. This realization led him to veganism, which transformed his life and health. In th...

"Finely drawn . . . charming and engrossing.”—Suzanne Vega, singer-songwriterAt a classic café in the French provinces, anonymity, chance encounters, and traumatic pasts collide against the muted background of global instability. Jean-Philippe Blondel, author of the bestselling The 6:41 to Paris, presents a moving fresco of intertwined destinies portrayed with humor, insight, and tenderness. In the span of twenty-four hours, a medley of characters retrace ...

Inspired by Erik Satie's work of the same name, Sports and Pastimes is the latest novel by acclaimed Montreal playwright and author Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard.Translated by Aimee Wall (whose translation of Vickie Gendreau's Testament for BookThug in 2016 drew critical reviews), this fast-paced story follows the daily life, at once empty and overloaded, of a group of friends who spend all their energy trying to distract themselves with huge hits of endorphins, art ...

'The book is like the spoon: once invented, it cannot be bettered' - Umberto Eco.These days it is impossible to get away from discussions of whether the book will survive the digital revolution. Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles on the subject appear daily, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting ignorance of the future. Amidst the twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air.This thought-provoking book takes the ...

In these three interconnected stories, reality bends and breaks in unexpected ways. A woman trapped in a deadly time loop discovers her fate may hinge on a simple ritual. Another finds herself questioning her sanity after a cupcake accident leads her to an ethereal Japanese professor. A man awakens to confront supernatural threats in a sinister city where darkness breeds violence. Through fractured time and realities, these tales from an expert in cryptography explore the thin line between...

"Art, love and longing, the French way . . . an emotionally taut portrayal of late-in-life, post-marriage drift" from the author of The 6:41 to Paris ( The New York Times Book Review).A French teacher on the verge of retirement is invited to a glittering opening that showcases the artwork of his former student, who has since become a celebrated painter. This unexpected encounter leads to the older man posing for his portrait. Possibly in the nude. ...

75+ easy, comforting, and oh-so-delicious vegan recipes for every home cook—from the bestselling author of The Buddhist Chef.Jean-Philippe Cyr—vegan chef, blogger, and bestselling cookbook author—is back with even more delicious vegan recipes. Inspired by the comfort foods he enjoyed cooking with his grandmother while growing up, his classical culinary training, as well as his travels around the world, The Buddhist Chef’s Vegan Comfort Cooking wil...

In Self-Portrait Abroad, our narrator—a Belgian author much like Toussaint himself—travels the globe, finding the mundane blended everywhere with the exotic: With his usual poker face, he keeps up on Corsican gossip in Tokyo and has a battle of nerves in a butcher shop in Berlin; he wins a boules tournament in Cap Corse, takes in a strip club in Japan's historic Nara, gets pulled through Hanoi on a cycle rickshaw, and has a chance encounter on the road from Tunis to Sfax. Tales of...

Through the lens of chess, a celebrated Belgian author unearths fresh insights into his work and relationships in this luminous exploration of childhood, memory, and aging.Shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic forced Europe into lockdown, Jean-Philippe Toussaint left Brussels for the seaside city of Ostend. Spending his days editing his novel The Emotions and coming to terms with new aches and pains, his mind wanders to memories of his youth—summers at the ...

Joyeux Noël: "[An]endearing collection of Christmas stories from ten of France's most esteemed writers―past and present―skillfully translated." ― Foreword ReviewsThis collection brings together the best French Christmas stories of all time, featuring classics by Guy de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet, plus stories by the esteemed twentieth century authors Irène Némirovsky and Nobel Prize winner Anatole France and contemporary writers Dominique Fabre and Jea...

"A little thing happened to me. Which could have just as easily happened to you. You're on vacation in a hotel with your son in a small village and you're about to go see some friends, but something holds you back, a mysterious reticence that prevents you from going to find them. Here is the novel of this reticence, small and specific, and of the fears that it instigates, little by little. Because not only are your friends not there when you do decide to go find them, but, several days lat...