It's a few days before Christmas in Versailles. Olivier has come to bury his mother, but the impending holidays and icy conditions have delayed the funeral.While trapped in limbo at his mother's flat, a chance encounter brings Olivier back in touch with childhood friend Jeanne and her blind brother, Rodolphe.Rodolphe suggests they have dinner together, along with a homeless man he's taken in. As the wine flows, dark secrets are spilled, and there's more than just hangovers ...

Ennui, dislocation, alienation, estrangement - these are the colours on Garnier's palette. And somehow, darkly, he makes them almost funny. I could compare him with JG Ballard or with Michel Houellebecq or Daniel Davies. He's been compared with Georges Simenon and Cormac McCarthy and with Patricia Highsmith. But really, his books are out there on their own, short, jagged and exhilarating, unexpected slaps around the face that make you laugh with surprise while you spin around to see who di...

Fabien and Sylvie had both known their marriage was no longer working. And yet when Sylvie is involved in a fatal car accident, her husband is stunned to discover that she had a lover who died alongside her.With thoughts of revenge on his mind, Fabien decides to find out about the lover's widow, Martine, first by stalking her, then by breaking into her home.He really needs to get Martine on her own. But she never goes anywhere without her formidable best friend, Madeleine...

A crime writer uses the modest advance on his latest novel to rent a house on the Normandy coast. There should be little to distract him from his work besides walks on the windswept beach, but as he begins to tell the tale of forty-something Louis - who, after dispatching his own mother, goes on to relieve others of their burdensome elderly relations - events in his own life begin to overlap with the work of his imagination.

Written over a 15-year period from the mid '90s, Garnier's short novels feature a recurring set of themes, characters and settings, and reading them side by side allows the author's profound and darkly comic tapestry of human experience to be fully appreciated.Volume 1 includes The A26, in which a new Picardy motorway brings modernity close to a flat in which a brother and sister live together, haunted by terminal illness and the events of 1945; How's ...

If you have an inner life, you inevitably have a double life. It remained to be seen which of the two lives would gobble up the other.Brice and Emma had bought their new home in the countryside together. And then Emma disappeared. Now, as he awaits her return, Brice busies himself with DIY and walks around the village. He gradually comes to know his new neighbours including Blanche, an enigmatic woman in white, who has lived on her own in the big house by the graveyard since the de...

'A trippy, sleazy, sly and classy read' A. L. KennedyMarc dreams of going somewhere far, far away - but he'll start by taking his cat and his grown-up daughter, Anne, to an out-of-season resort on the Channel. Reluctant to go home, the curious threesome head south for Agen, whose main claim to fame is its prunes. As their impromptu road trip takes ever stranger turns, the trail of destruction - and mysterious disappearances - mounts up in their wake.Shocking, hilarious and ...

Gabriel is a stranger in a small Breton town. Nobody knows where he came from or why he's here. Yet his small acts of kindness, and exceptional cooking, quickly earn him acceptance from the locals.His new friends grow fond of Gabriel, who seems as reserved and benign as the toy panda he wins at the funfair.But unlike Gabriel, the fluffy toy is not haunted by his past....

Recently widowed grandmother Éliette is returning to her home in the mountains when her micro-car breaks down. A stranger comes to her aid on foot. Éliette offers him a lift, glad of the interruption to her humdrum routine.That night, her neighbours' son is killed in a road accident. Could the tragedy be linked to the arrival of her good Samaritan?

Nature's a funny old thing, it does whatever it pleases.Given the choice, Martial would not have moved to Les Conviviales. But Odette loved the idea of a brand-new retirement village in the south of France. So that was that. At first it feels like a terrible mistake: they're the only residents and it's raining non-stop. Then three neighbours arrive, the sun comes out, and life becomes far more interesting and agreeable. Until, that is, some travellers set up camp just outside their...

'Happiness for those unused to it is like food for the starving - a little too much can be fatal.'Writer Jeff Colombier is not accustomed to success. Twice divorced with a grown-up son he barely sees, he drinks too much and his books don't sell. Then he wins a big literary prize and his life changes for ever. Overwhelmed by his newfound wealth and happiness, he feels the need to escape and recapture his lost youth, taking his son, Damien, with him. And if shady characters lead them...

Written over a 15-year period from the mid '90s, Garnier's short novels weave a profound and darkly comic tapestry of human experience.Volume 3 includes The Eskimo Solution, which combines the story of a struggling writer with excerpts of the crime novel he's writing, which will spill over into his own life; Low Heights, in which a cantankerous retiree falls for his nurse and finds himself confronted with a man claiming to be his long-lost son ......