Le chantier

Flora Del Sol is a young architect. Recently graduated, she has joined a major studio, where her boss is the famous El Rodrigo—brilliant, capricious, and flamboyant. As she learns the ropes, Flora experiences all the humiliations and disappointments, but also all the thrills and joys, of being an architect today. Soon she takes on a project of her own, working independently and growing in confidence. In the beginning she was awkward and diffident, but she has now taken wing, reaching the heights of eco-design and sustainable construction with her bold originality.

The world is now divided by invisible walls that disrupt the time continuum… The conclusion of this fascinating diptych!

Since her death in 2009, Vivian Maier has been recognized as one of the world’s greatest photographers. But who was this enigmatic and unconventional nurse? The authors explore Maier’s life with humility and sensitivity, discovering a woman for whom there were no taboos, and who never ceased to observe the world around her with a uniquely personal gaze.

Back in Scotland, Kathy discovers that the house left to her by an aunt has been burnt down. She tries to understand the cause of the fire and gradually realizes that this event is linked to other strange events happening in the area, some of which may have an extraterrestrial origin. Alerted, MI6 asks her to investigate the presence of Russian spies in this lost territory… At the same time, Kathy is confronted with personal memories of the lost land where she used to live.

“Nature abhors a void,” his therapist reminds him. “So you create images to replace lost memories.” Reflecting on this observation, Joann realizes that images are indeed very important to him, and he recalls a similar conversation he had as a child with a rabbi. Can an image take the place of a memory of someone who has died, of one’s own mother? And if you rely on an image instead of something real, is that not a kind of idolatry? Does the image prevent you from interacting with or confronting reality? Or are drawing and writing (the essence of the graphic novel) not rather a way of freeing yourself from reality, of opening yourself up to and understanding the world around you? Are they not in fact a kind of therapy?

Chicago, 1938. Jules Tivoli, a 17-year-old Italian immigrant, finds his life turned upside down when he crosses paths with Adam Czar, an older, charismatic, and infuriating member of the local Mafia. Jules is attracted to him, and Adam, seduced by the young man’s nerve, decides to take him under his wing. At first self-effacing, Jules climbs the ranks to become an important member of the Mafia. Little by little, he begins to realize that Adam takes a very dim view of his young lover’s ascendancy over him…

In the heart of the ancestral forest, young Taru is searching for her place among her people. She is marginalized by the hunter-warrior tribe because of her naiveté, and her ingenious innovations are considered strange. When she meets Hana, a young human captive placed in her charge, she finds refuge, perhaps a friend, and soon a gateway to finding her own way. As the village is once again targeted by monstrous animals, Hana and Taru join forces to try and understand the natural world that has become uncontrollable and deadly…

Jailed! Four of our five ladies find themselves locked up in the penitentiary. Life in the big-house is already hard enough, but when you’re four women in a men’s prison, it gets so unbearably hard that there’s no time to fool around—barely have they moved into their shared cell, and they’re already planning their escape. Even in the highly-regimented world of incarceration, the ladies always make it unclear exactly who’s in charge, who wields the power, and who is tilting one side or other of the scales of justice

At M.A., Mothers Anonymous, we talk frankly about motherhood. Not about “how extraordinary it is to become a mother”! Far from the talk of girlfriends, the clichés of magazines and the stories of grandmothers in the subway, we recount personal experiences, anxieties, failures… And this integral edition collects both Mères Anonymes and A la recherche du nouveau père, where Philippe, a new and slightly disregarded arrival at M.A., reflects on his status as a ‘new dad’.

In 1841, 12-year-old Edmond, a young slave of Mr. Ferreol Sellier-Beaumont, a landowner on Reunion Island, discovered the process of artificial fertilization of vanilla. The technical procedure he invented, simple, fast, and efficient, was a worldwide revolution in the cultivation of vanilla, and was adopted almost everywhere in the world. Even though it made the island extremely wealthy, Edmond did not make any profit from it. Though he suffers a fall from grace and spends time in prison, in the end he triumphs against all odds, becoming a popular figure, a man of roguish charm, joyful, and eternal.