Moscow, September 17th, 1904. A crowd, brandishing sticks, stones and rotten vegetables, gathers in the forecourt of the palace of Moscow’s Governor. They’re not happy. The state of their country and their standard of living is rapidly becoming intolerable. Up on the balcony, Governor Sergei Alexandrovitch drops his handkerchief…
Was it intentional? Or a tragic accident? Whatever the case may be, it’s the signal: the soldiers open fire on the crowd. In an explosive political context, where the people are gathering together in the fight against an autocratic regime, this unfortunate event is nothing short of a death sentence for the Governor of Moscow…
Alex Poliac and his son are still on the run, having evaded both the FBI and the Clown — the supposed serial killer who’s actually a KGB hatchet man. Because Alex isn’t exactly who he says he is, part of a network run by a shadowy figure among the US’s most wanted list. He also happens to be the only holder of the explosive Route 66 List, which contains the names of every agent implanted in the States along the celebrated road. Agents whose days are now numbered.
These seven short adventures were published throughout the 1970s in the paperback magazine Super Pocket Pilote alongside such favorites as Asterix, Blueberry, and Lucky Luke. The first of these stories was published even before the albums starting coming out, when Valerian and Laureline are just beginning their brilliant careers as space agents. Christin and Mézières use these tales as a kind of laboratory for their growing universe of flora, fauna, and colorful characters.
Manu and Mariette have immigrated to the countryside. Manu wants a vegetable garden and Mariette wants a baby. But Manu, who’s celebrating with much jubilation the birth of his very first radish, is having a hard time accepting the notion of parenthood. I mean, imagine having to admit to your child that you don’t know how to change the contact breakers on your car… So Manu hides himself away inside the packing boxes that seem to have become a permanent installment of their new house’s decor. And don’t even start on the neighbor’s penchant for pesticides, and then the poster he’s supposed to design for the annual pig festival…
Marie-Pascale and Thérèse are 13 years old when they meet at a boarding school in Honfleur, an establishment for girls run by the Sisters of St Augustine canons. Marie-Pascale comes from a (very) wealthy family from Neuilly, and Thérèse comes from a farming family from the area. Something of a culture shock. The two girls become inseparable as they experience countless adventures together at boarding school. The sixties are in full swing and the two girls, soon to be young women, share the milestones of their lives: adolescence, boys, love, further studies and looking for personal fulfillment in the working world…
London, 1831. The young naturalist Charles Darwin, keen to embark on the journey of a lifetime, is soon to take his place onboard the HMS Beagle. This vessel is destined not only for far‐away lands full of promise, but also for many challenges. During his travels through the steamy tropics, Darwin has many encounters, from Conrad Martens, a painter aboard the ship, to a trio of Indian missionaries. While his discovery of the variety of flora and fauna fill him with awe and perplexity, his brush with slave drivers prompts him to question the moral values of his peers.
Riad Sattouf is approached by Libération for their “summer adventure” column. That’s how he ends up in New York with his buddy Mollet, who came to work for Spielberg but ended up as a trained cassoulet waiter in a French restaurant. There’s also Lucie, a bad-tempered “kind of friend” who is only interested in our hero when she’s drunk enough to find him attractive or when he picks up the tab at Michael Jordan’s steak house: steak and spaghetti at a thousand bucks plus the Chardonnay… So why “No Sex in New York”? Well, because “sex” sells, even with the “no” in front of it. Although they do spend a lot of time thinking about it…
We know the brilliant writer of the Rougon-Macquart series and the committed author of the open letter “J’accuse…!” but what do we know about his private life? Who were the women in his life? How did they help him to accomplish his work? At what sacrifice? A remarkable fresco that takes us back to the end of the 19th century, to the heart of an ever-changing France and the city of Paris, full of artists and workers.
“Alice Chemama is devoted to recreating, with watercolors, the avant-garde artistic styles of the era on the page, particularly the impressionism of Manet, Claude Monet, and Paul Cézanne.”
“Marcaggi’s writing shows clear evidence of deep historical research, like the inclusion of correspondence between Emile Zola and Paul Cézanne…”The AV Club
Tom Thomson, whose grandiose landscapes of Ontario’s wilderness marked the entry of Canadian art into the modern era, died at a young age under troubling circumstances. His career as a painter was as brief as it was fundamental, in that it inspired the next great generation of Canadian painters, the iconic Group of Seven. Returning to the circumstances of the painter’s sudden disappearance just as he was beginning to attain recognition, Sandrine Revel retraces his journey, sketching a subtle portrait of the artist while questioning nostalgia in art as it attaches itself to artists. This is a book about memory and the past: troubling, beautiful, and melancholic, like the passage of time.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead or actual events would be strangely coincidental… In a town in the east of France, Sylvestre Ruppert-Levansky, a president of the circuit court, begins his last trial, in the same place his career began. Everything here reminds him of Rachel, his first love, and most of all, Mathilde, a manipulative, diabolic serial killer. The old magistrate has a spotless reputation. He is considered tolerant and fair. But then a police officer from his past asks to see him. Perhaps the legend of Sylvestre, the eminent judge, isn’t so cut and dry… In a gripping tale full of surprises, Denis Robert and Franck Biancarelli reinvent the thriller.
