CATALOGUE LONDON BOOK FAIR 2014 PAYOT ET RIVAGES : TEXTES (anglais) 2014 Augustin GUILBERT-BILLETDOUX - Les joueuses (“The Players”) Two teenaged girls who want to get the most out of life and are determined to make it – budding actresses, they’re sure – form a life-long friendship the first time they meet, in acting class. Zoé talks, Lou leads the way. With their shared obsession for the stage as a backdrop, they go through the motions as they await roles that are worthy of them. They’ll need to find a love that can compare to their feelings for each other... They soon become young women who feel hemmed in under the rooftops of Paris in a decadent era. When they meet a man who seems to hold the promise of a different kind of love, they head to Brazil, desperately seeking something sacred and true, in search of something greater here on Earth. Will their encounter with Candomblé, the cult of the orishas, allow them to share their love? Each in her own way, both women will go to the end of their obsession: the irresistible need to play. Augustin Guilbert-Billetdoux was born in 1986. His first novel was Le Messie du people chauve (Gallimard, 2012). “Augustin Billetdoux has gracefully escaped second-novel syndrome. He is has a fine grasp of what the holy could mean in that period of existence when the desire to live fife to the fullest brushes up against – at the risk of falling into – eternal abysses.” Véronique Cassarin-Grand, Le Nouvel Observateur

Elie TREESE - Les Anges à part (“Angels Apart”) Young boys tramp through the countryside hoping to find a few cigarettes, a beer, or a girl to impress. They have taken refuge in an abandoned house where Carabi, the latter of the two to arrive, plans to store his childhood treasures. Together, they become initiated into transgressive play, provoking adults who are portrayed through the lens of childhood derision. Until their friendship begins to crack... Like a cross between Mark Twain and Faulkner, this lively, chatty text recreates the sense of freedom of early adolescence, as well as the share of fantasy that is inherent to it. ElieTreese, a Franco-American, was born in 1973. This is his second novel, after Ni ce qu'ils espèrent, ni ce qu'ils croient (Allia, 2012). Press: “With this second, even more well-written novel (…), one of the most ambitious and singular novelistic projects of our times is starting to take shape.” - O.M., LivresHebdo “Something about this misleadingly naïve text is reminiscent of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. But the violence is more sudden here, the beauty of the world both more raw and more obvious.” – Bérengère Birée, Technikart

Georgia MAKHLOUF - Les absents (“The Absent”) From Beirut to Paris, the narrator describes a life begun under the pleasant auspices of a happy childhood, which is brutally shattered by war and exile. She does it through portraits of those she calls the “absent”– people she encountered at different times who have now disappeared. Their names were jotted into her address book, then crossed out or erased due to changing circumstances, disagreements, arguments, changes of itinerary or death. We gradually come to see that these lively and precise interwoven portraits create a kind of volatile negative image of the author, who is haunted by a self-absence that is nourished by the exaltation of memory. This is not a series of anecdotal confessions; the subject of this novel, which defies the laws of autobiography, is the delicate ties – both incarnated and immaterial – between human beings. Georgia Makhlouf divides her time between Paris and Beirut. A member of the editorial board of L'Orient Littéraire, she won the France-Lebanon Prize for Eclats de mémoire(2006) and the Phénix Prize for Les Hommes debout(2007). Pascal RUFFENACH - Une femme à la mer (“Woman Overboard”) A woman decides to abandon everything. To walk away from her family, her children, everyone she loves, the places she lives. Nothing takes their place: her life becomes a desert, a vacuum. She is gradually disappearing. She leaves, heading off on a boat to lose herself in the great poem of the sea. The ocean soothes and consoles her, makes her unsinkable: she is drowning in it, but she doesn’t drown. She is shipwrecked, taken by the waves, but has no fear: out of nowhere, a ship arrives and saves this ‘woman overboard’. Night and day, the captain and crew take turns at her side, whispering the stories of their own lives. Stories of travel and separation, of distant families, of seaports. Thanks to these nomadic men’s stories, she will slowly regain a fragile, uncertain hold on life. Pascal Ruffenach is the head of the children’s literature division of Editions Bayard. His previous books include L'Hôpital maritime (Seuil, 2012). François RIVIERE – Un garcon disparaît (“A Boy Disappears”) A mysterious event took place in 1962 in Yonge, a small town on the west coast of France, in Mme Leprince’s class. Decades later, Julian Dransfield, an English journalist, goes to Yonge to question the few surviving eyewitnesses. They reveal the existence of Oscar, a strange little boy who had moved there from Paris in the middle of the school year. Oddly, Oscar disappeared after the incident… The

atmosphere quickly becomes disturbing, as the tale goes subtly yet effectively back and forth in time, from Julian’s investigation to the events that took place a lifetime ago in this sleepy little town. The suspense never lets up in this page-turner. The author skillfully creates enigmatic situations that are made even more so by the web of relations between the protagonists. Novelist, biographer and literary journalist, François Rivière has written comic books and detective fiction, as well as biographies of Agatha Christie – his specialty, Patricia Highsmith, Edgar P. Jacobs and Enid Blyton, among others. Emmanuel RUBEN – La ligne des glaces (“Icebound”) Samuel Vidouble, a budding young diplomat, is appointed to a mysterious country in the eastern Baltic, which he knows nothing about. As soon as he shows up at the French embassy, he is assigned the task of mapping the country in order to define its maritime boundaries. Guided by Lothar Kalters, a linguist friend of his, and by Neva, a mesmerizing young woman, his journeys around the country bring discoveries, encounters and disappointments. Gradually coming to the realization that he has been assigned an impossible mission, he loses interest, becoming overwhelmed with a sense of melancholy that is reinforced by the wintry weather… In a style that creates powerful images, this very ambitious and intimate tale offers a disturbing satire of diplomacy and its geopolitical intrigues, as well as lovely tableaux of History’s tragedies and ruins. Emmanuel Ruben was born in Lyon in 1980. He is the author of Halte à Yalta (Jbz&Cie, 2010) and Kaddish pour un orphelin célèbre et un matelot inconnu (éditions du Sonneur, 2013). Salomon DE IZARRA, Nous sommes tous morts (“We Are All Dead”) The young second mate Nathaniel Nordnight and a crew of picturesque characters leave Norway on the Providence, a whaling ship under the command of the charismatic Captain Sogarvans. When the ship gets trapped in ice after a rough storm, the voyage turns into a nightmare. The irreversible mental and moral breakdown that follows the storm gradually leads Nordnight into murder, cannibalism and madness. This is his log. Like a cross between Robert Louis Stevenson and H.P. Lovecraft, this incisive and mesmerizing tale perfectly captures the tragic fate of a man whose geographical and mental shipwreck confront him with the living mirror of his own fears. Salomon de Izarra was born in 1989. Nous sommes tous morts is his first novel.

Déborah LEVY-BERTHERAT, Les voyages de Daniel Ascher (“Daniel Ascher’s Travels”) What the press has to say: “This is a book that will rejuvenate you – not because it’s about a young person or because it’s a bildungsroman, although those elements are there, but because it’s a novel for our eternal inner child” Antoine Compagnon, Le Monde des Livres “This first novel (…) is bursting with a spice that is actually pretty rare on the French literary landscape (…): charm.” - Olivier Mony, LivresHebdo Maël RENOUARD, La réforme de l’opéra de Pékin What the press has to say: “With remarkable accuracy, Maël Renouard shows that Maoism was also a grotesque comedy in which power, as always, goes to the one who dissimulates it best.” - Eric Aeschimann, Le NouvelObservateur “a brilliant and poetical book about the strange ties between art and politics” - Marine de Tilly, Le Point

Thriller – Rivages noir Dominique FORMA – Hollywood zéro Dominique is a solitary burglar who likes efficient, low-risk jobs. Unfortunately, he owes a rather large sum to a pair of very threatening thugs. With his back to the wall, he flies to L.A., where he is hoping to find his old pal Christian, a.k.a. Kenny, who has become a Hollywood producer. Well… to be more precise, Kenny’s specialty is swindling gullible would-be investors with sham film projects. Which is how a desperate Dominique is transformed into a promising young film director. After all, in Hollywood, anything’s possible. But the dream machine seems to be churning out nightmares instead. Having been both a computer engineer and a vendor of pirated records and X-rated movies, Dominique Forma’s life took a new tack when he moved to Hollywood, where he directed Scenes of the Crime, a film noir with Jeff Bridges. He lived in the USA for 15 years and acquired U.S. citizenship. Back in France, he decided to devote himself to writing. His books include Skeud (Fayard) and Voyoucratie (Rivages). What the press has to say: “This novel is both as high-octane and as disillusioned as can be” - Y.P, M le Magazine du Monde Marc VILLARD - Retour au Magenta (“Back to Magenta”) From Barbès– a North African neighborhood in Paris – to the U.S., the titles of these sixteen stories reveal the despair that haunts them: Gibier de potence (“Gallows Bird”), Vietnamisé (Vietnamized”),

L’Ange est un clochard (“The Angel Is

a Tramp”, Destroy dit-il (“Destroy, He Said”), Amnésie

provisoire (“Provisional Amnesia”) and more. Marc Villard has a way of telling stories about miserable heroes in search of a miniscule grail they’ll never achieve that is all his own. But the humor and electrifying poetry that run through these slices of life illuminate them with a surprising black light. Marc Villard was born into a working-class family in Versailles. He became a huge fan of both soccer and rock music. When he finally realized he’d never be a drummer in a rock band, he began writing poetry, then turned towards crime fiction in the 80s. He is considered the French master of the noir story. Hervé LE CORRE – Après la guerre (“After the War”) Bordeaux, 1950.World War II is still vivid in everyone’s memories, yet a new conflict has already broken out: the Algerian War. Daniel knows that he too, will have to go. An orphan who lost his parents in the camps, Daniel, now a mechanic, spends most evenings at the movies. One day, a stranger comes to the garage to get his motorcycle repaired. He seems to cast a shadow that poisons the atmosphere even after he’s gone. The man didn’t go there by chance. A series of violent incidents takes place. A high-school girl is mugged by someone who threatens her. She is the daughter of Albert Darlac, a police commissionaire who had had no qualms about arresting Jews during the Occupation, and who now rules the city with an iron hand. A short time later, the bar that is Darlac’s unofficial headquarters gets blown up. He gets drawn into a spiral of violence just as Daniel ships out to Algeria... After several novels in the Série Noire, Hervé Le Corre’s acclaimed L’Homme aux lèvres de saphir– a hit with critics and readers alike – won the Mystère de la Critique Prize. His next novel, Les Cœurs déchiquetés, won him the Mystère Prize yet again, as well as the Grand Prix de Littérature policière. Jean-Claude DEREY – Notre voisin le diable (“Our Neighbor, the Devil”) Apu lives in a slum near Delhi. One morning, his mother goes to the home of Mohinder Pandher Singh, a rich and respected businessman and local benefactor, to apply for a job as a maid. But after entering Sir Singh’s home, she is never seen again, and the corrupt police won’t lift a finger. With the help of his friend Indira, Apu soon realizes that this isn’t the first time someone has disappeared there. But how can you expose the truth when you’re a slum child whose life is worthless? There’s nothing for Apu and Indira to do but enter the lion’s den… and discover absolute horror. Based on a true story. Freelance journalist and novelist Claude Derey studied ethnology and psychology before traveling through Africa and Asia, which fascinate him, and where many of his novels are set. He is also a filmmaker.

Michaël MENTION – Adieu demain (Farewell Tomorrow”) Late 1990s. A new serial killer is terrorizing northern England. In many ways, his crimes are similar to Jack the Ripper’s: the victims are all women, and several of them are prostitutes. But the modus operandi distinguishes these murders: the bodies have been shot with a crossbow. Mark Burstyn, who was recently promoted to the rank of superintendent is put in charge of the investigation. One of the leads he decides to follow is that the victims were phobic: several of them did group therapy with a well-known psychiatrist. Youthful inspector Clarence Cooper will infiltrate this group, in the guise of someone suffering from arachnophobia, to find out more about the shrink and his patients. But for Cooper, the mission will soon turn into a living hell... Michaël Mention was born in Marseille. A film and music buff, he has already written several novels, in the noir or fantasy genres. Marc BOULET – C’est arrivé en Chine (“It Happened in China”) With his wife, Jade, a student from Beijing whom he met during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, Marc B., a French journalist, gets into the black market for organs procured from executed prisoners. The more executions there are, the richer their agency, Transplantations Without Borders, gets. It’s a veritable gold mine… but it’s not enough for Marc B., who has heard about Shambala, a fabled underground city somewhere in China. He is determined to find out how to get there... So begins a nervewracking voyage of initiation from Tibet to Mongolia, via Beijing and Chinese prisons’ Death Rows. Marc Boulet, the author of the best-sellers Dans la peau d’un Chinois and Dans la peau d’un intouchable, lived in China for several years. Eric HALPHEN – La piste du temps (“Running for Time”) The body of Marc Chaussoy, former running champ, was found on a building site in Neuilly, a select suburb of Paris. Chaussoy’s career hadn’t lived up to expectations. So how did this disappointing athlete earn his living – apparently quite a good one, too? And what was the reason for his brutal death? Commissioner Bizek, a lonely homosexual cop, and Judge Jonas Barth, an overworked young widower, will have to follow plenty of leads, most of them dead ends, before they manage – almost by chance – to catch a glimpse of light. Eric Halphen became famous as the magistrate in several important corruption cases involving subsidized housing in the Paris area. In addition to Sept ans de solitude (Denoël), in which he describes his confrontation with high-ranking politicians, he has written several novels, including Maquillages and La piste du temps, featuring Judge Barth and Commissioner Bizek.

What the press has to say: “No, La piste du temps is clearly not just another detective novel.” - V.M, Le Monde Luc CHOMARAT, L’espion qui venait du livre” (“The Spy who Came from a Book”) Bob Dumont is a top secret agent from the Cold War era. But times have changed, radically. Readers are looking for something different, and let’s not even talk about the world of publishing –where all they care about nowadays is the bottom line, merchandising, market studies and all that. Is there still a place for an author who’s sincere, albeit with debatable talent? On the other hand, perhaps the 110th installment in the adventures of Bob Dumont is one too many? As he reads the most god-awful first chapter he’s seen in the past 30 years, the editor of the Dumont series, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, decides to enter the novel in order to salvage what he can. Luc CHOMARAT, biography: Luc Chomarat was born in Algeria during the war. His first novel, published when he was 22, immediately earned him a spot on Magazine littéraire’s list of Top 50 living crime writers. His life then took a different tack. L’Espion qui venait du livre marks his return to writing.

Jean-Paul DEMURE, Le chant des morts In a little village in Provence, Brett, a (bogus) retired English officer, has bought Villa Cybèle, an architectural folly that no one wanted – not just because it’s such an oddity, but because “it’s cursed”. Then one day, after some heavy rain, a hollow-eyed skull washes up in the gravel by a hedge. The gardener had warned him that he needed to replenish the soil, but those silly foreigners never listen to the locals! Since Brett is naive enough to start asking questions, the villagers’ attitude towards him changes radically. But is he really that naive? Author of seven books for Rivages, winner of the Grand Prix de Littérature policière and the Grand Prix du Roman noir de Cognac, Jean-Paul Demure has a knack for writing very dark, cynical chronicles of society that are also very funny. Tito TOPIN, Métamorphose des cendres (“Metamorphosis of Ashes”) As social protest plunges France into chaos, a corrupt cop comes up with an unusual way to shake down the family of a member of the government who has been assassinated: take advantage of the reigning confusion to steal the urn with the ashes, then pluck at the relatives’ heartstrings to wring as much money out of them as possible. But a plan like that will inevitably run into all sorts of obstacles, starting with the unspeakable stupidity of some of the protagonists…

A noir novel that also has – as is often the case with Tito Topin – a pinch of anticipation. It takes on tough subjects like religion, nuclear energy and political sell-outs with jubilant and iconoclastic ferocity… Born in Morocco, writer and graphic designer Tito Topin has written 25 novels, comic books and television scripts (he is the creator of the famous Commissioner Navarro). He won the 1984 Mystère de la critique Prize and the 1989 Grand Prix de Littérature policière. Jean-Hugues OPPEL, Vostok What the press has to say: “A fascinating tale with moments of bitter, sometimes despairing humor.” - C.M., L’Humanité

CHILDREN’S BOOKS NADJA, Momo For those who don’t know him yet, Momo is a little crocodile who lives on a beach with other crocodiles. So what does he do ? Well … all sorts of things! Five new adventures for the crocodile created by Nadja.

L’amour c’est fou (“Love is Crazy) What is perfect, platonic, overwhelming, obsessive, true or secret love? What does it mean to be lovesick, to want proof of love, to pine for love? There are all sorts and kinds and ways of being in love, but one thing is for sure: love is crazy. The drawings are funny, offbeat, and refreshingly sassy. Nadja offers us two books with charming heroes to read and enjoy as a family.