What began as a 50th Birthday gift turned into a magical journey of self discovery in the city of love and lights. After 27 years of marriage, I found myself divorced on a Thursday and whisked across the Atlantic to Paris the following Tuesday. This impromptu vacation became a search for my soul, my smile, and the strong desire to live in the moment. When children and a husband define your life for so long, how do you regain your own sense of identity? When every room in your home holds memories too painful to bear, where can you go to allow your spirit to heal? Along the banks of the River Seine and in the cobblestone streets, churches and cafes of Montmartre I found a renewed strength inspired by the simplicity of French life. A new chapter of my life began when on a cold February evening Jon Webster a very tall and handsome American living in Paris walked into a wine bar in Montmartre. The sparkle that had been absent from my eyes was about to return and a pilgrimage to reconnect with the simplicity of life became a possibility. Faced with scenarios I had only dreamed of I took a leap of faith that altered my life. I conquered living in the moment and made my way through a city of strangers only to realize we all possessed the same desires; to be loved, appreciated, and in the end, grateful to be alive.

“[With] murderous plots, shady Parisian undersides, upper-class dealings. . . . this novel is rich in historical detail and robust with personality.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review Maud Heighton came to Lafond’s famous Academie to paint, and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but Paris, she quickly realizes, is no place for a light purse. While her fellow students enjoy the dazzling decadence of the Belle Epoque, Maud slips into poverty. Quietly starving, and dreading another cold Paris winter, she stumbles upon an opportunity when Christian Morel engages her as a live-in companion to his beautiful young sister, Sylvie. Maud is overjoyed by her good fortune. With a clean room, hot meals, and an umbrella to keep her dry, she is able to hold her head high as she strolls the streets of Montmartre. No longer hostage to poverty and hunger, Maud can at last devote herself to her art. But all is not as it seems. Christian and Sylvie, Maud soon discovers, are not quite the darlings they pretend to be. Sylvie has a secret addiction to opium and Christian has an ominous air of intrigue. As this dark and powerful tale progresses, Maud is drawn further into the Morels’ world of elegant deception. Their secrets become hers, and soon she is caught in a scheme of betrayal and revenge that will plunge her into the darkness that waits beneath this glittering city of light. “Dramatic and teeming with intrigue, The Paris Winter is a richly detailed historical novel that both thrills and satisfies.” —Shelf Awareness

Serial Killer in Paris Best selling authors, Thomas Donahue and Karen Donahue, take us on a special trip to Paris in this adventure that is filled with deadly twists and turns. The top of the Eiffel Tower is the perfect spot for John Hunter to propose marriage to Marin Ryan. After all, it’s Christmas Eve in Paris! Draped in newly fallen snow, the City of Light is decorated for the festive season, but Parisians are not in the spirit. A string of serial murders of young women sends violent tremors throughout the city. The police appear no closer to catching “the Christmas killer.” ReaderReview: “. . .a bit of romance, a bit of humor, and a bit of murder. . .what more could you ask for!” Reader Review: “An in depth investigation into the mind and degradation of a serial killer. . .”

A novel of murder and espionage during the First World War: “Rich atmosphere and a propulsive plot...a satisfying, stylish thrill.”―The Tampa Bay Times Autumn 1915. World War I is raging across Europe, but Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches—though that hasn’t stopped young men and women from crossing the Atlantic to volunteer at the front. Christopher “Kit” Cobb, a Chicago reporter with a second job as undercover agent for the U.S. government, is officially in Paris doing a story on American ambulance drivers, but his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, soon broadens his mission. City-dwelling civilians are meeting death by dynamite in a new string of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to figure out who is behind them—possibly a German operative who has snuck in with the waves of refugees coming in from the provinces and across the border in Belgium. But there are elements in this pursuit that will test Kit Cobb, in all his roles, to the very limits of his principles, wits, and talents for survival. With Paris in the Dark, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler returns to his lauded Christopher Marlowe Cobb series and proves once again that he can craft “a ripping good yarn” (Wall Street Journal) with unmistakably literary underpinnings and a rich sense of the political and cultural atmosphere of the time. “Best is Butler's feel for the black-and-white-movie atmospherics of a war zone after hours: It's a thrill to follow Kit to German hangouts like Le Rouge et le Noir, where a password will get you in, but there’s no guarantee you'll get out.”―Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

Some people grow up with silver spoons firmly planted in their mouths. But others have to teethe on life and its misfortunes. Meet Clare de Fontroy, poet, journalist, underground warrior, civil rights activist, mother, lover and most assuredly, no owner of a silver spoon. She is a woman who has witnessed history being carved out of daily lives of ordinary people, as well as those of the rich and famous. Her letters from Paris comprise and narrative about America's past, as well as its future.

What do you do when your great life-plan works out, and you're still unhappy? Successful, but on the verge of burnout, Janice MacLeod saved enough money to buy herself two years of freedom in Europe. Days into her stop in Paris, she met Christophe, and her fate was sealed. Forced to find a way to fund her expat future, Janice created a painted letter subscription service, sending out thousands of letters to people who are hungry to receive something beautiful. Paris Letters is the inspiring story of a woman who dared to discover a life she could love.

IN his preface, Mr. Le Gallienne is modest enough to say that this volume is not a guide-book. And yet it is. Those who follow him while he rambles about Paris must know more of that delectable city than others not so fortunate as to traipse along. To move with a poet down those old, haunted streets—ah! what a privilege it will be to thousands of us; for we shall be bound to find vistas we may have missed before. Mr. Le Gallienne’s love of Paris is well known. It has come to be almost a sensational “affair” of the spirit which neither the loveliest city in the world nor the dreaming poet has ever wished to conceal. There is an enchantment in the very name by which the world calls the city on the Seine, and no one can utter it without a glow, an ecstasy. The perfume and the sweetness of it are captured in these beautiful, leisurely pages; but likewise one will find here an old and almost forgotten city, full of vigor and strength, full of a humanity and a romantic history that warm the heart and cause the blood to run faster. I venture to say that no Frenchman could be more passionately fond of Paris than the English author of this living book; for to him, Paris is not, as it is to so many thoughtless visitors, merely a “light woman.” To him it is—Home.