New Releases by Georges Simenon

Set against a high-profile hunt for the latest criminal gang to hit Paris, Maigret is determined to track down the murderer of a quiet crook of the old school, for whom he cannot help feeling affection and respect. In Maigret''s careful recreation of the life of this gentle and eccentric burglar, Simenon beautifully depicts Maigret''s insight, compassion, and melancholic nostalgia.

Penguin delivers two more vintage Inspector Maigret novels by the legendary mystery author In The Hotel Majestic, Maigret investigates the murder of Mrs. Clark, the wife of a wealthy American industrialist, whose strangled body is found in the basement of an upscale hotel near the Champs-Elysees. Maigret’s inquiries take him from the endless corridors of the Hotel Majestic to the countryside of the Bois de Boulogne and sun-drenched Cannes, into a world of prostitution, drug addiction, and blackmail.

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.

Hardworking Dutch family man Kees Popinga loses his money when the shipping firm he works for collapses. Something snaps and from the shell of a modern citizen emerges a calculating paranoiac, capable of random acts of violence - even murder.

Inspector Lognon - a plain-clothes detective with a reputation for misfortune - is shot in the street with the word ''ghost'' on his lips. It soon emerges that he spent the night in the nearby apartment of a beautiful young woman, who has since vanished. While the injured man fights for his life in hospital, Chief Superintendent Maigret discovers that the hapless Inspector may finally have been on to something big. And when he encounters suave art dealer Norris Jonker and his glamorous wife Mirella, Maigret begins to wonder if their strange lifestyle is the reason for Lognon''s presence on the Avenue Junot. In Maigret and the Ghost, Simenon''s tenacious detective is perplexed by a constant stream of conflicting evidence as he explores the underground world of art collecting.

A kind, elderly lady-- meticulously groomed and showing no signs of derangement-- appeals to Inspector Maigret, frightened because someone has been moving furniture in her apartment. Nothing, however, has been stolen, and Maigret''s subordinates at Police Headquarters shrug her off as "Maigret''s madwoman." Touched by the imploring look in her eyes, Maigret promises to investigate-- but someone gets there ahead of him.

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.

It''s closing time at the Gai Moulin, and Jean Chabot and Rene Delfrosse are planning to rob the till to pay of their debts. To their surprise, they stumble upon a dead body. What at first seems to the police an open and shut case proves more complicated when the body turns up next at the zoo, stuffed into a wicker basket. Into the puzzlement steps Maigret, who makes one of the most dramatic and colorful entrances of his career as he sorts out the tangled web of deceit. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

After the death of Oscar Donadieu, a wealthy shipbuilder and tyrannical patriarch, his family begins to disintegrate, a process enchanced by the arrival of ambitious, angry Phillipe Dargens.

French master detective Maigret investigates the murder of the wife of Francois-Francis and discovers many puzzling circumstances surrounding it...

On Rue de Turenne, two human teeth are found in the old furnace of a Flemish bookbinder, who is taken into custody. A neighboring shoemaker is willing to talk, but his stories vary with each trip he makes to the local tavern. The case seems impossibly perplexing until Madame Maigret leaves her kitchen to offer her husband able assistance. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

The tidal regularity of life in a quiet village is broken when the local harbor-master is murdered, and Inspector Maigret must force the killer into the open by using all of his famous instincts.

After Inspector Maigret''s assistant Detective Lognon, loses a body, three shady Americans arrive in Paris, and Pozzo, the restaurateur from St. Louis, discovers that he is dealing with professional criminals

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.

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.

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

A homeless man is found beaten and unconscious along the banks of the Seine. Inspector Maigret must connect him to a past--and a possible motive for for his attempted murder. The investigation provides Maigret with a chilling look at those who have rejected society and the small measure of justice it offers them. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon

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

For a weekend, the Arbelet family stops in Pouilly, at the Hôtel du Cheval-Blanc. Maurice Arbelet is immediately seduced by the atmosphere of the inn: he will keep in his memory the image of a very pleasant place. Singular characters are found there however: Felix, the night watchman, former colonial soldier who''s become messy and cynical, an uncle of Mme Arbelet, lost for years; M. Jean, the owner of the hotel, who abuses his maids, Rose and Thérèse; and the latter''s husband, a Pole, who only shows up when he needs money. Why does Maurice Arbelet come back alone one afternoon to the Cheval-Blanc? This novel explores the hidden links two different milieus have with one another: the landlords of the inn and their employees, and the members of a middle-class family who frequent the restaurant, related to one of those employees.

The Inspector has fallen into disfavor with his Paris superiors and has been shunted to a district supervisor''s job on the northern French coast. Here, among mussel-gatherers and lobstermen, Maigret suffers depression and boredom. He is an outsider. Even the local police inspector is dull and predictable, as everything in the coastal villages appears to be. But the discovery of a corpse in the house of a retired judge returns a sense of purpose to Maigret. The Boston Globe called this "one of Simenon''s best Maigrets . . . replete with his customary irony and deft characterization".

One of Simenon''s riveting explorations of female psychology, a study in contrasts between two women who are mutually dependent from their school days. Marie is ugly, of somewhat limited intelligence, but her fixation on her friend gives her an uncanny insight into the other''s nature, intentions, and motivations. Sylvie--cold, vicious, ruthless--is also beautiful and compellingly attractive to men. Her desire to hurt extends to her faithful slave, Marie. For a number of years they lose sight of each other, as Sylvie becomes the adored mistress of a rich and elderly man. How and why Marie re-enters Sylvie''s life and achieves a dominating role in their relationship is described with surgical precision by one of the world''s greatest realistic writers.

To avoid financial scandal, the banker Ferchaux flees Paris for America. To accompany him as his personal secretary and bodyguard he hires a young boxer, Michel Maudet.

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.