From their initial online encounter, through a shared appreciation of erotic literature, to the highly explicit and shocking story of their brief relationship, Emma Becker charts the labyrinths of lust of Ellie and 'Monsieur', set against the murky landscape of Facebook, text messages and the Pigalle hotel room in which they meet every Tuesday morning. Why do we do things we know are wrong? Why do May-to-December romances invariably go wrong? Why does the allure of forbidden sex cloud our judgments? Emma Becker doesn't come up with all the answers, but provides a fascinating and poignant tale, which will turn Monsieur into the new Lolita.

Céleste Albaret was Marcel Proust's housekeeper in his last years, when he retreated from the world to devote himself to In Search of Lost Time. She could imitate his voice to perfection, and Proust himself said to her, "You know everything about me." Her reminiscences of her employer present an intimate picture of the daily life of a great writer who was also a deeply peculiar man, while Madame Albaret herself proves to be a shrewd and engaging companion.

From the olive trees of southern France to Gnostic cults in Egypt, a man and his lovers are invented and reinvented in this first volume of a great literary adventure. For British doctor Bruce Drexel, a return to Provence is bittersweet. Here, at a rustic chateau, he once fell in love with Sylvie, the Frenchwoman who would become his wife, and befriended her brother, Piers. The three made up a peculiar, potent ménage for years until Sylvie’s descent into madness and Piers’s suicide. As Drexel attends to Piers’s affairs, he becomes steeped in the memories of a spiritually transformational trip to Egypt; the band of intellectual confederates who used to be his intimate friends; and a three-sided love that became his reason for being. So begins Monsieur, the masterful first entry of Durrell’s Avignon Quintet, an infinite regress of memory and imagination that challenges the formal conventions of fiction.

'Monsieur Dior: Once Upon A Time' is an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the ten years Christian Dior ran his esteemed house. As women were starved for glamour following World War II, Dior's New Look was revolutionary in bringing femininity back to fashion with a bold use of fabric and silhouetted lines. In the short time he ran the house, Dior rose to superstardom and managed to expand his empire to perfumes, jewellery, and hosiery while opening boutiques all over the world. Author Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni interviewed dozens of people who had a direct relationship with the fashion designer such as Jacqueline de Ribes, Olivia de Havilland, John Fairchild, Pierre Cardin, Victoire Doutreleau, and many others, including his vendeuses or saleswomen, society clients, models, and muses, giving readers unique intimate insight into how this captivating house operated. With dazzling images by photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lord Snowdon, and Willy Maywald, as well as neverbefore-seen materials from the Dior Archives, this account is a fresh and surprising view into the House of Dior and life of its brilliant founder. 'Monsieur Dior: Once Upon A Time' is elegantly presented in a Dior grey box with silver tissue paper and a grosgrain bookmark.

How do we cope with the public and private disaster? Jasmina Tesanovic on being bombed in Belgrade -- "The Diary of a Political Idiot"; Ian Jack on good behavior aboard the Titanic; Joy Williams on the necessary death of her dog Hawk; Edward Said on the shame of his body; James Buchan inside Saddam's Iraq. Plus: Edmund White, and the debut of a novelist unknown when this issue was published -- Zadie Smith.

A hilarious, candid account of what life in France is actually like, from a writer for Vanity Fair and GQ Americans love to love Paris. We buy books about how the French parent, why French women don't get fat, and how to be Parisian wherever you are. While our work hours increase every year, we think longingly of the six weeks of vacation the French enjoy, imagining them at the seaside in stripes with plates of fruits de mer. John von Sothen fell in love with Paris through the stories his mother told of her year spent there as a student. And then, after falling for and marrying a French waitress he met in New York, von Sothen moved to Paris. But fifteen years in, he's finally ready to admit his mother's Paris is mostly a fantasy. In this hilarious and delightful collection of essays, von Sothen walks us through real life in Paris--not only myth-busting our Parisian daydreams but also revealing the inimitable and too often invisible pleasures of family life abroad. Relentlessly funny and full of incisive observations, Monsieur Mediocre is ultimately a love letter to France--to its absurdities, its history, its ideals--but it's a very French love letter: frank, smoky, unsentimental. It is a clear-eyed ode to a beautiful, complex, contradictory country from someone who both eagerly and grudgingly calls it home.

Reproduction of the original: The Love of Monsieur by George Gibbs