Best Selling Books by Georges Simenon

The Murderer is set in a small town on the flat plains of Holland. Dr. Juperus, a local physician, is a man of meditative deliberation, propelled into action when he learns of his wife''s adultery with one of the town''s leading citizens. The icy calm with which Kuperus prepares methodically for murder rivals the bleak chill of his surroundings. Now, having acted, Kuperus is trapped - in the stuffy little town, behind shuttered windows, inside himself. Fearing discovery, yet craving recognition for his daring, Kuperus is caged within his own four walls. --Book jacket.

An actor, recently divorced, at loose ends in New York; a woman, no less lonely, perhaps even more desperate than the man: they meet by chance in an all-night diner and are drawn to each other on the spot. Roaming the city streets, hitting its late-night dives, dropping another coin into yet another jukebox, these two lost souls struggle to understand what it is that has brought them, almost in spite of themselves, together. They are driven—from moment to moment, from bedroom to bedroom—to improvise the most unexpected of love stories, a tale of suspense where risk alone offers salvation. Georges Simenon was the most popular and prolific of the twentieth century’s great novelists. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan—closely based on the story of his own meeting with his second wife—is his most passionate and revealing work.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Master novelist Georges Simenon’s critically acclaimed tale of the destructive power of lust and guilt “He felt no resentment towards Andree for biting his lip. In the context of their lovemaking, it had its place.” For Tony and Andree, there are no rules when they meet in the blue room at the Hotel des Voyageurs. Their adulterous affair is intoxicating, passionate—and dangerous. It soon turns into a nightmare from which there can be no escape. Heart-pounding and high-stakes, The Blue Room is a stylish and sensual psychological thriller that weaves a story of cruelty, reckless lust, and relentless guilt.

Set in the oppressively squalid streets of Paris, A Man''s Head features Simenon''s famed detective as he tracks a killer on the run, while the writer''s sharp prose evokes the atmosphere of Parisian luxury hotels, seedy bars, and dark alleys.

When a woman is found strangled in a stable near Lock 14, Inspector Maigret investigates, but finds her husband both unmoved and unhelpful as he follows a dark trail of whiskey-fueled orgies and a nomadic lifestyle to find the killer. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Inspector Maigret goes up against a group of American gangsters and finds he just might have met his match In Maigret’s latest adventure, the Inspector learns that his hapless colleague Lognon is being menaced by some notorious American mobsters, and he makes it his mission to bring them to justice, despite threatening warnings that he is out of his depth. As the stakes get higher, Maigret must rely on intel from his FBI friend in Washington, D.C., as well as his own ingenuity, to smoke the Americans out before they can complete the job and silence his star witness—permanently.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré In this brilliant new translation of Georges Simenon’s classic novel, a young man descends into a brutal world of crime “And always the dirty snow, the heaps of snow that look rotten, with black patches and embedded garbage . . . unable to cover the filth.” Nineteen-year-old Frank—thug, thief, son of a brothel owner—gets by surprisingly well despite living in a city under military occupation, but a warm house and a full stomach are not enough to make him feel truly alive in such a climate of deceit and betrayal. During a bleak, unending winter, he embarks on a string of violent and sordid crimes that set him on a path from which he can never return. Georges Simenon’s matchless novel is a brutal, compelling portrayal of a world without pity; a devastating journey through a psychological no man’s land.

Restored to print for the first time in more than forty years, The President was hailed by the New York Times as a “tour de force” At 82, the former premier lives in alert and suspicious retirement—self exile—on the Normandy coast, writing his anxiously anticipated memoirs and receiving visits from statesman and biographers. In his library is the self-condemning, handwritten confession of the premier’s former attaché, Chalamont, hidden between the pages of a sumptuously produced work of privately printed pornography—a confession that the premier himself had dictated and forced Chalamont to sign. Now the long-thwarted Chalamont has been summoned to form a new coalition in the wake of the government’s collapse. The premier alone possesses the secret of Chalamont’s guilt, of his true character—and has publicly vowed: “He’ll never be Premier as long as I’m alive... Nor when I’m dead, either.” Inspired by French Premier Georges Clemenceau, The President is a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a probing account of the decline of power.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré A gripping mystery from Georges Simenon in which Inspector Maigret must go up against small town suspicion—and revenge In a small, seaside town in the northwest of France, the local wine dealer is wounded by a gunshot while retuning home drunk from a hotel bar. Maigret, who is heading up a mobile squad of the Paris police force, is called in by the mayor to solve the crime. But upon settling down in the hotel, Maigret quickly discovers a curious cast of characters awaits him there—and they all have something to hide. In the course of this strange case, a customs official is shot, a retired journalist is lost and found, and a vagrant is attested, but through it all Maigret has his sights set firmly in the direction of the truth, even as a strange yellow dog haunts the neighborhood. Fast-paced and wholly unpredictable, The Yellow Dog is a sharp mystery set against the cutthroat backdrop of small town politics.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré While on holiday, Inspector Maigret is drawn into the murder of a teenage girl and subsequent disappearance of her brother and must confront an evil that is hidden in plain sight During their holidays in Sables-d’Olonne, Maigret’s wife is hospitalized with appendicitis and Maigret receives a strange note instructing him to visit a patient in another ward. To solve the mysterious case that has left a young woman dead and her brother missing, Maigret must give one of his best performances yet in a story laced with mood, class tension, and in the end, of course, justice.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré The basis for the 1947 French film noir classic Panique, which was rereleased in January 2017 Georges Simenon’s chilling portrayal of tragic love, persecution and betrayal “One sensed in him neither flesh nor bone, nothing but soft, flaccid matter, so much so that his movements were hard to make out. Very red lips stood out from his orb-like face, as did the thin moustache that he curled with an iron and looked as if it had been drawn on with India ink; on his cheekbones were the symmetrical pink dots of a doll''s cheeks.” People find Mr. Hire strange, disconcerting. The tenants in his building try to avoid him. He is a peeping Tom, a frequent client of sex workers, a dealer in unsavory literature. He is also the prime suspect for a brutal murder that he did not commit. But Mr. Hire’s innocence will not stand in the way of those looking for a scapegoat as tragedy unfolds in this quietly devastating and deeply unnerving novel.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré In Simenon’s iconic first novel featuring Inspector Maigret, the laconic detective is taken from grimy bars to luxury hotels as he traces a fraudster’s true identity Inspector Jules Maigret, a taciturn detective and commissaire of the Paris Brigade Criminelle, receives notice from Interpol that a notorious conman known only as Peitr the Latvian is en route to France. Armed with a broad description and a scant few clues, Maigret plans to intercept him at the train station outside Paris. But when he arrives, he finds that there are several suspects—some living, and some dead—who meet the description uncannily well. Who is Pietr the Latvian, truly? A vagrant, a seaman, a businessman, a corpse? Russian, Norwegian, American or Latvian? In Pietr the Latvian, the iconic first novel of Simenon’s classic series that made Inspector Maigret a legendary figure in the annals of detective fiction, Maigret must use his every instinct to unravel the mystery and track down the truth.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When a Paris musician witnesses an altercation that may have been a murder, the young Inspector Maigret becomes embroiled in his first case A musician walking home along the Rue Chaptal in the early hours of the morning sees a panic-stricken woman call for help from an upstairs window; moments later he hears a gun shot. He tries to go to her assistance, pushing past the man who opens the door upon his frantic knocking, but he finds himself roughly ejected from the premises. Undeterred, he heads for the nearest police station and urges Maigret to return with him and find out what has taken place. With this look into the man he once was and how he became the insightful inspector we have some to know, Simenon offers new insights into the brilliance of Maigret.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When a young woman with a dark past is found dead on the streets of Paris, Inspector Maigret is on the case A young woman named Lulu, who has a history of brushes with the law and once lived on the streets of the 18th arrondissement, is found murdered in Paris. Maigret is called to the scene and soon learns that her boyfriend, a musician, has gone into hiding upon reading the news of her death. And when the Inspector learns that the young victim was pregnant, he begins to suspect the case might be more sinister than he imagined.

Against all expectations Marcel Féron has made a “normal” life in a bucolic French suburb in the Ardennes. But on May 10, 1940, as Nazi tanks approach, this timid, happy man must abandon his home and confront the “Fate” that he has secretly awaited. Separated from his pregnant wife and young daughter in the chaos of flight, he joins a freight car of refugees hurtling southward ahead of the pursuing invaders. There, he meets Anna, a sad-looking, dark- haired girl, whose accent is “neither Belgian nor German,” and who “seemed foreign to everything around her.” As the mystery of Anna’s identity is gradually revealed, Marcel leaps from the heights of an exhilarating freedom to the depths of a terrifying responsibility—one that will lead him to a blood-chilling choice. When it first appeared in English in 1964, British novelist and critic Brigid Brophy declared The Train to be “the novel his admirers had been expecting all along from Simenon.” Until The Train, she wrote, the dazzlingly prolific novelist had been “a master without a masterpiece.”

For forty years Charles Alavoine has sleepwalked through his life. Growing up as a good boy in the grip of a domineering mother, he trains as a doctor, marries, opens a medical practice in a quiet country town, and settles into an existence of impeccable bourgeois conformity. And yet at unguarded moments this model family man is haunted by a sense of emptiness and futility. Then, one night, laden with Christmas presents, he meets Martine. It is time for the sleeper to awake.

TWO DESPERATELY LONELY, DISILLUSIONED PEOPLE MEET AT A NEW YORK BAR, SPEND THE ENTIRE NIGHT TOGETHER, AND TAKE REFUGE IN A GARISH HOTEL. THEY FALL IN LOVE BUT ARE AFRAID TO BELIEVE A NEW LIFE IS POSSIBLE. TRANSLATION OF TROIS CHAMBRES A MANHATTAN.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Maigret stumbles upon a series of murders in Fontenay-le-Comte while visiting an old school friend On his way home from a conference, Maigret stops to visit an old school friend in Fontenay-le-Comte. A man in the same train car introduces himself and asks if Maigret has come to help solve the murder case. In fact, the man’s brother-in-law had been murdered four days earlier, followed by the murder of a local widow in the same way, a blow to the head with a pipe. While Maigret is in town, a third murder is reported. Maigret soon discovers that there are two warring factions in the town, a clear class separation, and an air of suspicion that only he can put to rest.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When the son of a wealthy businessman fears for his father’s life, Maigret is plucked from retirement to visit New York on an unlikely quest Aged 56 and in his first year of retirement at Meung-sur-Loire, Maigret is surprised with a visit by Jean, the son of wealthy New York businessman John Maura. With the assistance of his aging lawyer, Jean convinces Maigret to accompany him to New York, where he believes his father is in danger. But things take an unexpected turn upon their arrival when it is Jean himself who disappears. Set against the mysterious backdrop of New York City, Maigret’s investigation must unearth old crimes, outsmart treacherous characters, and overcome his status as an outsider policeman in the city.

“One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories.” —The Guardian When a well-liked nightclub owner turns up dead in a cemetery, Inspector Maigret must track down the killer—despite a lack of suspects. During a quiet spell in June, Maigret is called to investigate the disappearance of a reputable businessman, a nightclub owner with properties in Montmarte and on the Champs-Élysées. Things take a dark turn when the man’s body is discovered near the famous Père Lachaise cemetery. There’s no trace of the man having any enemies, and Maigret struggles to find any clues to the perpetrator—and loses his temper when his own reputation is threatened by the case. Under the heat of the Paris summer sun, in Maigret’s Anger, the inspector must find the connections he’ll need to catch a killer and preserve his good name.

Three vintage Maigret novels by legendary mystery author Georges Simenon One of the world ''s most successful crime writers, Georges Simenon has thrilled mystery lovers since 1931 with his matchless creation Inspector Maigret. In My Friend Maigret, Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small- time crook on a Mediterranean island. Told in Simenon''s spare, unsentimental prose, Inspector Cadaver is a haunting exploration of provincial hypocrisy and snobbery, in which Maigret encounters a rival sleuth from his past. In Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Simenon''s tenacious detective pieces together the life of a man who for three years lived a secret life-until he is found stabbed to death in an alleyway.

“One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories.” —The Guardian When suspicion turns on Inspector Maigret for a crime he did not commit, he must use every investigative tool in his arsenal to clear his name. For the first time in his career, Inspector Maigret receives written summons to the Chief Commissioner’s office. There he learns that he has been accused of a horrible assault by an individual with ties to a high-ranking official. He is forbidden from attempting to investigate the case, but with his career and reputation on the line, Maigret must do everything he can to prove his innocence and uncover the motive behind the accusation. A nail-biting dissection of what happens when suspicion falls on the very man tasked with bringing about justice, Maigret Defends Himself is a riveting mystery from Georges Simenon.

Mystery. Originally published in England as T̀he patience of Maigret'' in 1940.

''The father of contemporary European detective fiction'' Ann Cleeves ''Just take a look,'' Duclos said in an undertone, pointing to the scene all round them, the picture-book town, with everything in its place, like ornaments on the mantlepiece of a careful housewife . . . ''Everyone here earns his living. Everyone''s more or less content. And above all, everyone keeps his instincts under control, because that''s the rule here, and a necessity if people want to live in society.'' When a French professor visiting the quiet, Dutch coastal town of Delfzjil is accused of murder, Maigret is sent to investigate. The community seem happy to blame an unknown outsider, but there are people much closer to home who seem to know much more than they''re letting on: Beetje, the dissatisfied daughter of a local farmer, Any van Elst, sister-in-law of the deceased and a notorious local crook. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret in Holland. ''Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'' John Gray ''A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness'' Independent

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré Inspector Maigret loses himself in coastal luxury—and danger—in this devastating mystery set on the French Riviera “It had a smell of holidays. The previous evening, in Cannes Harbour, with the setting sun, had also had the smell of holidays, especially the Ardena, whose owner swaggered in front of two girls with gorgeous figures...” Dazzled at first by the glamour of sunny Antibes, Maigret soon finds himself immersed in the less salubrious side of the Riviera as he retraces the final steps of a local eccentric.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré A chilling Inspector Maigret mystery set on the Belgian border “She wasn''t an ordinary supplicant. She didn''t lower her eyes. There was nothing humble about her bearing. She spoke frankly, looking straight ahead, as if to claim what was rightfully hers. ‘If you don''t agree to look at our case, my parents and I will be lost, and it will be the most hateful legal error...’” Maigret is asked to the windswept, rainy border town of Givet by a young woman desperate to clear her family of murder. But their well-kept shop, the sleepy community and its raging river all hide their own mysteries.

''His artistry is supreme'' John Banville It was as if suddenly, long ago, life had stopped here, not the life of the man lying on the bed but the life of the house, the life of its world, and even the factory chimney that could be seen through the curtains looked obsolete and absurd. A once-wealthy family closes ranks when one of their own is shot, leaving Maigret - along with a troublesome new magistrate - to pick his way through their secrets. ''One of the greatest writers of our time'' Sunday Times

Detective Maigret, escaping death and lying speechless in a hospital, still manages to solve the mystery.

“One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories.” —The Guardian When he is tasked with solving a seemingly motiveless murder, Inspector Maigret must rely on his famous intuition to discover the truth A retired manufacturer is found murdered with his own pistol in his favorite armchair, shattering the tranquility of a quiet Paris community. The neighbors describe the Josselin household as a bastion of bourgeois compatibility, and Inspector Maigret is stymied by the absence of motive and by the reticence of the bereaved wife. It is not until a chance witness recalls an odd encounter between the deceased and a man in a bistro that the veil of propriety protecting the killer begins to dissolve. Maigret suspects that he’s not being given all the facts in this case as he is drawn deeper into the complex web of family dramas and lies at the heart of it. In Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse, he must rely on his famous intuition above all to uncover the shocking truth.

The extraordinarily patient Maigret cracks a most perplexing case, comme ca. For more than two decades, daring daylight jewelry store heists has plagued the Parisian inspector. When a Corsican immigrant, ex-pimp and sometime police informer, is found shot in the head in his wheelchair with his own gun, an entire generation of conspiracy begins to unravel.

Investigating the murder of one of Paris''s elite, the detective Maigret finds the list of suspects is longer than anyone could have imagined When a wealthy wine merchant is shot and killed in Paris, Inspector Maigret must investigate a long list of family, colleagues and lovers to uncover just who could have committed the crime. Delving into the depths of the man''s personality, Maigret discovers that the victim may have made one too many enemies on his way to the top. Breathlessly paced and psychologically astute, Maigret and the Wine Merchant is a thrilling mystery from the master Georges Simenon.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When Inspector Maigret’s .45 revolver is stolen from his home, he becomes embroiled in a murder in which the gun may have played a deadly role Maigret is the victim of a burglary in which the .45 revolver he had received as a gift from the FBI is stolen. That evening Maigret attends a dinner where François Lagrange, an acquaintance of Maigret’s friend, is expected but fails to appear due to ill health. Following his instincts, Maigret decides to investigate Lagrange’s absence and uncovers a body stowed in a trunk, as well as Lagrange, who refuses to talk and seems to have lost his mind. Only Maigret can uncover the truth—and the fateful role his revolver may have played.

A new translation of Simenon''s tense novel, book fifteen in the new Penguin Maigret series. He recalled his travelling companion''s agitated sleep - was it really sleep? - his sighs, and his sobbing. Then the two dangling legs, the patent-leather shoes and hand-knitted socks . . . An insipid face. Glazed eyes. And Maigret was not surprised to see a grey beard eating into his cheeks. A distressed passenger leaps off a night train and vanishes into the woods. Maigret, on his way to a well-earned break in the Dordogne, is soon plunged into the pursuit of a madman, hiding amongst the seemingly respectable citizens of Bergerac. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. ''Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'' John Gray ''One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories'' Guardian ''A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness'' Independent

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré “[My Friend Maigret] is a great vehicle for passing the dead minutes…by pondering, with Maigret, the challenges of order versus chaos, how to serve justice, if it needs serving—and an island filled with ‘nothing but phenomena.’” —The New York Times Book Review Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small-time crook on a Mediterranean island While Inspector Pyke of Scotland Yard is staying with Maigret to observe his methods, Maigret receives word of a murder in the Midi on the island of Porquerolles. The victim is Marcellin, a man who claims to have been Maigret’s friend but was actually a criminal whose girlfriend, a sex worker, Maigret helped out of a scrape years ago. Travelling to the island, Maigret and Pyke must solve a mystery that takes them deep into the shadowy world of art forgery and the heart of an isolated community with eccentric inhabitants—and no shortage of secrets. My Friend Maigret is a page-turning mystery set in the sun-drenched south of France about what can happen when past acquaintances resurface.

Almost anyone could have shot the ex-postmistress of Saint-André-sur-Mer. Why is Maigret there, among an odd assortment of people he has never seen before and charged with the task of digging out their deepest secrets? A secret agenda of his own draws him on.

When a body is found in Paris, nothing is as it seems, and Maigret must delve into the victim''s mysterious past to discover who could have killed him Inspector Maigret is called to action after a man who appears to be an elderly, socially isolated vagrant is found dead in the condemned building where he had been sleeping in Les Halles, Paris. As he begins to pick apart the few clues available, however, Maigret soon realizes that this man is far from who he originally appeared. Helped along by his signature intuition, an anonymous caller, and the memories of Montmarte''s community of senior citizens, the Inspector must put the puzzle together and reveal the truth behind a pair of crimes. With Georges Simenon''s signature tightly-woven plotting, Maigret and the Loner is a riveting, page-turning mystery.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré At a lavish dinner party, Inspector Maigret recounts the tale of an old case that has haunted him for years At one of his friends’ frequent dinner parties, Maigret shares the story of a case from a few years back that haunts him to this day, in which a man named Adrien Josset was found guilty and was executed for the murder of his wife, Christine. Adrien had been a weak-willed, mild-mannered man, but Christine, who was much wealthier than he, had used her connections to land him an influential position in an important career. Maigret had interviewed Adrien only once when the examining magistrate took over the case and successfully moved to have him executed. But though all the clues pointed to Adrien’s guilt, Maigret remained unconvinced, and years later, he still doubts the murderer’s true identity. Maigret’s Secret is a thought-provoking dive into the machinations of justice, and the ways in which they can sweep away an innocent man’s life.

A young woman who shares an apartment with an elderly aunt returns to police headquarters repeatedly to complain of strange shifts in the position of her furniture during the night. On a particularly busy day the Inspector puts her off just long enough for disaster to strike. Translated by Eileen Ellenbogen. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.