La Bête humaine, often cited as a masterwork, tells a story that details the psychological dissolution of a working man named Jacques Lantier. On board a train bound for the French port city of Le Havre, stationmaster Roubard murders a man who seduced his beautiful young wife Severine. Jacques Lantier also seduces Severine, who tries to entice Lantier to murder the abusive and controlling Roubard. Lantier has urges and tendencies of his own however that change everything and bring the novel to a brilliant close. A suspenseful, violent psycholgical thriller written in 1890 by the brilliant Emile Zola.

A beloved French classic, Le Petit Chose is an autobiographical memoir by Alphonse Daudet. Le Petit Chose recounts Daudet's early years from childhood, his teen years in boarding school, and goes on to chronicle his move to Paris where Daudet experienced his first successes as an author. Le Petit Chose is a lush and engaging story about childhood, growing up, and learning from mistakes. The novel was Daudet's first published, though not first written, work. Published in 1868. Join Club de Lecture at 2:00pm in the Board Room at Genuine Joe’s Coffee Shop on Anderson Lane, February 23, 2019.

Guy Roland is a detective who lost his memory ten years before the beginning of the story. When his employer retires and closes the detective agency where he has worked for eight years, Roland embarks on a search for his own identity. His investigations uncover clues to a life that seems to stop during World War II. Roland learns it’s likely he is Jimmy Stern, a Jewish Greek man who was living in Paris under an assumed name. With his memory partially back, Guy Roland goes to look for his friend Freddie. At the end of the novel Roland is about to follow the last clue that might unlock his past: an address on a street in Rome, the Via della Botteghe Obscure, where Jimmy Stern lived throughout the 1930s.