Mama Madeleine, Mado voor de intimi, lijdt sinds een paar maanden aan
'amour maladie'. Ze heeft er schoon genoeg van om schoenen te
verkopen aan anonieme sokken vol gaten. Ze heeft er genoeg van te
wachten tot haar man, striptekenaar, eindelijk een beetje doorbreekt.
Mado wil een ander leven! Want de kilometers trekken voorbij en er is
geen ontkomen aan de vervloekte rammelkast die haar leven is! Na vruchteloze ruzies en nog veel pijnlijker stiltes, besluit het
echtpaar te scheiden. Maar niet meteen. Na de zomer pas. Dan kunnen
de kinderen genieten van een laatste vakantie samen. Vakanties zijn
toch de mooiste momenten uit het leven van een gezin? Je weet wel,
die vakanties waarin je in een auto wordt gepropt en honderden
kilometers rijdt in een plakkerige hitte ...
1962. Mam'zelle Esterel maakt haar eerste rit mét muziek, op de tonen
van "Let's Twist Again!" 1992. De jaren zijn voorbij gevlogen, het
jonge koppel van weleer is intussen met pensioen. De kinderen zijn
intussen volwassen en de R4 staat te koop... Het uitgelezen moment om
herinneringen op te halen aan het jaar 1962 en hun allereerste
vakantie aan boord van Mam'zelle Esterel in het gezelschap van...de schoonouders! Een trip die eerder gastronomisch dan idyllisch lijkt
te worden. Op naar Saint-Etienne!
In het tweede deel van Mooie Zomers gaan Zidrou enLafebre terug in de
tijd naar 1969: de Faldéraults en hunrode Renault 4L zijn vier jaar
jonger. Hun bestemming:het zuiden... maar de reis over de binnenwegen
is ookbelangrijk: de laatste kop koffie met Pépé Buelo voorhet
vertrek, de champagne voor de 100.000 kilometervan Mam'zelle Estérel,
de plaspauzes, de picknicks, hetkamperen... Dat alles voordat de
paradijselijke krekenvan de Middellandse Zee in zicht komen.
Kostbaremomenten waarvoor je de tijd moet nemen...
Twee jaar na zijn ontsnapping uit de gevangenis is de Kameleon
opnieuw in Parijs. Dankzij plastische chirurgie en een doorgedreven
maandenlange training lijkt hij als twee druppels water op zijn
gezworen vijand Rik Ringers. Zijn bedoeling is duidelijk: hij wil
Riks plaats innemen en diens wereld flink op zijn kop zetten. Wanneer
hij met Nadine, het nichtje van commissaris Baardemakers naar
Porquerolles trekt waar Baardemakers zal trouwen, gaan de poppen pas
echt aan het dansen...
Een mysterieuze vrouw vermoordt eenzame mannen in de Jardin du
Luxembourg. De politie staat voor een compleet raadsel. De echte Rik
Ringers is terug en start een politieonderzoek dat minstens even
spannend is als de avonturen uit de gloriejaren van de reeks.
Na de recente gebeurtenissen in Londen worden Jay en Kita door de
zelfingenomen bourgeoisie meer dan ooit als terroristen beschouwd.
Maar dankzij de `Angry Mothers', een kleine groep activistische
moeders die de twee jonge vrouwen hadden opgericht, heeft hun strijd
zich als een lopend vuurtje verspreid. Als gevolg daarvan is SHI nog
nooit zo zichtbaar geweest in heel Londen, waar het de rechten van
zowel vrouwen als kinderen behartigt. Bij Jay's graf begint Apolline
te beseffen hoe het leven van haar biologische moeder er vroeger
uitzag; een leven van strijd en gevecht, voor een groter doel. Maar
is Apolline sterk genoeg om het gewicht van haar erfenis te dragen?
Is zij klaar om het over te nemen van haar dode moeder, over wie zij
niets weet behalve wat ze heeft geleerd uit roddels en brieven om
losgeld?
"Bearskin" takes us on a trip to modern day Italy and then all the way to the United States of the late 1930s. Every day, Amadeo bikes up the hill from his small hometown on a beautiful island off the coast of Italy to read the daily horoscope to Don Palermo. Little does he know that this blind and powerless old man with a cane in his hand used to be a bear tamer, not to mention his later shenanigans as the right-hand man of a powerful mafia boss. A highly moving story of love, vengeance and cowardice.
Hello, my name is Zita. But here, at the La Gaufre hospital, everyone calls me "Baldy" I have a type of leukemia that seems to be especially fond of my body. Because of all the treatments I have undergone, I now only have a few tufts of hair left on my head. So I prefer to shave my head bald. Hence my nickname.
We're right in the middle of World War I, deep in the trenches. The soldiers are confronted by unimaginable suffering and violent death on a daily basis. Considered as nothing more than cannon fodder by their superiors, they try desperately to survive. Partly as an act of defiance in the face of hardship, partly as the ultimate irony, the soldiers nickname their regiment after the famous Parisian cabaret club 'Folies Bergère'. They laugh and joke, they write, they draw, they fight, they die in appalling circumstances, they kill themselves, they lose their minds. And then one of their number is sentenced to death by firing squad... and miraculously survives...
It's June 1942. Five years have gone by, and Paris has changed. The Winter Velodrome, Inspector Séverin's favorite place, is soon to be put to different use. Aimé Louzeau, although still the fresh-faced young man he always was, has been profoundly affected by his encounter with Eeva, the panther woman. She seems to have stirred up all sorts of contradictions in him: policeman or Indian chief? The frivolities of the 30s have well and truly disappeared, to be replaced by drama, resignation and blind melancholy.
During the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, two women's lives become irrevocably intertwined when they both fall victim to a nefarious underground fraternity of ex-soldiers from England's upper crust who have sworn their lives to defending the British Empire-as well as their own decadent lifestyles. In this first volume, young rebel Jennifer Winterfield and the mysterious Kitamakura from Japan forge an unlikely alliance along with Jennifer's doctor uncle and a street urchin named Pickles. Together they lay the groundwork for a criminal organization that will go on to sow terror in the hearts of the colonialists and industrialists who tried to put them down.
During the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, two women's lives become irrevocably intertwined when they both fall victim to a nefarious underground fraternity of ex-soldiers from England's upper crust who have sworn their lives to defending the British Empire-as well as their own decadent lifestyles. In this first volume, young rebel Jennifer Winterfield and the mysterious Kitamakura from Japan forge an unlikely alliance along with Jennifer's doctor uncle and a street urchin named Pickles. Together they lay the groundwork for a criminal organization that will go on to sow terror in the hearts of the colonialists and industrialists who tried to put them down.
No one thought he'd ever dare to return. In this African country where the dictatorship has banned all forms of cultural expression, the storyteller named Once-Upon-A-Time has already had a brush with death. For refusing to stop performing his puppet shows, he lost both his hands, severed at the wrist with the slash of a machete. Now he's back, ready to begin performing again, and ready to take on the powers that be...
Yu Kiang works for a Chinese lumberjack corporation in the Congo. Despite his company's ban on its employees from frequenting the local girls, Yu has fallen for a Congolese woman, Antoinette... and, in a very different way, for Antoinette's little daughter, Marie-Léontine. One night, in the arms of his lover, Yu discovers Antoinette's wound: a terrible scar, an assault on her femininity. How many others are there like her, exiled from their own body, victims of a monstrous ongoing tradition? How many? 150 million. But the only thing that matters to Yu and Antoinette is that little Marie-Léontine never falls victim to the tradition that her mother had to suffer.
Virtuoso Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe is invited out to the Congo by the governor to give a concert. How could he refuse such an invitation? Eugène waves goodbye to the infamous gray Belgian skies and hops on a plane taking him to the dazzling colors of Africa. He is invited to stay a few weeks at his nephew's house, by the stunning Lake Maï Ndombé. And that's where he meets Turntable. Through their mutual appreciation of music, the servant and the celebrity gradually form an unlikely friendship, breaking the boundaries of convention.
From his Barcelona studio in 1939, an aging Catalan painter shares with his model the mystery of his best friend Vidal Balaguer, "the forgotten genius" of Catalan Modernism, who vanished on the eve of 1900. His story his linked to the disappearance a few months earlier of his muse and lover, Mar, the subject of his most famous painting, "Young Lady in a Mantón." But there are other disappearances, too, of people, a corpse, some oranges, and a stubbornly silent canary named Stradivarius. A police detective is convinced that Balaguer murdered his model but by the end of the story we may come to believe that, as the painter himself reflects, "the murder weapon is not always what you might think!"
When unassuming candy store owner Ike Hopper dies of a heart attack, he leaves behind a bombshell that rocks his small Australian town. His confession of guilt to a 27-year old murder-the savage stabbing of local girl Lee Duncan-brings his brother Greg, accused of the crime, out of the bush where he's been hiding. But Greg, returning to his hometown of Dubbo to tie up loose ends, finds not all ghosts go quietly to the grave. For instance, he seems to see his ex-wife Lee taunting him wherever he wanders... A hard-hitting, guilt-ridden, sun-drenched slice of outback noir.
It's 1969 and the Faldérault family is headed south on their annual summer vacation. Despite unexpected delays and detours, picking up new friends along the road, one way or another they'll make it to their destination: a picturesque calanque in southern France!
An average Joe falls in love with a hooker from Ecuador and, when she goes missing, pressures a local mobster into telling him where she is by kidnapping his only daughter... What could possibly go wrong? A story about second chances, with a buddy road trip and musings on art and beauty thrown in for good measure.
On a forgotten cul-de-sac in a nameless city, a child is born. It doesn't take long for the charming little girl to work her way into the hearts of all the residents on this cozy little street. Does it really matter that she's invisible? The child's mother delivered a stillborn, fatherless baby. Two months later, she becomes convinced that her child has returned from heaven. The neighbors don't have the heart to tell her otherwise, and so they play along. After all, "why bring somebody pain when it's so easy to bring joy instead?" ...But is Lydie really a figment?
It's the summer of 1962 and the Faldérault family, grandparents included, is setting out on the maiden voyage of their brand-spanking-new Renault hatchback-Miss Esterel! Though they won't make it as far as their beloved Mediterranean-only making it as far into France as Saint-Etienne-the fry-loving and pop hit-singing Faldéraults will still make plenty of special memories along the way.
What do you do when you hate your wife and you're sleeping with your stepdaughter? If you're ostrich farmer Pep, you beat your wife's head in with a shovel when your stepdaughter asks you to. You might do it some rainy night, and toss the body down a well for good measure. You might even think you're getting some money out of it. But if you're hapless and unlucky as Pep is, you might find yourself trapped in a hell of your own making, endlessly wondering: how many times do you have to kill someone before they're really dead?
In the third book of the series, the Glorious Eries develop their plan to win England back its colonies and they find themselves collaborating with a powerful and surprising ally. Jennifer Winterfield and Kita let the world believe they are dead so that they can begin plotting their revenge with the help of Kita's sensei, a Japanese tattoo artist with mystical powers who lives in a houseboat on the Thames. Meanwhile, Pickles the street urchin gets her hopes up that Jennifer might adopt her, but destiny has other plans.
It's 1980 and the Faldérault family is ready for a new kind of summer vacation. After years of roughing it, luxury and comfort are on the horizon in a brand-new custom-made vacation home. Things don't go as planned, of course, and Pierre, Madeleine, and the kids find themselves on yet another unexpected adventure!
Nouv.
