'Let's be clear that it's not your professionalism which I question. If you understand nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, it's because from the very start you've been working with facts which had been falsified.' Maigret sets out to prove the innocence of a man condemned to death for a brutal murder. As his audacious plan to uncover the truth unfolds, he encounters rich American expatriates, some truly dangerous characters and their hidden motives.

Maigret plunges into the murky Parisian underworld in book twenty-nine of the new Penguin Maigret series. 'That shoeless foot looked incongruous lying on the pavement next to another foot encased in a shoe made of black kid leather. It was naked, private . . . It was Maigret who retrieved the other shoe which lay by the kerb six or seven metres away' A series of strange phone calls leads Inspector Maigret through the Paris streets towards a man out of his depth amid a network of merciless criminals. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret's Special Murder.

On a foggy winter's evening in Dieppe, after the arrival of the daily ferry from England, a railway signalman habitually scrutinizes the port from his tiny, isolated cabin. When a scuffle on the quayside catches his eye, he is drawn to the scene of a brutal murder and his once quiet life changes forever. A mere observer at first, he soon finds himself fishing a briefcase from the water and in doing so he enters a feverish and secret chase. As the murderer and witness stalk and spy on each other, they gain an increasingly profound yet tacit understanding of each other until the witness becomes an accomplice. Written in 1933, soon after the successful launch of the Inspector Maigret novels, this haunting, atmospheric novel soon became a classic and the inspiration for several film and TV adaptations.

Супруги Мегрэ по настоятельной рекомендации врача отправились на курорт в Виши. Они гуляют, пьют целебную минеральную воду - в общем, отдыхают. И тут, как по заказу, на безмятежном курорте происходит убийство. Дело ведет бывший коллега Мегрэ по парижской уголовной полиции. Привыкший к бурной деятельности комиссар скучает без привычной работы и приходит на помощь к местной полиции. Неадаптированный текст романа снабжен комментариями и словарем. Книга предназначена для студентов языковых вузов и всех любителей детективного жанра, владеющих французским языком.

Tout a coup, entre deux petites gares dont il n'aurait pu dire le nom et dont il ne vit presque rien dans l'obscurite, sinon des lignes de pluie devant une grosse lampe et des silhouettes humaines qui poussaient des chariots, Maigret se demanda ce qu'il faisait la. Peut-etre s'etait-il assoupi un moment dans le compartiment surchauffe ? Il ne devait pas avoir perdu entierement conscience car il savait qu'il etait dans un train ; il en entendait le bruit monotone ; il aurait jure qu'il avait continue a voir, de loin en loin, dans l'etendue obscure des champs, les fenetres eclairees d'une ferme isolee. Tout cela, et l'odeur de suie qui se melangeait a celle de ses vetements mouilles, restait reel, et aussi un murmure regulier de voix dans un compartiment voisin, mais cela perdait en quelque sorte de son actualite, cela ne se situait plus tres bien dans l'espace, ni surtout dans le temps.

'She was beautiful, full of vitality, and he was sixteen years older, a dusty, lonely bookseller whose only passion in life was collecting stamps.' Jonas is used to his young wife disappearing. Everyone in the town knows that she goes off with other men. This time, however, he tells a small lie to protect her, saying she is visiting a school friend. It is a lie, however, that eats into him like an illness, provoking hostility and resentment of this timid little Russian-Jewish bookseller, who always thought he had been accepted. As suspicion mounts, his true, terrifying isolation is revealed.

'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, Amy van Elst, sister-in-law of the deceased and a notorious local crook.

'What he thought he had discovered, in place of the joyful candour that she usually displayed, was an irony which was neither less cheerful nor less childish, but which troubled him ... He wondered now if his exultation wasn't down to the fact that she was playing a part, not just to deceive him, not just to hide something from him, but for the pleasure of acting a part' When one of his best inspectors is shot, Maigret decides to book himself into Mademoiselle Cle'ment's well-kept Paris boarding house nearby in order to find the culprit.

'High up in Montmartre, there was a festive atmosphere, people were crowding round the little tables where rose wine was being served ... Yet a hundred metres further on, the little alleyways were deserted, and the killer might find it easy to pounce' Detective Chief Inspector Maigret is known for his infallible instinct, for getting at the truth no matter how complex the case, but when someone starts killing women on the streets of Montmartre, he finds himself confounded. In the sweltering Paris summer heat, with the city in a state of siege, Maigret hatches a plan to lure the murderer out ...

A first ink drawing showed a hanged man swinging from a gallows on which perched an enormous crow. And there were at least twenty other etchings and pen or pencil sketches that had the same leitmotif of hanging. On the edge of a forest: a man hanging from every branch. A church steeple: beneath the weathercock, a human body dangling from each arm of the cross. . . Below another sketch were written four lines from Francois Villon's Ballade of the Hanged Men. On a trip to Brussels, Maigret unwittingly causes a man's suicide, but his own remorse is overshadowed by the discovery of the sordid events that drove the desperate man to shoot himself. This novel has been published in previous translations as Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets and The Crime of Inspector Maigret.

Si Baudoin a trouve du travail, c’est grace a cette cravate. S’il a decouvert sa vocation d’ecrivain, c’est encore grace a elle. Avant lui deja, son pere avait soin de la porter dans les moments decisifs de l’existence. Elle aurait meme appartenu a Georges Simenon, le celebre ecrivain belge ! Mais lorsque le pere de Leopold tombe gravement malade, la pauvre cravate semble impuissante… A moins que ? Pour les apprenants de niveau A2, un roman tour a tour drole et emouvant sur une relation pleine de pudeur entre un pere et son fils.

Maigret shrugged his shoulders, buried his hands in his pockets and went off without answering. He had just spent one of the most wretched days in his life. For hours, in his corner he had felt old and feeble, without idea or incentive. But now a tiny flame flickered. 'You bet we'll see' he growled. Maigret's peaceful retirement in the countryside is disrupted when a relative unwittingly embroils himself in a crime he did not commit and the inspector returns to Police Headquarters in Paris once again.

'She tried to laugh, but was sobbing at the same time. She attempted to stand up and fell over, but she didn't shatter like the glass' Alone and adrift after losing everything in a divorce, Betty finds her life sliding dangerously out of control. When an older woman, Laure, discovers her drunk in a Paris restaurant and nurses her back to health, she is given another chance. But Betty is damaged, consumed by darkness. As the truth about her past, and her nature, emerges, it threatens to consume Laure too. Originally published in 1961, this gripping psychological thriller caused a sensation and inspired a film adaptation by Claude Chabrol.

In his mind's eye he would see that slim figure in the striking clothes, those wide eyes the colour of forget-me-not, the pert nose and especially the hat, that giddy, crimson bonnet perched on the top of her head with a bronze-green feather shaped like a blade stuck in it . . . Felicie had given him more trouble than all the 'hard' men who had been put behind bars. This novel has been published in a previous translation as Maigret and the Toy Village.

Avant d’ouvrir les yeux, Maigret fronca les sourcils, comme s’il se fut mefie de cette voix qui venait lui crier tout au fond de son sommeil : – Mon oncle !… Les paupieres toujours closes, il soupira, tatonna le drap de lit et comprit qu’il ne revait pas, qu’il se passait quelque chose puisque sa main n’avait pas rencontre, la ou il eut du etre, le corps chaud de Mme Maigret. Il ouvrit enfin les yeux. La nuit etait claire. Mme Maigret, debout pres de la fenetre a petits carreaux, ecartait le rideau cependant qu’en bas quelqu’un secouait la porte et que le bruit se repercutait dans toute la maison. – Mon oncle ! C’est moi…

A man's dismembered body is found in a canal, and only Maigret can uncover the killer When a man's headless body is discovered in Paris's Saint-Martin Canal, Maigret is quick to answer the call. It is in this very neighborhood that he meets a strangely taciturn woman who runs a cafe. Her husband is away on a trip-or so she says. As is often the case, Maigret soon learns that there is more to the story than meets the eye. As shocking as it is incisive, Maigret and the Headless Corpse is a compelling mystery from Georges Simenon.